It is relevant. Because most shows are targeted toward boys. The second even an audience is made up too much of girls creators in the tv industry see that as a problem and cancel the show. It is important for girls to have feminist and empowering shows. mlp is empowering for girls. Mlp was not made for men and bronies need to respect that. We live in a patriarchy where girls grow up having very little self-esteem. This is a show created to empower girls and men are taking it for themselves. You can do all the mental gymnastics you want to deny the fact we live in a culture that encourages marginalized groups to have low self-esteem and that the fact a show for a marginalized group (girls) has been hijacked by a privileged group (white men) doesn’t mean anything or matter. And make false equivalences between that and women trying to enjoy male-oriented media because there’s barely anything for us. And ignore the fact men make up most of the writers, directors, cinematographers and producers in the industry. Or you can fucking be honest with yourself and admit that the fact MLP targets girls and that it and other things targeting girls are regularly hijacked by men matters.

2. Children don’t need to be going on tumblr tags to start, and there is in fact a safe search option.

There are children on tumblr, but this extends beyond tumblr. It’s all over the internet. Children can and do go on the internet. And it’s disgusting to me that people like you don’t find it a tad bit disturbing when men have all the porn of real women they could ever possibly want but instead they fixate on cartoon ponies for little girls and create so much porn that the bulk of the shit on the internet about mlp is porn? That a little girl who is the intended audience of the show can’t do research about the show or go online and look up things about it without seeing tons and tons of porn? Just fucking incredible.

3. Again, irrelevant. Women take “men’s things” and make it about themselves all the time… It really doesn’t matter.

Please name one example of this happening on the scale of bronies with mlp. But again, as I explained, women enjoying something targeting men and making a fandom for themselves is entirely different because you’re ignoring the entire context of these completely different things. When men take something for girls, they’re taking something for girls in a culture where there’s very little movies and shows for girls. Where men are represented on a 3:1 ratio compared to women in family films and women make up much fewer speaking roles on tv and movies than male characters, and when they do get those roles, they’re often sexualized, victimized or unclothed. I’m not saying people outside a targeted audience can’t enjoy a show. But you have adult men claiming the show isn’t really for girls. You have the writers and people marketing the show changing things to tailor it to these men. That matters when you consider how our society works.

4. There’s a ‘targeted’ audience, and then there’s everyone else, who may or may not fall into that category. Pokémon is geared towards children, and many adults including myself watch and play it. You may want to rethink your tittle as a feminist, because stating that something (such as a show) is “just for girls” is ass backwards from what you’re supposedly fighting for. That’s exactly like me saying the video games are just for boys and women are taking that and making it about themselves (which they have a long history as well).

Lol yes, you, an ignorant man with absolutely no idea about how gender works in this society and not one fact to back up any of your claims are going to make me “rethink” my “title” as a feminist. Could you get more condescending? What a sexist ass you are.

It’s not like saying video games are for men, because guess what plenty of men say that every fucking day to try to alienate women who like games even though nearly half of all gamers are women. And video games are an entire fucking medium. You can’t say a fucking type of technology and art form is for men. That’s sexist and ridiculous. It’s not, however, illogical or “backwards” to say that a show conceived for, written for and marketed toward little girls explicitly, was intended for little girls.

Hopefully you can at least see that suggesting video games—an entire fucking art medium, are “for men” and that women “took it and made it about themselves,” (lol when did that happen, please show me where this matriarchy is, I want to move there) is incorrect and sexist, especially when men use sexism to keep women out of the video game industry and IGNORE the fact nearly half their consumers are women. Just fucking get out of here with your false equivalences and faulty reasoning. You’re a hoot.

Repeating the same thing four times with different wording doesn’t equate to five total points.

