Have you seen Wonder Woman yet?
I have. It was great. A friend cried during it. The audience applauded at the end.
But the film’s release hasn’t been a stranger to controversy. One particularly hateful response to a women-only screening got an epic smack-down by none other than the mayor of Austin, Texas.
Yeah, usually mayors don’t get a lot of attention for talking about superhero movies, and Mayor Steve Adler isn’t really an exception.
He’s talking about sexism and human dignity.
The controversy wasn’t so much about Wonder Woman itself, but about one theater’s decision to host a women-only screening, and one of the men who absolutely flipped out about it.
In case it actually needs to be stated, like, men-only screenings of films aren’t uncommon. Also plenty of bars still have “Ladies Night” and that sort of thing.
It’s a little weird, sure, though we can totally understand why some women would want to see the film in the absence of guys like whatever piece of work wrote this horrifying email to Austin’s mayor.
“The notion of a woman hero is a fine example of women’s eagerness to accept the appearance of achievement without actual achievement.
“Women learn from an early age to value make-up, that it’s OK to pretend that you are greater than you actually are,” he writes, only after hoping for Austin’s defamation and accusing the theater of “sexism.”
All superheroes are pretend, not just the lady ones. The makeup comment is so weird that we don’t even know how to respond except to say that clearly this guy doesn’t ever do anything to improve his appearance.
“Women pretend they do not know that only men serve in combat because they are content to have an easier ride. Women gladly accept gold medals at the Olympics for coming in 10th and competing only against the second class of athletes,” he says as if he isn’t the wrongest person to ever live.
“Name something invented by a woman! Achievements by the second rate gender pale in comparison to virtually everything great in human history was accomplished by men, not women,” he continued, just keeping on digging that hole.
The short version of all of this is that a man who despises women claims that he doesn’t.
He then signs his name, Richard A. Ameduri, because that’s totally a letter where you’d want to include your name.
Steve Adler’s letter in response is all kinds of savage.
“I am writing to alert you that your email account has been hacked by an unfortunate and unusually hostile individual,” he begins.
“Please remedy your account’s security right away, lest this person’s uninformed and sexist rantings give you a bad name. After all, we men have to look out for each other!”
That’s tongue-in-cheek and beautiful, right?
Then he dives in and just begins solidly refuting the vile man’s sexist claims.
“Can you imagine if someone thought that you didn’t know women could serve in our combat units now without exclusion?” he asked. You can feel the sarcasm emanating in waves from the screen.
Remember that claim that women never invented anything? Adler sure did.
“What if someone thought you didn’t know that women invented medical syringes, life rafts, fire escapes, central and solar heating, a war-time communications system for radio-controlling torpedoes that laid the technological foundations for everything from Wi-Fi to GPS, and beer?”
A nicely succinct list.
Which of course could have been longer.
He also took the time to remind the whiner that a private business can hold whatever screenings they like.
“And I hesitate to imagine,” he adds. “How embarrassed you’d be if someone thought you were upset that a private business was realizing a business opportunity by reserving one screening this weekend for women to see a superhero movie.”
Savage.
We love seeing intelligent politicians go off on people who deserve it.
And speaking of things getting what they deserve, Wonder Woman is already a hit at the box office after only Thursday night’s early previews.
We can’t wait to see what kind of numbers she rakes in by the end of the weekend.