The modest sound of a damehood, however – along with the righteous spectacle of a gender imbalance being corrected – still ensures that the average new dame will find the world beaming right back at this purported triumph for equality/the working classes/her grandchildren.
The good guys (or, I should say, the morally righteous people of all genders) always prevail in the end.
Even before the financial disaster struck, the new feminists also claim, the best companies had been abandoning "patriarchal" hierarchies in favour of "collaboration" and "networking", skills in which women have an inherent advantage.This argument may sound a little like the stuff of gender workshops in righteous universities.
However righteous this protest – it's impossible to overstate the gender imbalance that has long plagued the movies – the greater problem is that those who bankroll projects simply don't hire enough female directors, including for the tent-poles and comic-book diversions that dominate the international market.
"Righteous Babes" examines political violence, domestic violence, race relations, cross-dressing and gender roles in choreography that draws upon gymnastics, martial arts, contact improvisation and various American and Asian theater styles.
"Realness" is often about as relevant as it is in wrestling, righteous and altogether less savoury politics blur together, and even the boundaries of gender and sexuality are distinctly wobbly.
But, between these two horrific events, we have seen many other instances of gender-based violence that expose the hollow nature of the righteous indignation expressed by public officials, political parties and journalists alike.
What is actually "sin" in this conflict is not LGBTQ identity or behavior but rather the self-righteous, self-serving lie that being born with a minority expression of gender or sexual orientation is in itself sinful.
Given that the movement has become more egalitarian, ordaining women as rabbis since 1985, the mahzor also includes more language that is gender-neutral and names female Biblical figures like Hannah and Miriam as models of righteous heroism.
That episode is also, as I learned in "Bossypants," an illustration of the pitfalls of seeing the world only through the lens of gender, even for those of us who regularly enjoy working ourselves into a self-righteous feminist lather.
