In a recent interview for Heatstreet, Feig said “I understand some people are mad it wasn’t a sequel. I more have a problem with the people that are mad because the cast are women. They gotta deal with that themselves.”
So I’m curious - Have any women within the community felt negatively affected as a result of the reboot? It seemed that most fans were much more concerned that the film had no apparent ties to the established universe, and that the problem of a female cast was secondary.
That website is garbage. Misrepresented what Feig said and can’t even get the name of the GB creator right.
I did encounter a surprisingly number of people who bought into that “women aren’t funny” narrative. That MRA stuff is poison and it cost me a friend of 20 years (not just for the women aren’t funny thing, very long story). And I think it’s hilarious that so many GB fans took up Milo as their hero after seeing the original cast was fine with the reboot. But I understand that there’s also a ton of fans who have no problem with women.
I’ve been part of many fanbases whose franchises were made up of multi universes–stories with no apparent ties to the original established fanbase. Therefore, I can’t understand the mentality that the original Ghostbusters is somehow “erased.” That’s made me feel more alienated than the gender stuff by far.
Over the years we have had female members of the forum/s who’ve chosen to move on to other pastures - and I can see why some may feel the forums are boys’ clubs.
A number of years back a community member organised a calendar that while well-intentioned, it didn’t do anything to dissolve the impression… and in some cases the reality that some of the male fans only saw their female counterparts in a particular and unconstructive light. There’ve also sadly been some people who’ve made their female counterparts uncomfortable through their interactions.
I like to believe we have improved somewhat, though there’s still plenty of road left to travel.
JurorNo.2 - Thanks for your response. The validity of that particular website wasn’t much what I was concerned with. Feig has expressed numerous times that he was disappointed in the hate that seemed to be directed at the women in the film. There is no doubt that there was a large amount of hate directed at the women on the internet. My question was to discern if that was a genuine issue that existed within the actual fandom. It seemed to me that people within our community felt more alienated that the reboot didn’t have a direct tie to the established universe, and that was often overshadowed by the hate directed at the actors. So when I read another quote from Feig being concerned about that, I wondered if this was a real issue that existed in the community or if it was a problem of internet trolls and bandwagon “fans” but not a part of what I would consider the genuine fandom.
Kingpin - Thank you for your two cents as well. As a mod, you’ve seen a lot more than I have on the forums.
The reboot brought up some interesting issues. Should we, as a community, try to do more to foster a more welcoming atmosphere for women?
I mean, there are people who consider themselves part of the community, and there’s people who are just fans of the movie. They’re both fans, but we’re talking two different things. In any case, I did think it was pretty hilarious that so many fans took up Milo as their new Ghostbuster hero when it was clear the original cast wasn’t that upset about the reboot. If you have to go to someone so completely separate from the franchise you love for support, then perhaps you need to take a step back and rethink, lol.
@ referring to bold
Yeah, I can’t understand it, either. Nothing is really erased when the GB16 reboot was in theaters; GB84 is still with us as it has always been (even in the IDW comics).
What’s left now is that, as Kingpin said, the franchise has plenty of room to grow and evolve in many different ways without being held back and it’s a long road.
Agreed. In this particular case, I was speaking more about people who have a higher level of involvement than someone who just likes the movies like those of us here on the forum or may belong to a franchise and dress for cons.
If you look on any number of franchises Facebook pages nearly every single team has female members. My team has 2, other teams have larger numbers. Women have always been part of this fandom and they didn’t need an all female led version to do that. All the recent interviews with Feig display a moderate amount of ignorance on his part about why the original is so well regarded. But this “boys club” mentality is a forced narrative driven by Feig and Sony to rally women to get behind the reboot when if they actually took the time to research they’d have known that women have been busting reight along side men for years.
Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t appreciate it.
Maybe that would have been true a couple years ago. But with the GamerGate/MRA/alt right stuff, a lot of jerks have been hijacking fandoms lately. I mean look at this election year. Now, I know a few Trump supporters so I know not all of them are “deplorables.” But Trump certainly brought those types out of the woodwork.
I don;t agree with you on well much, but I do agree with the Trump virus permeating everything. And not every women appreciates it. My wife didn’t care for the film and Brandi our other member flat out refused to see it. But a great number do, well Holtzmann at least. Nobody seems to care much from a cosplay sense for any of the others.
I slightly suspect a lot of sexist hate (not the rational criticism) directed at the reboot was caused by Trump’s negative comments on Twitter about the cast being gender-swapped.
Oh I agree, women aren’t a hive mind. My Dad actually enjoyed the movie more than my Mom did (though both agreed it didn’t deserve such a negative reaction).
I think most fans aren’t the types to outright say “women aren’t funny.” But some **do **try to fudge it a bit by insisting that the movie has some kind of evil feminist agenda. To them, that counts as “rational criticism.”
