I'm still stuck on the core/rim dichotomy in attitudes toward the companions. Wasn't whatever planet featured in Train Job on the rim? (All I recall is that it was dirt-poor and people were dying for the lack of medicine--sounds rim-y.) And didn't Inara kind of waltzed in and saved Mal and Zoe because she, as a companion, commanded respect?

I think the *idea* of having a class of well-educated prostitutes be considered respectable was an interesting one. I just wish the writers were consistent about it. Why not have them be respectable everywhere? I mean, if this is for the sake of keeping up Mal/Inara UST, they could have other, more interesting reason to keep them apart. Inara was pro-Alliance in the war, and Mal doesn't strike me as someone who would lightly regard ideological differences. They could have played with the class distinction angle, with Inara in a much loftier position than Mal in the social echelon. Anything but the whole "because you are a whore" thing, which just 1) makes nonsense of the entire premise about companionship, and 2) renders itself susceptible to annoying stereotyping.

Anyone want to deconstruct the gender issues surrounding the fact that when Mal gets some from Nandi and not Inara, his insinuated-by-plot soulmate, Nandi dies?

Don't forget to also deconstruct the fact that in essence Inara causes her death. That's got to mean something too.

Don't forget to also deconstruct the fact that in essence Inara causes her death. That's got to mean something too.

CATFIGHT!

*ahem*

I mean: Casual Sex Is Bad and It's All the Woman's Fault. 'Cause men, y'know, just incapable of participating in decisionmaking with regards to The Sex, but Women should Know Better and Get Punished.

I'm thinking of bringing back the random capitalization of Important Concepts all on my own.

Nutty said most of what I thought better than I could already. I'd love to see an ME show that addressed more subtle forms of cultural gender bias that occur in otherwise egalitarian spaces, like My Breasts Don't Have Radar That Locates Office Supplies, Fucko. Maybe someone will ask Fred from Angel to fax something and she can behead them with an ingenious device. :)

In general, I love the way the show subverts stereotype with the Wash/Zoe & Zoe/Mal dynamics & GettingSome!Kaylee, though, so I'm willing to cut a little slack. Hooray for Hot Married Sex & non-UST M/F friends!

Sometimes someone dies because that character dies, not because they are a Symbol of Gender Issues.

Sometimes people ask where the staplers are kept because they don't know and You Look Like Someone Competent.

On the other hand... Gender Bias baflles me anyway.

I tend to make coffee in any office I'm working in if the pots are in need of it and I'm bored on break. I have been surprised by how surprised the women are near the coffee brewing machine.

It never occured to me until college that a perfectly capable man IRL would ask the nearest woman to make coffee instead of doing it himself. I thought it was an old TV stereotype.

At my last job, it was pathetic that no one bothered to show me where the supplies were and I had to ask several people over the course of two weeks. Usually "in the supply room, around the other side" was the most common answer, male or female.

I hear ya, and I often have no problem helping an officemate find something. The times when it annoyed me, me & one of my staff kept getting pre-empted by a salesweasle/other staff to do secretarial/office supply things which was *not* part of the job description. If my title has "Director" in it, you can safely assume, even in a small office, that I am not going to stop what I'm doing to find you staples, not out of rabid feminism, but out of having much more important things to do.

Also, the office was really, really small. Go look, fer chrissakes! It's a closet! My breasts don't hide the office supplies either! :)

Gender sterotypes. There are about 500 secretaries at my workplace, and only two of them are male.

We are the only people who know where the staplers are, where they come from, and how to refill them. Not that we aren't happy to share the information with the mostly male staff we support, it's just that it's too trivial a matter for them to remember, until they have loose papers that need fastening. And then, if I am not there to refill an empty stapler, it is a TRAGEDY.

We are also not allowed to change our titles from Secretary to Administrative Assistant, as this may confuse the people we support into thinking we are Administrators, who are the people who work on budgets.

So, yeah, my tits have stapler-finding radar, and gender bullshit is alive and well in Pasadena.

So the two male secretaries also come to you? Otherwise, it sounds mostly like Stupidus Corporatus, the workers who can't be expected to do daily things any human with a brain should know.

I think the point flew over your head and out of the window, Daniel. Out of more than 500 secretaries, 2 are male.

I do not dispute the fact that 99.96% being female is gender stereotyping, whether it be through society or some gender issues by your HR staff.

I would also hasten to add that if someone capable of advancement to the other "suits" level are being blocked because they are a woman, kick their arse.

I was just pointing out that the stapler panic part was typical of many suit-type people in corporateland, who apparently can't seem to be expected to function outside of their limited function of their little worlds.

I think if I saw the ratio you describe, I'd think I had dropped through a wormhole to the 60's.