I write: Stalin was more brutal than Hitler.

I write: 10,293 tons of printer ink makes its way to the ocean each year.

I write:  Barack Obama was born in the United States.

They look at me with their half-moon eyelids, heavily. They have likely scrolled through dozens of status updates, tweets, and headlines by the time I am on the road to school with my travel mug of coffee. They know more about a constructed world than I do, and we both know it.

Once the students have all arrived, I have them self-select break-out groups, five in each.

“Now,” I announce grandly, my dry-erase in my left hand, walking to the front of the board like Vanna White. “Which of these are facts, and which are opinions?”

That is the lesson for today: the fundamentals of thinking. Differentiating between when something is opinion (which is overtly subjective) and when something is truth (which is covertly subjective). Once they’ve weighed in on their verdicts (opinion, opinion but easy to substantiate, opinion, fact), we do another round.

“Ok,” I say, “Now, what needs to happen to make these opinions facts?”

We broke it down to it’s cardboard-box basics: in order for an opinion to be a fact, the abstract must become concrete. What does it mean to conquer the world? What if it was universally, specifically defined? Well, then we’d know what it entails, and, under our enterprising capitalism, which shoes to wear while we did our conquering.

Then we do a third round. I give the students context about each of the quotes—information that may compromise their ability to think critically. Suddenly, the oceans affected (even though I made the number up about the printer ink) are very near to our backyard beaches. Suddenly, I reveal that the first statement (roughly) belonged to Marilyn Monroe (“How does it change the meaning to know that the shoes may be stilettos?”). At the end of this exercise, I showed them a video of Mollie Tibbetts’ father, talking about how inappropriately his daughter’s death is being used, to further a racist agenda she didn’t believe in.

“Find the information, find the facts,” I told them, and they set to work. They Googled and scoured social media; they looked at both reliable and unreliable sources using their laptops or their phones. I accepted unreliable information along with reliable, so we could hold each one up to the light and look through it.

A student approached me after class.

“My question is—are there any right answers? At the end of the day, are we all just making decisions based off our core values?” She asked, holding her folder to her chest as if shielding herself from the insult of vagueness.

“You’ve just identified the very crux of this class,” I smiled.

Here are a few facts that help break down the current relevance or irrelevance of facts:

1. It has, as of last year, been two hundred years since John Keats introduced the idea of negative capability, or the ability to sit with uncertainty, mystery, or doubt without needing to reach for reason or fact.
2. Last night, my friend Nadia sat across from me, slumped back in her chair after we’d just finished a two-hour go-around about what art is (and is not). “Art just… promotes thinking,” she said, exhausted.
3. A man in my screenwriting class, who is currently balls-deep in writing a superhero script about an anti-hero superhero who “doesn’t see race,” demanded that I explain to him my two female teenage characters. “Are they gay, or aren’t they?” “They’re teenagers,” I said to him, counting the number of circles in the pegboard behind his head.

Critical thinking, I’m told, is the externalization of the process of thought; it is the consciousness surrounding thinking, which is, or can be, a subconscious process. For example, we can know the following from these pieces of information, from this externalization of my own fact-gathering: negative capability is still in full-force; art is a tool for greater understanding and nothing more/less; and sexuality is more “acceptably” fluid than it used to be.

These are the ‘facts’ I’ve gathered in just the past few days, and they bump up against one another in the darkness of my brain.

Critical thinking, I’m told, is the externalization of the process of thought; it is the consciousness surrounding thinking.
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I am constantly reminding my students that I’m no authority on anything. I’m constantly providing materials that demonstrate that there are only varying degrees of truth and falsehood. It can make a person feel bananas, sometimes, realizing how much of their life they spend talking about the value of not only seeing and navigating gray areas, but also being wholly comfortable with them. That without negative capability, or grayscale, we’d not be able to digest art.

And now, with alternative facts, fake news, and click-bait, we’d not be able to hold our realities and our surrealities in the same hand.