I think we have to try, as the community is made up of a melting pot of personalities and identities, and we should aspire to have a place where all should feel welcome.
It would be interesting to know how many of the female franchise members are also members here. I’ve gotten the impression (although that could be a false one as there often isn’t much on the profile data visible beside the posts) that the majority of the GBFans membership was male.
It’d be revealing to hear from those who are aware of the forum, but aren’t on it, the particular reasons behind why they aren’t posting here.
It’s existed in a form long before the reboot was even announced, the calendar I alluded to earlier was one example of the mentality some in the community had.
My colleague Tara has costumed as Abby at a few events now, and plans to build her own reboot Pack soon. I’m also thinking about doing a genderbent Abby, as I neither have the hair colouring or figure for Holtzmann. 
I think the problem that many are pointing out is that the new movie didn’t make the franchise more “inclusive” to females, it straight up replaced the guys instead. I was never against female characters, but when it was basically a PC based gender swap, I can kinda understand why some people had issues with it. Still, there was no need for the nastiness that some people projected towards the whole thing…
Thing is, the nastiness that did result kinda proves to me that we have a long way to go. It’s one to say “Eh, political correctness is annoying.” I can agree with that, lol. It’s quite another to go on a “My childhood has been erased by the evil feminist agenda!” rampage for months on end. Again, just like this election year, there was so little middle ground to be found.
And I want to be fair and say it wasn’t only guys. There were also girl fans who were wary of a “feminist agenda.” There’s just not that many of them (most women don’t care one way or the other), so they don’t really create a pattern. They’re outliers.
Back last July at Comic Con I was speaking to a Ghostbuster fan at their UK stall. I hadn’t seen the film yet and asked what he thought of it. He said he didn’t like it. I said I didn’t like the way that fans who aren’t for the reboot were being labelled as misogynistic by the media. As I was saying that one female Ghostbuster fan overheard a couple of words I said, not the full conversation and immediately interrupted us defending not only the movie but complaining in my face about the backlash due to misogynistic fans as though it was entirely my fault. She basically overheard just a couple of words and that triggered her without hearing everything I said. I did feel intimidated, never thought I’d feel intimidated by the fanbase I most support. Felt a little disappointed in that person to be honest. But then some friend of theirs came over and they completely forgot I was there so I moved on… 
Most geek culture has traditionally been very inclusive of women, and has been from the beginning. Going all the way back to the original series of Star Trek which has always had a very prominent female fan base. Female fans like Bjo Trimble and Devra Langsam were basically the pioneers of modern fandom. Female inclusion is something that has persisted in most geek fandoms, far more than other interest groups. You see it at the conventions, all the women dressed up as Star Wars, Ghostbusters, superhero, LoTR etc. characters. The whole idea that fans are misogynist, women haters that the studio and cast of this film alongside the media were trying to push has never been true. Thats what trolls are.
Likewise the idea the media was trying to sell that this film was some kind of brave step forward for the way women are portrayed in film and that they were being hated for it by men, what a load of nonsense. Male audiences has always supported strong, non-sexualised female characters. The same general audience for the original GB is the same audience that loved Ripley, Sarah Conner, the Bride, Rey, Furiosa etc. The same people who will be flocking to Rogue One. Meanwhile it is female audiences who are making the likes of Twilight and Shades of Gray which could not portray women in a worse light huge box office hits.
It’s not an either/or situation. Yes, there have always been female Trekkies. And they have been there to cheer for Nichelle Nicholas when she rightly pointed out, “Television doesn’t know how to use women. We’re just fill ins.”
Are you really going to say with a straight face that those characters weren’t sexualized? And btw, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Just saying that** is** what male geeks tend to prefer. Plus all those characters followed the cliche of female action heroes, that of the super serious ass kicker (basically they were all trying to be the next Ripley ;)). As long as female characters follow those tropes, male geeks won’t complain much.
In contrast, the GB16 ladies wear outfits not designed to flatter their figures; they have goofy senses of humor (rankling Hitchens groupies everywhere); and they are far from being ninjas. GB16 challenged a lot of traditional tropes, and I do think parts of geek culture had trouble adjusting to this.
How on earth were they sexualized? Their femininity was all downplayed, none of them wore outfits or makeup or hairstyles meant to make them “sexy”, they were meant to look tough. None of them were there to be romantic interests to male stars
Also the cliche of 99% of male action heroes.
How many male action heroes arent buff and wearing tight clothes to flatter their physiques?
If Ghostbusters had been something more than what it was, something that actually appealed to the wider audience and broke down genre barriers while starring women who looked like McCarthy etc, maybe than it would have been challenging traditional tropes. But it was a fairly standard Feig/McCarthy type comedy, and those types of films always star unattractive comedians, both sexes, it was nothing new. You need to look to a movie like Gravity or Edge of Tomorrow to really see those barriers being broken.