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new twitter challenge: describe yourself like a male author would

— Whit Reynolds (@whitneyarner) April 1, 2018

The way that some male writers have a tendency to write female characters—with emphasis on their looks and their breasts—has long been a popular subject of Internet conversation and derision. Today a Twitter thread invited people to imagine themselves as a male writer would.

The “challenge,” promoted by podcaster Whit Reynolds and writer Kate Leth, was kicked off by another Tweet:

A male author is insisting that he is living proof that it’s possible for a male author to write an authentic female protagonist.

Here’s a quote from his first page. pic.twitter.com/f6d5bN2EHq

— Gwen C. Katz (@gwenckatz) March 30, 2018

That it’s so easy for Twitter users to chime in with their guy-writer descriptions demonstrates how widespread this sort of writing is. The focus of male writers when turning their gaze on women is something that most of have read so many times that we could produce these in our sleep.

Worse, several people in the thread say that as a woman over 50, or someone outside of patriarchal beauty standards, they don’t have a description at all—because they’re considered invisible by the type of author who likes to write about the way a t-shirt clings to the curve of a small but well-shaped breast.

Carolyn was old. Not sure how old, doesn’t matter, too old for the likes of me. And fat. Wore glasses. No makeup. It’s like she gave up trying to be attractive for men. Or women. Whichever. I’m not sexist.
She may have won a Nobel in her day, but she sure was nothing to look at.

— LJ Breedlove (@LJBreedlove) April 1, 2018

She caught my eye in a peripheral sort of way; just enough that I noticed her form in the background. Upon inspection, her tight frown and standoffish demeanor invited me to skate my eyes away from her in discomfort. Moments later, she was completely erased from my memory.

— Alicia Mestre (@aliciamestre) April 1, 2018

Let’s be realistic, as a middle-aged woman in tech, no male author would describe me, ever.

— Kathleen (@PeaceLoveUnix) April 1, 2018

And in terms of descriptions of diverse characters, Asian women knew exactly what to expect.

basically, pic.twitter.com/io8s3Y14UF

— Amanda Wong (@amandawtwong) April 1, 2018

[insert something about being mixed race and how that makes me petite and inherently submissive but juxtapose it with the idea of me being adorably aggressive and will stand up for myself. But make it sound endearing. ]

— Lilly Beth Chung (@LillyBethChungx) April 1, 2018

something abt porcelain skin because Asian, something about petite and submissive because Asian, something about silky raven Asian hair, something about exotic and something about almond shaped eyes because Asian

— Marie Lum 林 (@PuccaNoodles) April 1, 2018

Some respondents had fun with the challenge, but the reason their satire works is that it’s playing off of characterizations we’ve seen time and time again.

She was beautiful, inside and out, even with her flaws, which were few and endearing. After all, if I cared to notice anything deeper about her and consider her a dimensional human being my obsessive fantasy of her might be shattered.

— Cami Ragaglia (@Cami_Rags) April 1, 2018

Now some of the men in the thread are chiming in that it’s making them scared to write female characters.

Every dude who has responded to this thread with “this makes me scared to write women” — stop it, cut it out, nobody cares, just treat us like people. https://t.co/zJyp8I7Lss

— Kate Leth 🦇✨🌈 (@kateleth) April 2, 2018

My dudes, no one is saying that you shouldn’t try. Just try to write your women as humans (or aliens, or what have you) instead of sexual objects. If you’re worried about your characterization, ask a lady friend for their opinion, or find a lady editor and listen to their feedback. We need men to write women with sensitivity and grace. And I promise we don’t think about our boobs half so much as you imagine.

(images: Twitter, Tumblr)

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—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

Next year, Brie Larson is flying solo in her own Captain Marvel movie, but will she be taking flight much sooner than expected? Marvel does like to set the stage for its heroes before they show up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Both Thor and Captain America were teased in the Iron Man films, while Avengers: Age of Ultron was giving Wakanda a shout out a full year before Black Panther appeared in Captain America: Civil War. Today’s Nerdist News is laying odds on when and where we’ll see Captain Marvel before her film hits theaters.

Join guest host Amy “Noh-Varr” Vorpahl as she runs down the recent rumors about Larson making an appearance in Ant-Man and the Wasp. While it’s true the first Ant-Man had the Winter Soldier and Captain America in its end credits scene, it also had the Falcon as the connection between that moment and Ant-Man himself. It’s hard to see how Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel could fit into the movie unless she appears alongside a CGI de-aged Michael Douglas in another Hank Pym flashback.

If Captain Marvel isn’t coming to Ant-Man and the Wasp, then the only other option is a cameo on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.…don’t worry, we’re kidding. If it’s gonna happen, look for it in Avengers: Infinity War. The Russo brothers have said up and down Captain Marvel isn’t going to be in their next movie. But isn’t that what they should say if they want to leave it as a surprise?

Here’s how we think it will play out: Captain Marvel won’t appear in Infinity War until one of the post-credit scenes. That way, her onscreen debut could be a special moment and it may even set the stage for the still untitled Avengers 4. We already know Larson is on board for that one.

