There’s been a fair bit of discussion of late about whether The Walking Dead is a sexist show. To which I say, more or less, “Duh!”
However, that’s not actually what I’m going to talk about here. Intentional or not, the show certainly reflects sexism, and in that regard serves as a useful example.
There is a particular scene near the end of the second season, in which Andrea’s gun is disassembled on the kitchen table of the RV and Shane (whose ” I AM ALPHA MAEL” instability is rapidly spiraling towards a conclusion) smugly debates whether he wants to teach her how to reassemble it or not — whether she should be permitted to have access to a functional gun which was originally hers, in a planet (and shortly, in a RV) full of brain-eating zombies.
Her gun. His decision. Why? Because she never learned a basic function of her own gun — not when she first acquired it, nor at any point thereafter. This despite, at this point in the series, having extensive and obvious reasons to learn. Had she known — and it’s very simple; the gun they showed on the screen was similar to my own, which breaks down into five parts and takes about four steps to reassemble which are fairly intuitive given a basic understanding of how it is supposed to work — she could simply have picked up the pieces and put the gun back together, thereby defusing Shane’s power play.
So this is, pretty much, your cautionary tale. Learn how the things that are around you work and how to work them. Learn how to figure things out even when you don’t know in advance. Do this, lest you find yourself sitting across the table from someone who does not have your best interests in mind but does have the knowledge and willingness that you lack.
Smoke Test Shack 