Who wouldn't want to strangle a murdering, shape-shifting villainous mutant? (insert ex-wife joke here)
We can't even be sure it's a female, can we?

Amy Alkon making light of this demonstrates her insensitivity to the plight of Persons of Fiction. I would ask of Amy Alkon that she check her Nonfiction Privilege.

Come on! You know she likes it.

The most disturbing question here is, "Why does Rose McGowan, probably a d-list celebrity and not known for her brains, have license to dictate a controversy that gains national attention?"

Shouldn't our reaction to pretty much everything she has to say be more along the lines of, "That's nice, Rose. Now, run along and play." And send her off with a pat on the head?

The most unbelievable aspect of "Charmed" wasn't the witchcraft. It wasn't even the fact that all three sisters lived in San Francisco and didn't know a single gay person. It was the fact that the character played by Rose McGowan somehow earned a Master's degree in social work! I mean, where the hell did she buy her thesis from?

She's an adequate singer, terrible actress and what some guys see in her is beyond me. Who the hell is attracted to that pasty, white hag?

When did we decide that she was worth listening to on ... anything?

@Patrick,

There's always a market for doe-eyed, pasty white, dark-ish ladies.

See also Winona Rider, and Cristina Ricci.

It's women like Rose McGowan that promote violence against women.

This type of movie ad should REDUCE the incidence of women being injured in DV encounters. It reminds women that men, as compared to women, are insanely strong. Being reminded of that, women will keep their f*ckin' hands to themselves. After all, the most typical DV scenario in which women end up in the hospital is when they start the violence and hurt the guy enough so that he reflexively reacts with all of his strength, and she ends up injured. (Many women appear to go out of their way to provoke a strong reaction from their men -- a sick way of getting attention, hmmm?)

On the other hand, the now ubiquitous ads showing little ladies punching out big guys will only result in more women being hurt as a result of their own unrestrained aggression and unrealistic attitude.

Fox has already apologized.

“In our enthusiasm to show the villainy of the character Apocalypse we didn’t immediately recognize the upsetting connotation of this image in print form,” Fox said in a statement. “Once we realized how insensitive it was, we quickly took steps to remove those materials. We apologize for our actions and would never condone violence against women.”

Gee, Rose. We certainly don't want to promote anything based on sex or gender, do we?

If you're a super-giant grey guy under a tempestuous sky? And you have gray, rock-looking clothes with lots of weird parts on 'em? And you've got a woman by the throat, only she has all these blue scales on her skin? And she's got fucked up red hair?

You can go ahead 'n choke her... I'll give you a pass.

Jesus, Rad. I'll just give up eating for the rest of the week.

"some royal-looking space dude"

Apparently "He is the world's very first mutant ..." according to wikipedia (also jives with my memories). He is human and was born in the middle east ~3000BC. His parents understandably abandoned him as a baby (freaky skin color and all). At which point he fell in with a bad crowd and consequently picked up a hobby of genocide.

So the moral of the story is due to some prehistoric dude's low self esteem we are all going to die. Boy, those guys at Marvel are real Debby downers.

Fox apology translation:

"Shit, we hope this won't hurt box office!"

I certainly don't see this as "promoting violence against women" but, on the other hand, you'd think that of all the possible scenes from the movie Fox could've used on a billboard/poster to hype the movie, they could've picked something other than this.

Radwaste: Gee, Rose. We certainly don't want to promote anything based on sex or gender, do we?

I'm curious how you see that as relevant to her criticism?

JayR: After all, the most typical DV scenario in which women end up in the hospital is when they start the violence and hurt the guy enough so that he reflexively reacts with all of his strength, and she ends up injured.

I'm curious about this as well: is this fact or merely your opinion? If it's fact, what's your source?

@JD

First hit on Google for "women initiate domestic violence":

http://time.com/2921491/hope-solo-women-violence/

'Research showing that women are often aggressors in domestic violence has been causing controversy for almost 40 years, ever since the 1975 National Family Violence Survey by sociologists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire found that women were just as likely as men to report hitting a spouse and men were just as likely as women to report getting hit. The researchers initially assumed that, at least in cases of mutual violence, the women were defending themselves or retaliating. But when subsequent surveys asked who struck first, it turned out that women were as likely as men to initiate violence—a finding confirmed by more than 200 studies of intimate violence. In a 2010 review essay in the journal Partner Abuse, Straus concludes that women’s motives for domestic violence are often similar to men’s, ranging from anger to coercive control.'