Where do you think Captain Marvel will make her MCU debut? Let us know in the comment section below!

Images: Marvel Studios

More of the latest Nerdist News!

• Mark Hamill is super jealous of the “Reylo Moment” from The Last Jedi!
• Did Captain Marvel‘s casting confirm Phase 4?
• 9 Easter eggs you missed in Pacific Rim Uprising!

For decades, economists and TV talking heads have studied and debated economic inequality and racial income disparity in America, often attributing the root causes to class, residential segregation, or discrimination to differences in family structure and even genetics.

A new extensive study conducted by The Equality of Opportunity Project, analyzed racial differences in economic opportunity using data on 20 million children and their parents across generations, shedding light on a stark reality that African Americans have always known to be true, that race, and racism have always been determining factors in how opportunity is distributed in America.

Findings in the study show that black boys, even ones raised in wealthy families, living in the most well-to-do neighborhoods have always earned less than their white counterparts in adulthood. To put it simply, black boys have always had much lower rates of upward mobility than white children, which has contributed to generations of black-white income disparity.

Researchers studied five racial and ethnic groups: people of Hispanic ethnicity, non-Hispanic
whites, blacks, Asians, and American Indians. By analyzing rates of upward and downward mobility, they were able to quantify how incomes change and predict their future earnings trajectories.

(The Equality of Opportunity Project,)

Here are five highlights from the 106-page study:

1. In 99 percent of America’s neighborhoods, black boys still grow up to make less than whites.

One of the prominent reasons given for income disparity among blacks and whites is the difference in the neighborhoods they grow up in. The study, however, found that disparities persist even among black and white children who grow up on the same block. Growing up in either Baltimore or Roslyn won’t have any significant impact on the income mobility of black boys as they grow into adulthood, they continue to make less than their white counterparts.

“These results reveal that differences in neighborhood-level resources, such as the quality of schools, cannot explain the inter-generational gaps between black and white boys by themselves,” the authors of the study wrote.

The results, they said, revealed that differences in neighborhood-level resources, such as the quality of schools, cannot explain the inter-generational gaps between black and white boys by themselves. The researchers even compared data from some of the best metro areas for economic mobility for low-income black boys to ones for low-income white boys. They found that black-white disparities exist in virtually all areas and neighborhoods.

2. The Gap Can Be Closed.

One of the findings of the study shows that the black-white income gap isn’t immutable. Black men who move to better areas with low poverty rates, low racial bias, and higher father presence earlier in their childhood have higher incomes and lower rates of incarceration by the time they reach adulthood—demonstrating the effects of growing up in a bad neighborhood.

The challenge is that very few black children currently grow up in environments that foster
upward mobility, the study found.

“Fewer than 5 percent of black children currently grow up in areas with a poverty rate below 10 percent and more than half of black fathers present. In contrast, 63 percent of white children grow up in areas with analogous conditions.”

3. Education level, parental status does not explain the black-white disparity

Although black children are much more likely to grow up in single-parent households with less wealth and lower levels of education, those factors do not explain the gap in black-white disparities, the study found.

When researchers compared outcomes for black and white men who grew up in similar households with both parents and similar levels of income, wealth and education, they found that black men still had substantially lower incomes in adulthood. Their conclusion was that “family characteristics play a limited role in explaining the gap.”

Another hypothesis that is often used to explain racial disparities is that white people are of a higher intelligence than blacks.

“The fact that black women have outcomes comparable to white women conditional on parental income despite having much lower test scores suggests that standardized tests do not provide accurate measures of differences in ability (insofar as it is relevant for earnings) by race, perhaps because of stereotype anxiety or racial biases in tests.”

4. Hispanics Are Doing Better

The upward income mobility across generations of Hispanic Americans are slightly below those of whites but well above that of African Americans. They found that blacks and Native Americans have substantially lower rates of upward mobility than the other racial groups.

In contrast, black and American Indian children have substantially lower rates of upward mobility than the other racial groups.

“For example, black children born to parents in the bottom household income quintile have a 2.5% chance of rising to the top quintile of household income, compared with 10.6% for whites.”

And growing up in a high-income family provides no cushion from these disparities either. The study found that black children with rich parents are almost as likely to fall back into poverty as they are to remain rich. By contrast, white children born to wealthy parents are five times more likely to stay there.

5. Black Women Fare Better

Among those who grow up in families with comparable incomes, the study found that there is almost no gap in wage rates or hours of work between black and white women. Conditional on parental income, black women are slightly out-earning white women. Also dependent on parental income, black women’s college attendance rates are higher than white men’s.

For black men though, the outlook is grim. Among those with comparable incomes, black men grow up to earn significantly less than white men. For black men born to the lowest-income families, 21% of them are incarcerated any given day, which is significantly higher than any other subgroup, the study found.

The post Study: Even When Born Into Wealth, Many Black Boys Destined to Become Poor appeared first on Black Enterprise.