There is value in taking the time to sit back and reflect, be grateful for, hold, how little we know. Or, rather, that the truths we know sometimes go to the mat with one another.

“We live in a post-truth world,” says The Guardian. I disagree. I think we live in a world rife and ripe with a smorgasbord of truths, a world we must show up to with a tool belt of discernment and critical thinking skills. A world that needs a nuanced touch. “Post-truth world” makes me think too much about my twelfth grade English teacher (whom I loved like a father), who prepped us for the world by plying us with dystopian literature, and then died a few years before things got truly dystopian.

However, even if we entertain the thought that we do live in a present state of post-truth, what of it? We humans are by definition irreconcilable, full of contradictory definitions of truths, momentary and life-long.

“The terrible thing about the movie Titanic,” a mentor once told me, “is that there’s nothing complicated about it—it’s just fucking sad. You want a true measure of human nature?” he shook his head ruefully, “Watch Clockwork Orange.”

I don’t disagree. Once, while in the middle of a soul-crushing breakup where I lived off tears and Doritos, I found myself sitting in a room with a woman who had a tipped-over pear on the table in front of her. The pear was so lovely, so shapely. I was suddenly overcome with a lust for the woman that was so intense I had to leave immediately. I can be miserable and lustful at the same time. A person can be bludgeoned in the head while Singing in the Rain plays in the background.  

After all, we hold prisms of truth inside us every day. We love art by artists who have done awful things. We are committed to our lives, but dream of uprooting to Fiji. We help a struggling stranger with change, a hand, a coat, but have violent revenge fantasies about the man in the BMW who cut us off on the freeway. We’re not straightforward in our human-ness, ever, and why should we be? That’d be a disservice to the very best things that we contain (which would be multitudes).

Keep being complicated.

“The number of cesarean sections hovered around 30 percent most days, well above the World Health Organization recommendation of 10 to 15 percent, but some days it was 75 percent. I saw women bullied into epidurals by their nurses, who would tell them, ‘You will never get through this without one.’ And special, extraordinary scorn was reserved for women who chose to have a home birth. ‘Crazy,’ ‘irresponsible’ and ‘child abuse’ were terms I heard in the staff break room.”

By Sarah Bregel

Dr. Amy Tuteur, also known as “The Skeptical OB” (ironic, since she is no longer a licensed obstetrician), hates the home birth industry. This is not a dramatic statement — she’ll gladly tell you this herself and has written it frequently, in more aggressive ways, on her blog and in the comments section of articles about women’s choices in maternity care. Her view, as Slate put it in an interview with her, is that “ the alternative birth scene is largely based on self-serving myths, not science, and creates unnecessary guilt in women who don’t abide by its standard.” Dr. Tuteur recently wrote a book that faced criticism from advocates of alternative forms of maternity care, and has attacked women who want unmedicated birth on her blog, claiming there is no benefit to such a thing (though years of research prove the opposite).

In a recent New York Times piece, “Why is American Home Birth So Dangerous?,” Dr. Tuteur specifically took aim at Certified Professional Midwives (CPM), the primary attendants of home birth in the U.S., questioning their credentials and qualifications. Since I’ve read Dr. Tuteur’s work before, I actually found the article quite tame (or perhaps heavily edited) — but that doesn’t change the fact that most of what she writes is wildly inaccurate.

Her “witch hunt,” as it was called in a rebuttal to the Times piece, also ignores serious issues with modern maternal care in the U.S. But most importantly, it’s not Dr. Tuteur’s — or anyone else’s — business what women decide to do with their own bodies.

***

Contrary to Dr. Tuteur’s opinions, home birth is a safe option for low-risk women. A 2014 study, the largest of its kind on home birth, showed that home birth is as safe as hospital birth, but with much lower rates of intervention. The findings, researchers wrote, “confirm the safety and overwhelmingly positive health benefits for low-risk mothers and babies who choose to birth at home with a midwife.”

