Really? We are still here?

I watched the Jason Statham movie Redemption, this week, and was really shaken up. I usually like his rugged, rough around the edges, bad ass nature character that he portrays. But this movie.

Bad.

Not him in particular. I am used to the killing, the blood baths, the carnage.

As a woman today who has watched these types of films for years, with partners who enjoy them, I have found my own things to appreciate about them. I do try.

This film in particular just seemed to hit all of the things that made me feel more uncomfortable and sad though.

Child sexual abuse, human trafficking, women who are forced into prostitution in order to survive their situation. Each woman in the film had been victimized and on a major level. There was no peaceful landing spot for any of them. No hope.

Sick responses outwardly in the world, because of the trauma done to the inside.

A woman becomes a nun after killing her attacker as a teenager and it is the only way to avoid punishment. Really? Then she jumps Jason Statham's bones and leaves town with his picture to remember him by. What a load of crap.

I watched as much as I could, and then stopped. It played on in the background and I tried to figure out how I was feeling. To be able to process and explain it to my husband, that I am just not going to watch this shit anymore.

And it hit me. This story was written for men. Because men like to be the one to save, yet bad men tend to do a lot of the damage in the first place.

Do men today honestly like to see women in movies that have been abused, beaten, raped and killed? Does that really do it for you?

As many ways as a woman could be abused, they were all present in this movie.

Do we really have such an incredible lack of imagination, that we can't come up with a new way of portraying women in these movies? How about if the woman saves herself, or saves the man? Or they stand together, against the bad guys as a team?

Do they always have to be weaker, totally vulnerable and taken advantage of at every turn?

Some men dig women who are powerful too, like Tomb raider with Angelina Jolie and all the Marvel movies. Can't we infuse some of the badass women from those films into these female dehumanizing movies that seem to sell so well?

Get some respect, as half of the human population?

I think what it comes down to, is that these movies do damage to our potential relationships and our relationships to each other. We cannot allow the victimization of women to be "men's" entertainment any longer.

Do I have the right to choose not to watch these movies.

Yes. I know this.

But aren't more people other than me kind of sick of this treatment of women? We are sisters, mothers, wives, friends. Every woman belongs to somebody whether as a family member, lover or friend.

I wish more men would get that.

Anyway. Bad movie. Don't watch it. Or do, and see what I mean.

Hollywood writers. Do better.