Most domestic violence is bidirectional:

Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project
Facts and Statistics on Domestic Violence at-a-Glance
Sponsored by the Journal Partner Abuse, John Hamel, LCSW, Editor-in-Chief
November 2012

"Among large population samples, 57.9% of IPV reported was bi-directional, 42% unidirectional; 13.8% of the unidirectional violence was male to female (MFPV), 28.3% was female to male (FMPV)"

It is at least informed opinion.

@JD

Based on the above, you see that the goalposts were moved from actual violence to whether or not the violence landed one in the hospital. Knowing the above, that women are likely to initiate the violence, putting these two pieces of information together says JayR is right on the money:

http://www.socialworker.com/feature-articles/practice/10_Things_Every_Social_Worker_Needs_to_Know_About_Domestic_Violence/

"'If you think men are the victims of domestic violence, sit outside the hospital emergency room and watch who gets unloaded from the ambulances.' Yes, women may behave badly in relationships, but they are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators."

Now, a profession that has spent time and money defining being "controlling with money" to be domestic violence sure must be avoiding something it doesn't want to admit if they then raise the bar to whether or not the physical violence puts somebody in the emergency room or not for it to matter.

The lesbian domestic violence information is amazing, too. If there was somebody the universities should teach it is "never OK to hit a woman", it's the Subaru crowd.

Apparently, someone found a way for it to be okay to show violence against a female character:

https://i.sli.mg/MSH2zh.jpg

Vintage violence against a woman in the movies:

https://twitter.com/X_Aeon_X/status/739232596421402625/photo/1

Thanks for the info and link to Young's article, ElVerdeLoco. I appreciate the response.

@JD

It opened my eyes.

It explained to me why the whole domestic violence apparatus appears to make no progress, and reminds me of something my grandmother said, "Some couples go at each other with fists and pans; it is their way."

I would much rather see a non-gendered statement - it is not OK to hit anyone - than the constant drumbeat of "it's never OK to hit a woman!" which presupposes a world where domestic violence is unidirectional, always male on female, and women are innocent little damsels because they are without agency and not moral actors (because somebody never able to make a bad choice is, in fact, not a moral actor).

I would much rather see a non-gendered statement - it is not OK to hit anyone - than the constant drumbeat of "it's never OK to hit a woman!"

I completely agree.

I'm reminded of a girlfriend I was with for two years back in the early '80s. She had quite a temper and we'd really get into some ferocious arguments. One time, she did something physical to me (I can't remember exactly what it was but I remember being really taken aback by it.) I didn't respond the same way but, instead, looked her in the eye and firmly said something like*, "Look, I've never touched you like that and I'm never gonna touch you like that. But you are also never gonna touch me like that again. If you do, we're done."

She never did and we ended up breaking up for other reasons.

*with the passage of time I don't remember my exact words.

If the victim is female, but she identifies as male, is that still violence against women?

These things always remind me of the Washington Post's review, written by Rita Kempley, of the Schwarzenegger movie "True Lies." She found it abhorrent that there was violence against women, namely Tia Carrere being slapped in the face.

Never mind that a) she was slapped by the movie's villain, in a scene with the sole purpose of revealing that he is a villain, and b) in that same movie, you have men being shot, stabbed, set on fire, impaled on meat hooks, exploded, getting their necks snapped, and blasted through a building on a missile, among dozens of other deaths and tortures.

But a slap in the face? Intolerable!

"I'm curious how you see that as relevant to her criticism?"

She portrays herself as a sexual object, not the whole person one might hope to meet.

Is this a topic for #bluelivesmatter?

> of all the possible scenes from
> the movie Fox could've used on
> a billboard/poster to hype the
> movie, they could've picked
> something other than this.

Why would they?

Listen, this has been going on my entire adult life. Star Wars came out the month I graduated High School... Since that hour, the vast majority of big Hollywood machinery has been tickling the plotless, shallow, violent imaginations of 12-year-old boys. And I've been amazed to see that the larger part of adult American culture, including the college-goers, has gone along with this. It gets weirder weirder... A generation of men and women have grown into adulthood and beyond without complaining that these movies are childish and shorn of cultural value that can't translate into a foreign market. They remember the plot points from trash: They regard the pill colors of the fucking Matrix as if they represented antipositivist disquisitions of the Frankfort school.

This is a really, really weird time to complain about a 'woman' facing an instance of violence for the marketing of what is essentially a cartoon.