Dr. Tuteur’s argument to “abolish the CPM” is also a problematic one, considering CPMs are the only midwives specifically trained for birth that takes place outside of a hospital. A call to eradicate the CPM certification is, then, a call to dispose of home birth altogether — a restriction of choice that is dubious and not likely to happen. There is a growing demand for out-of-hospital birth in the face of high rates of unnecessary hospital intervention. Many women desire home births for a whole host of other reasons as well, such as the best shot at a vaginal birth, freedom of movement that often isn’t found in hospitals, and the comforts of home during and immediately after delivery. A growing number of women want to birth under the midwifery model of care, and will not stop fighting for their right to that option.

CPMs are proven to be capable of meeting the needs of women who want home births. They are trained in all aspects of birth, and their knowledge is extensive. The CPM credential is nationally accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA), which has accredited more than 300 programs in a range of professions, including nursing. The rigorous training takes three to five years, and requires completion of a national board exam and a clinical skills assessment process, as well as continuing education and recertification every three years.

A CPM must also meet the standards for certification set by the North American Registry of Midwives, and is the only midwifery credential that requires knowledge about and experience in out-of-hospital settings. For this reason, the American Public Health Association and WHO recommend midwives as the primary maternity care providers for the majority of women. CPMs were also recognized in The Millbank Report: Evidence-Based Maternity Care as the model for low intervention and good outcomes.

The expansiveness of the CPM training regimen is likely one reason why many women who use this model of care often speak to how well-rounded and far-reaching it is. Speaking personally, when I birthed with Certified Professional Midwives two years ago, I was shocked to find out that our prenatal sessions weren’t the quick 15-minute doctor’s office visits I’d become accustomed to when I was pregnant with my first child, but 45 minutes to an hour, each time. I was asked about everything from what I ate for breakfast, to how much stress I was under. I wasn’t merely weighed and measured and sent on my way because, as my midwives often said, there were far more things to consider than the size of my belly. The approach was far from “one size fits all,” but felt in-depth and personal.

Overall, my home midwifery care was more extensive than I could’ve imagined. My midwives saw me through my labor and delivery. They attended my birth from start to finish and stayed for several hours after my baby was born. I spent far more time with my midwives than I ever did with my obstetrician, who did not even end up attending my hospital delivery. Instead, a masked man — the on-call doctor whom I’d never seen before — popped in seconds before my baby came out and left almost immediately afterwards. Someone I didn’t know at all delivered my first baby, but that wasn’t before he sliced me up with an episiotomy (a procedure that is not routinely recommended) without even so much as a “how do you do?” I didn’t see my actual doctor until a few hours before I checked out of the hospital, days later, when she briefly stopped by, pressed on my belly, and offered me a “congratulations” on new motherhood.

A great number of other women report strikingly similar experiences to my own. But despite the facts, stats, and anecdotes to the contrary, Dr. Tuteur continues to claim that midwives are all glaringly incompetent.

That said, there is one point on which we marginally agree: Dr. Tuteur points to the fact that in many states, CPMs remain unlicensed, making the births they attend less safe. Certified Professional Midwives are, indeed, legally authorized to practice in only 29 states (Certified Nurse-Midwives, or CNMs, who are dually trained in midwifery and nursing, can practice in all 50 states, while Certified Midwives, which are similar to CNMs but lack the nursing training, can practice in just three).

Dr. Tuteur is right — midwives being left unlicensed does not do anything to help ensure the safety of women. But ironically, it’s the unfounded idea she perpetuates — that midwife-attended home births are radically unsafe — which has, well, made them less safe. Without legal support, it’s harder for midwives to get proper training, and if they are forced to practice in secret, they are less likely to be able to ensure safe hospital transfers if and when they are necessary.

