After an endless stream of male superhero movies (Batman, Superman, Ironman, Spiderman, Ant-Man, Captain America, Thor, Deadpool, etc.) we’re finally getting a female superhero flick in the form of Wonder Woman. It’s due out on June 2nd in the US and, to celebrate, the Alamo Drafthouse chain decided they’d host a small number of women only screenings with proceeds going to Planned Parenthood. This fine idea was of course instantly attacked by a bunch of whiny male assholes whose sense of entitlement is inversely proportional to their IQ. Happily the theater chain’s response to all this whining was to add more women only shows at their other locations.
I’m looking forward to the movie. I’m sure I’ll manage to somehow squeeze into one of the eleventeen-billion showings that are open to all genders. In the meantime, I enjoyed the picture below from this article. From left to right that’s Patty Jenkins (director), Sue Kroll (president of marketing and distribution), Gal Gadot (star of the new film) and Lynda Carter (star of the old TV show). Nice to see women in key positions behind the screen as well as in front of it.
Private property owners/business have the right to self-determine how they want to serve customers. Private property owners/business’ consent should be respected.
Many people want contradicting treatment of both exclusivity (privileges) and being included. Exclude others but include me (special privileges), but god forbid others wishing the same.
I think it comes down to how you balance competing rights. I wouldn’t say business owners who are open to the public should generally be allowed to broadly discriminate based on things like race, gender or sexuality. There’s clear harm to them doing that and no obvious benefit other than catering to a prejudice.
On the other hand, in this case, there’s lots of other showings of this film at both this chain and others. So there’s no obvious harm caused to others and its clearly a selective event that will benefit those who want to take part.
Its the same as if a swimming pool has a ‘Mothers and toddlers’ event one morning a week. I think it’d clearly be bad if a ‘public’ swimming pool broadly banned black people or gay people or men from using it (even if it’s a privately owned company that runs it). But that shouldn’t stop them discriminating for specific targeted events at selective times.
-paltego