(Hated)changing somenthing to be more "progressive" ends up being a bad thing

[u/Morr4Seiya]

Now to be clear,i am not one of these "anti-woke" losers that complain some people exist,and i am also not the type to complain about changing somenthing in a new version or adaptation,however there are cases where it did ended up being a bad idea.

-In the anime of Cowboy Bebop there is the character Gren,despite being short lived the character is very memorable specially thanks to his tragic story.Basically his story was that he was a soldier from the titan war who was a great friend with Vicious(the main bad guy)after the war he was emprisioned thanks to Vicious who testified against him and he was forced to take a experimental drug that caused him hormonal problems,giving him a feminine appearence and even breasts.

In the Netflix live action,for some reasons they decided Gren was going to be non-binary,which wouldn't be a problem(some people believe he was gay in the anime)if it wasn't for the fact that they also removed all the nuances and complexities that made the character memorable and interesting,instead of a tragic war veteran that was betrayed and had his body changed against his will,Gren is just kinda there.

-The original Rugrats cartoon had the couple Betty and Howard,Betty was a big and masculine woman while Howard was a smaller and nervous man,it was a genuine interesting relationship that stood out from the other couples who were the standard straight couple.

In the new series however they replaced Howard with a woman named Trish,two things,first off why?What was the problem with having a woman being the stronger in a straight relationship?Second why does Hollywood seem to think that every tomboy or masculine woman is a lesbian?

Overall not the worst thing but it is jarring that they had a gender reverse roled that was progressive and decided that wasn't enough.

-Oh man,this one pisses me off the most so i am gonna have to break it down

So back in the late 80s and 90s there was this anime called Saint Seiya also knows as Knights of the zodiac,it tells the story of knights who fight for the Goddess Athena to protect earth,being divided in the golden,silver and bronze knights,the anime was a huge hit in latin america and Europe and while it floped in the US it still has a loyal fanbase.

Being a fan myself i can't recommend it enough,now granted the story does have a fair share of flaws,and that's because the author was honestly just making stuff up as he went along(also a lot of side characters are poorly used or even forgotten about)still it is a great story you should check out

But then a couple of years back Netflix got the rights and decided to a 3D reboot,in this reboot they decided to make the story more "american" to try to bring more american viewers,now i could go on and on a big rant about how that was a bad idea and the execution was so terrible that it made me want to strangle someone but this post is about one specific change.

So Saint Seiya has five main characters,those are Pegasus Seiya,Dragon Shiryu,Cygnus Hyoga,Phoenix Ikki and finally Andromeda Shun.

While the other four characters were the standard masculine and brute male characters who were always ready to throw punches,Shun was smaller,more sensitive and even feminine looking,a pacifist who didn't liked fighting,but don't mistake that for weakness because Shun was loyal to his friends and was extremely powerful.

Then Netflix decided to change Shun into a girl named Shaun.

So wait,you have a male character who goes against every male stereotype and you turn him into just another generic female character?

When asked about it,the showrunner Eugene Son said he made that change because there was no girl in the group and having a all boys group wouldn't be acceptable nowadays

First off that's not true because Athena was also part of the main cast,yeah she wasn't the fighting type but she still helped quite a lot in the story even saving the knights on several occasions,second if you wanted to add a girl to the main group why not use Marin or Shaina?Hell,if you were going to change the story anyway why not turn Seiya sister into a knight?

Thankfully this monstrosity was cancelled(so much for trying to bring more fans)

[u/Daniilsa209]

Mulan 2020

The original and the Disney adaptation make the point that, through effort, you can achieve anything regardless of your gender, but in the movie adaptation, they gave her special magical powers.

[u/DeUnderCaker → u/Daniilsa209]

Made worse when they gave her a sister that was later matched by the end of the movie lol, pretty much saying that unless your ass was born special you deserved to remain under the patriarchal societal roles the women of their time are subject to.

[u/Longjumping-Ear-6248 → u/DeUnderCaker]

In a interesting irony, during times when Mulan takes place, Mongolian women had more rights in Mongolian Society than Chinese women had in theirs.