Dr. Tuteur advocates not for legalization and regulation (which means safety), but rather to abolish the CPM, leaving women with fewer choices in childbirth than they currently have (and that’s not much). Of course, we need standards to ensure that midwives practicing outside of the hospital environment are up to snuff. But the ones pushing the hardest for those standards aren’t people like Dr. Tuteur, who are talking about how ill-equipped midwives are, but the midwives themselves.

They’re the ones knocking down doors and rallying on street corners and going to the courthouse year after year to make sure midwives in every state can be legal and licensed and regulated. They’re the ones crowdfunding and petitioning and fighting for safety standards, not against them. Though Dr. Tuteur would like you to believe otherwise, midwives don’t want to practice illegally. In fact, they want standards more than anyone. They want their licenses so that they can practice with the respect and dignity that they deserve and have been denied for so long. They don’t want to fear prosecution any longer for helping women who are so desperately clinging to their choices in childbirth. And with the rising rates of women who desire different options than hospital birth, not only keeping CPMs around, but making them more accessible, is a very good idea. Not only does it drastically reduce the cost of birth nationwide, but it helps keep low-risk women low-risk.

Out-of-hospital birth has demonstrated that a drastic reduction in unnecessary interventions like cesareans, which have greater risks than vaginal deliveries, is not only possible, but should be the standard of care. The U.S., a country where women primarily birth in hospitals under obstetrician-led care, has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. Are there bad doctors out there who make birth less safe for women, who routinely sacrifice women’s safety in favor of a speedier delivery or a paycheck boost for every unnecessary intervention done to her body, which may take longer to heal from? Absolutely. Our high rates of intervention show how little caution is used. Not to mention the countless reports of women saying they were forced, pressured, or otherwise manipulated into procedures they say they didn’t want or need in the delivery room.

In a rebuttal to Dr. Teuter’s Times piece, an anesthesiologist wrote:

Choices in childbirth are so important, as are all the choices women make regarding their bodies. But Dr. Tuteur seems dead-set on making sure women don’t get to have them. Weeding out the handful of bad midwives practicing out-of-hospital birth would undoubtedly be a good thing, but it won’t happen until CPMs can practice legally in all 50 states. Shouting from the rooftops that they are all dangerous, ill-equipped, and grossly negligent does nothing to protect women, like licensing midwives would.

If Dr. Tuteur really wants to help women, like she says she does, she should rally behind certified professional midwives to ensure they can give women what they really need — the rights to their own bodies and access to safe birth.

***

Lead image: Pixabay

I stopped following the news on March 23, 2015. The Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality was still a few months away, and the conversation surrounding LGBTQ rights was hot. But in article after article, instead of reading about this issue with any sort of nuance, I was forced to confront thoughtless, divisive, offensive headlines like The Guardian’s “California lawyer seeks to put ‘shoot the gays’ proposal on 2016 ballot.”

In that story, a particularly inflammatory line was used as the opener: “A California lawyer says he wants to legalize the execution of gay people, and there may be nothing the state’s attorney general can do to stop the proposal from moving forward.” There is no way this bill would ever make it to a vote, but by insinuating it could with a line designed to push buttons, The Guardian loaded the anger cannon and fired straight into the anger machine — aka, the internet.

At first glance, a story by a Columbus, Ohio, NBC affiliate — “Ohio lawmakers to consider controversial bathroom bill” — seems less salacious, but it, too, taps into outrage with its sub-heading: “Representative John Becker says legislation is needed to keep predators from victimizing women and children.” This presentation preys on pro-LGBTQ outrage over gender policing bathrooms, while tapping into bigots’ fear by implying the bill protects against “predators.”

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‘The Guardian’ loaded the anger cannon and fired straight into the anger machine.
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This method of news coverage, especially common in mainstream media, may make an article especially clickable, but focusing on virality through outrageous, sensational coverage causes damage to the LGBTQ community on many levels. Not only does it turn actual people into voiceless two-dimensional objects, it also minimizes LGBTQ struggles and ignores larger issues facing the community. It’s a cycle that achieves nothing — and is ultimately exhausting for those in the LGBTQ community.