She's got blue fucking skin. Scales. Weird hair. And her blue titties are pretty much out there for us all to enjoy: Hers is the pinnacle of youthful, nulliparous sexuality. And her entire presence in this franchise is quite possibly a corrupted pander to "feminists" who'd whine that Women can be comic-book superheroes, too!

So, JD, seriously... What did you expect? Comic book superheroes! It's a realm of lethal dangers and clumsy violence! Did you think the sisters in that script were going to be serving tea?

Did you want them to? What do you want?

Mystique is a major character in the Marvel universe. She's been in all the X-Men films. This was not a token addition.

But people /are/ clamoring for more screen time for superheroines and supervillainesses, and these characters in engage in brutal physical combat in their comics. (And not just recently.) Often against men. If the Joker wouldn't lay a finger on Batgirl, on principle, THAT would show he doesn't take her seriously as an adversary. If Batgirl fought only female villains, that would be equally pathetic. I think Marvel and DC have become quite egalitarian about this.

DC des have one character whose backstory specifically involves domestic violence, Harley Quinn, and I'm curious to see how they will treat it in the upcoming Suicide Squad.

In the movie Deadpool, the title character pauses during a fight with Angel Dust (girl villain of remarkable strength) and wonders aloud, "Is it sexist if I hit you or sexist if I don't?" Everyone who complains about male/female fight scenes in action movies should have an explanation for their answer.

And Patrick, I don't think most people care what Rose McGowan has to say. It's social media, and expressions of outrage go viral no matter who says them. Seriously, though, you think that's an UGLY woman?

Here's McGowan getting beaten to hell by Conan the Barbarian (2011 film):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fUoM5CLV_ss

Insufficient Poison:

And Patrick, I don't think most people care what Rose McGowan has to say. It's social media, and expressions of outrage go viral no matter who says them. Seriously, though, you think that's an UGLY woman?

Just to remind you, in case there's still someone out of the loop, I'm not into women.

But no, I have never considered Rose McGowan attractive. I liked "Charmed" much better when Shannen Doherty was on it. Far more attractive, and 50 times the better actress.

Rose McGowan looks ... incongruous to me. She's got porcelain skin, but black hair. She's a natural born Goth.

She's thin, at least. I will give her that. Her natural facial expression is a look of disgust. Smiling just doesn't become her.

Personally, I think the most attractive of the actresses on Charmed was Holly Marie Combs. She had more wholesome unpretentious look about her.

I was out of the loop.

Agree with you re Combs. I wanted her hair.

Interesting thing about those two characters: they're both shape-changers, but of different types.

Mystique can duplicate anyone's form to perfection, but if she impersonates a mutant, she cannot duplicate their powers.

Her powers don't lend themselves to fighting. But she'd be a perfect spy. She can impersonate anyone.

Apocalypse can turn himself into anything, even complex machinery or a jet engine. He can also add more mass to himself.

As someone else pointed out, he's Marvel's oldest mutant, dating back to ancient Egypt. He's a supra-genius in all fields of science, surpassing even the most brilliant minds among humans.

This wouldn't be the first time Rose did anything she could to get noticed.

Also, um, feminism 'n stuff.

NSFW!

Right, so how many times has Rose taken money to be beaten/raped/nude on screen?

Don't forget the dress at the 1998 VMA Awards.

Link is NSFW.

Rose McGowan accepting roles where male action heroes beat her up seems relevant here, because that shows she's a hypocrite. (See my Conan link above.)

Rose McGowan dressing overtly sexy seems orthogonal to the topic. She didn't criticize Jennifer Lawrence's costume, did she?

"Rose McGowan dressing overtly sexy seems orthogonal to the topic. "

Well, it just illustrates postmodern feminism's dishonest double standard towards sex. Plenty of feminists would say "You go girl!" to McGowan for wearing that. Those same feminists would stand in line for a chance to shame any man who looked.

@ Insufficient Poison - I think her nude photo shoots and nearly-nude public appearances create the same problem with objectification that encumber troglodyte wife-beaters. "Don't appreciate my talent and intellect, check out this booty!".

Lawrence is in a movie about cartoon characters, albeit played by real people, and the clash of imaginary blue-skinned superheroes shouldn't even be part of any violence-against-women discussion.

I understand that becoming a celebrity means a lot of hard work, dedication, talent, sacrifice, and luck, but this screed by McGowan just stinks of a desperate bid for attention to goose her flagging career.