Being incapable of understanding the points I make and dismissing them as repeating myself is not critical thinking or legitimate argumentation—it’s a rhetorical device. My last point about men being lauded for enjoying female-targeted things and women being lambasted for doing the same thing is an additional point. I’m highlighting a double standard—a double standard that you’re too thick to recognize. I see men consuming things that target girls (magical girl anime, mlp, shoujo anime, even twilight) and pat themselves on the back for it and say shit like “this is good for a girl’s anime/book/etc”) and act like they’re so unique and special for seeing the value in something for women. But when women have the “audacity” to like something that’s perceived as being for men (video games, comics, etc), men work very hard to keep us out. They sexually harass us and call us fake fans and attack us. They actively work to make us feel uncomfortable and unwanted and even unsafe. This doesn’t happen to men who like things by girls. Again, this is a different but related point. My point is that men liking something is seen as legitimizing that thing in a patriarchy. If men like MLP, that means its worthwhile. If they like Sailor Moon or Chihayafuru or Madoka, that means shoujo anime or magical girl anime might have something “of value.” But when women come into a fandom or community dominated by men, those men perceive that as a threat or possibly devaluing those things. It’s why there’s loads of men undervaluing pinterest (which is mostly used by women). It’s why jobs like social work and teaching and nursing are undervalued and underpaid. It’s why the creators of that aforementioned show freaked out when “too many” girls liked the show.

I bring up this devaluing of things associated with women, or becoming devalued when associated with women, because male mlp fans don’t recognize their male privilege in this regard. It’s easy for them to hijack things for women, even though we don’t get much things for us. Men are lauded for “adding value” to those things, but women and girls don’t have the power to do the same thing back. This point is actually very important because if you understood it, you’d realize why it doesn’t go “both ways” and why women can’t “take” what you have and make it about us—not in the way men can and do. And that when you guys do it, the ramifications in our society are very different.

Now, let me just say that I’m not defending the MLP fan base; I don’t care. I don’t like the show, I don’t like children, and I find it odd that men are fucking little horse dolls. I’m mainly just playing devils advocate, because if this is how the majority of your feminist views look like, you’re going to need a little more practice, considering you didn’t even make one valid point…

Honey, I blog and think about and analyze and research media from a feminist perspective every day. You are small fry. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Go ahead and try to debate with me more, but you will lose. You don’t have one idea here that I haven’t seen before against feminism or feminist analysis. Everything you’re saying is the same half-assed, poorly argued bullshit I’ve seen from mras, anti-feminists and other assorted sexists nearly every day I write and read about these matters.

You may not care. But I do. And this is actually a key difference. To you it’s a game where you casually play “devil’s advocate.” To me, this is my fucking life, where, just today I didn’t believe my doctor when she says I’m underweight because I’m certain I’m too fat because I live in a culture that has trained me and other women and girls to hate our bodies and ourselves. Who has experienced harassment, assault, stalking and fear due to my gender. MLP is a show for girls in a society they hates girls and women. You can ignore that. You can choose to ignore that you live in a culture that values you and other men and the things that are considered male and masculine over women and femininity. You can choose to ignore your part in that when you play “devil’s advocate” and casually step into a discussion you have little no background knowledge in and condescend to someone who has years of experience and education, and deign to posit that you have the authority to take away her credentials and “title.”

You can have fun with your faux-intellectual jack off fest when you try to play with feminists like me who have invested much more time and research and intellectual rigor than you ever will in a topic and count on the fact your little buddies will slap you on the back for “showing her” because your voice and what you say will be valued over my voice and what I say. Because you are male. Because you’ll get approval for your groundless assessment of a writer in a field you don’t know anything about as “needing practice” or to “rethink her title” and your half-assed, unsound ideas you came up with off the cuff, whereas I can study and research and continue to build my analysis over years of experience and education and men still won’t take what I say seriously. I actually don’t care if you stay ignorant. You don’t have to know or care or do the research or even have facts or logic to back up any of your backwards ideas. But if so, I don’t want to hear them. Just stay the fuck out of our discussions because you have nothing of value to add that we haven’t heard before. You have nothing of value to say in these conversations. You don’t know the most basic, fundamental facts you’d need to even begin to understand what we’re talking about. And you’ll just get your ass handed to you over and over by people who care much much more about these things than you do. Because guess what? We’re living it. And you have the privilege to not have to. So if you don’t care, why don’t you prove it and go the fuck away.