And as is the case with so much online, it’s a problem that begins with outrage.

There’s a reason so many media outlets tap into divisive anger when covering LGBTQ issues (not to mention any number of other topics handled in a similarly pot-stirring way). In a 2010 study on virality at the University of Pennsylvania, Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman discovered “content that evokes more [high arousal emotions such as] anxiety or anger is actually more viral.”

The media has been inciting these high-arousal reactions by covering outrageous anti-LGBTQ stories all but guaranteed to provoke strong reactions on both sides, including that aforementioned “shoot the gays” bill; the Duck Dynasty, Chil-Fil-A, and Barillo homophobes; the Westboro Baptist Church’s boycott of any rainbow flag; the anti-gay wedding cake of 2014; Indiana’s anti-gay pizza catering; and, most recently, North Carolina’s discrimination bill and Georgia’s vetoed religious liberty bill.

In presenting these stories of blatant homophobia, the media has relied on a simple either-or paradigm: You are either for LGBTQ people or for the homophobes. In recent bathroom bill coverage, for example, only opinions for and against the legislation are included. Absent are transgender voices, or narratives that might complicate this binary view of the law. Stories involving more nuance and discussion don’t fit this outrage model, so instead, real LGBTQ people are used as objects in a heated debate they rarely have a voice in — all in exchange for clicks, shares, and likes.

“[The media] aren’t really picking stories based on what’s actually important to LGBTQ people. And they think they’re doing a good job just because they’re writing about us at all,” says Riese Bernard, CEO and editor-in-chief of the popular queer website, Autostraddle.

Bernard adds that at the very least, viral coverage “gives straight people the impression that we are still being constantly persecuted, which is good, because we are. Just because we have marriage equality in America doesn’t mean our problems are over.”

But using LGBTQ issues to fuel a viral fire rarely has a meaningful impact on the LGBTQ community, as outrage does little to change the lives of real LGBTQ people. Moreover, this kind of deliberately divisive coverage causes bigots to double down on their homophobic rhetoric.

How LGBTQ-Run Businesses Are Surviving — And Thriving — In The Face Of Obstacles

Meanwhile, religious liberty bills in Indiana, North Carolina, and Georgia do have real-world impact on the LGBTQ community. However, it’s hard to pick their importance out of the news lineup because outrageous one-off incidents, like an egregious Duck Dynasty comment or single homophobic lawyer, end up with just as much, if not more, news coverage. Virality obfuscates real threats to LGBTQ people.

The Guardian’s “shoot the gays” coverage, for example, prompted 31,000 shares and 701 comments in the now-closed thread. Though obvious the bill would die, the audacious and sensational nature of the proposed law was prime to go viral. It got more attention than North Carolina’s recent and devastating bill blocking local anti-discrimination laws. (The Guardian’s coverage on North Carolina has garnered fewer than 500 shares so far.)

As Bernard puts it:

“I think for people who aren’t familiar with the issues, who are just surveying the news landscape, there’s no real clear way to differentiate between legislations and initiatives that are genuine threats to our community and those that just sound really crazy and therefore could become a Facebook trending topic. It’s hard to find the things that matter when everything is reported on in the same way, including things that really don’t matter. … It belittles our struggles in general. … The small sensational stories become the ones that entire communities are judged by.”

“The problem with the mainstream media is that an LGBTQ issue isn’t important unless it can either be turned into a reality show or a ratings grabber,” seconds Ashley Steves, a New York-based freelance writer who has covered LGBTQ issues. “There are so many issues relevant to our community that rarely or never get the spotlight: homeless LGBTQ youth, health care, employment discrimination, an increase in violence against the community, poverty, anti-bullying in schools, trans suicide, racial justice for LGBTQ people of color, biphobia and transphobia within the community. Those issues aren’t shiny enough for the mainstream.”