[u/TandrDregn → u/Longjumping-Ear-6248]

This seems to be a thing in a lot of very warrior-like cultures. Another example are the Spartans who treated their women better than most of the other polis did. I think it’s tied to the fact that they couldn’t MAKE new warriors without them, so they naturally tend to respect them more, as opposed to, say, the Athenians who were apparently pretty damn shitty towards their women.

[u/thetrustworthybandit → u/TandrDregn]

It's less about the making new warriors (after all, having heirs is important in pretty much every society) and more that when men are out fighting wars it's the women that have to keep society going, and for that they need to be able to be more independent/competent/educated

[u/MagnusIsABird → u/thetrustworthybandit]

Also, harsher climates mean more people have to work outside just to survive. A mongolian camp wouldnt survive if the women didnt work alongside the men.

In more settled agrarian societies you have a surplus of resources (usually) and you can pushh women into household chores. So they tend to be more patriarchial

[u/ManiacalShen → u/MagnusIsABird]

Don't undersell the amount of farming women would do. You'd have to be pretty well-off to be able to be confined to household chores, which themselves could be pretty backbreaking compared to today (eg laundry). In feudal societies, lords weren't exactly excusing female peons from field work.

But if you are landed gentry or a homesteader and have that big, settled property, you can make the farm the wife's problem and sequester her there with the kids while the husband does any business that's elsewhere. So she ideally needs to be skilled enough to manage the land but not bold enough to disobey his orders about it.

[u/Akhevan → u/MagnusIsABird]

Actually the Mongolian grazing-based economy required about 20-30% of the population to be engaged in herding, when most agricultural societies of the time had about 75-85% of population engaged in agriculture. You should read on the subject instead of making silly assumptions on the level of "harsh climate makes harsh women".

Also it's not as if the women in said agricultural societies didn't work all their spare time (on top of doing "household chores" and farming work), weaving alone was a black hole for labor until the advent of the mechanized loom.

[u/Notte_di_nerezza → u/thetrustworthybandit]

See also: the Norse.

[u/thetrustworthybandit → u/Notte_di_nerezza]

See also: the world during and post WWII.

[u/nagrom7 → u/thetrustworthybandit]

Yeah, the same even happened in our societies whenever we'd engage in total war. Both world wars were massive advancements in the rights of women because they basically had to run everything back home while all the men were off fighting, and as such jobs and roles that they were previously forbidden from even applying for, were straight up begging for them because they had no workforce otherwise. And then even after the war was over, most of those young men that were fighting came back with no relevant experience in those fields, while all the people who did have experience were the women who'd spent the last several years doing those jobs.

[u/my-name-is-puddles → u/thetrustworthybandit]

more that when men are out fighting wars it's the women that have to keep society going

This was true for other Greek city states too, though. It's not like Spartan men were going to war significantly more than other Greeks. Contrary to popular belief, Spartans were NOT professional soldiers. They were specifically profession-less. During times of peace they didn't do military drilling or anything like that; when war broke out they mustered, drilled, and marched off to war much like every other Greek city.

Also keep in mind, "Spartans" made up a small minority of the people in and around Sparta. Spartan citizenship was a very exclusive club. Most of the actual population were perioikoi (free, non-citizens) and helots (state-owned slaves/serfs). At Sparta's absolute peak there were only about 9000 male citizens. They were greatly outnumbered by the perioikoi and helots. Women in those groups did not have the same privileges as Spartan women. And it'd also be very wrong to imply Spartan society was anything close to being egalitarian between genders (not saying you were implying that). If you were born a woman in that time period in Greece you might wanna be born Spartan, but that's mostly because if you're Spartan you're already basically in the "1%". You would not want to be born a woman born in basically the same place just not a Spartan citizen.

[u/blacksoxing → u/thetrustworthybandit]

Without typing a novel us Americans have a history lesson of our own regarding WWII and how women were treated while propping up the economy and their persistence to not return back to the house...