[Part of a conversation on KotakuInAction about a quote from Sonic Boom, where Knuckles says that always making big deal about feminism whenever a woman accomplishes something undermines equality by making the act seem like an exception rather than the status quo, using soccer as an example. This started a debate on if this constitutes Knuckles being used as a vehicle for feminist propaganda or him being anti-feminist.]

Sickening, but I suppose it's pretty par for the course. People have been pushing their political agendas in cartoons for as long as I can remember. The cartoons I grew up with were always tokens 'r' us when it was human characters. Had to have the black one, the chick one, the wheelchair one, etc. Had to make them look good, too, so there'd be a dumb/aggressive white guy for them to correct/restrain. Then you had the ham-fisted moral/PSA at the end where you learn not to judge a book by its cover and why you shouldn't play with downed power lines, because knowing is half the battle.

It felt so much more benign when the propaganda was just Captain Planet and the morals were stuff like sharing is caring. Now it's going to be fucking wage gap myths and Tumblr genders. The kids never did anything to deserve this shit.

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What Knuckles says may be accurate, but he shouldn't be saying it. Feminist proselytizing in a children's cartoon is despicable. You can argue that it's that mythical "good feminism" that stops at "men and women should be treated equally" since what he's saying isn't insane, but I would argue that "good feminism" wouldn't be proudly circlejerking about their propaganda on Twitter. Secondly feminism in that sense is essentially a meaningless term because almost everyone in the Western world is a feminist. It's like having a label for people who believe the earth is round. Aside from incels and maybe some weird NRx types no one believes or argues for the contrary position that women should not be treated equally except trolls looking to get a reaction. Even TRPers who conceptualize women as essentially slightly retarded children aren't looking to subjugate them or strip them of any of their rights, they just want to fuck the pretty ones and impress each other with their half-assed evopsych observational comedy.

If there were pushing BLM in a cartoon, would you be like "what, you don't think black lives matter?" if I objected?