Here’s the reality: Nearly 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ. A reported 47% of trans people are “fired, not hired, or denied a promotion because of being transgender or gender non-conforming.” More than 30% of bisexual women live in poverty, and trans people are four times more likely than the general population to live in extreme poverty. Yet important issues such as these rarely make it into mainstream news stories.

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Nearly 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ.
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The absence of these issues renders entire swaths of the LGBTQ community invisible and sinking without a lifeline. These larger issues need news coverage so the general public is aware that the fight for true equality is far from over. In some cases, in fact, that fight is just beginning. The struggle to get these issues on the radar of the mainstream press is but one step among many that we as a society need to take to lift up the entire LGBTQ community.

Of course, this takes tireless effort. And particularly when dealing with the abundance of outraged viral news, it’s exhausting to everyone involved.

“There might be all this press, but you’re still not getting ahead,” says Chicago-based LGBTQ local news writer Liz Baudler. “It strikes me as more of an echo chamber. And the constant echoing is draining.”

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“The outrage cycle sucks up a ton of energy from people,” Bernard says. “I think at the end of the day, the impact is that when it’s time to talk about real issues, people are tired of fighting [on Facebook] with some guy they went to high school with all day about some vaguely homophobic thing a comedian said.”

Allison Moon, author of the sex-education book Girl Sex 101, adds, “My resolution this year was to read fewer think pieces, particularly those which ‘respond to the response’ or ‘comment on the commentary.’ I chose to do that because each daily outrage took its toll on my emotional health.”

“We forbid writing articles about articles five years ago at Autostraddle because it was getting so exhausting,” Bernard adds. “So much energy is sucked up by people criticizing pronouns that are being used, the way that a lesbian is depicted, or these kinds of issues.”

Virality only serves to minimize and erase real struggles LGBTQ people face daily, and exhausts everyone in the process. On the other end of those outraged, angry bigot-baiting headlines are real people with real lives, friends, and family. The LGBTQ community deserves to be more than objects of an outraged virality storm. We deserve to be treated as the complex, important people we are, in the news and in the real world.

Mainstream media has the power to help make this a reality — but only if they abandon the goal of virality.

The Oscar-nominated comedy-drama The Big Short, based on the nonfiction book by journalist Michael Lewis, depicts five Wall Street financiers who foresee the 2008 financial crisis. Viewers and critics adore it; on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s 88% certified fresh, and many are predicting it could take home the trophy for Best Picture at tonight’s Academy Awards telecast.

But what most don’t realize is that it also conceals a good old-fashioned mystery — someone is missing. Director Adam McKay disappeared one of the crisis’ biggest heroes.

Lewis’ book begins with Meredith Whitney, a young woman who bagged a Wall Street job straight out of Brown University. Thirteen years later, she cut $390 billion off the value of the U.S. stock market. By noting that Citigroup’s dividends and profits didn’t match up, she spurred a substantial drop in their stock. In Lewis’ words, “Whitney was crashing the stock market with her every utterance.” Whitney’s disappearance leaves a glaring gap in McKay’s adaptation, not least because she’s a badass, economy-stopping genius, but also because the remaining five protagonists are all men.

This is a shame, because countless women and girls needed to see Whitney in The Big Short. After all, “you can’t be what you can’t see” (shoutout to the great Marian Edelman for that one). In U.S. financial services, women make up 54% of the workforce, 16% of senior executives, and an amazing 0% of CEOs. Few women reach the summit of Wall Street, and as a result, female financiers have hardly any role models. With Wall Street making only plodding progress with gender equality, the media has the potential — and a responsibility — to inspire women in finance.

You’d be surprised at the power of popular culture; Bend it Like Beckham motivated tons of girls to take to the soccer pitch, and according to the book Operation Hollywood, naval aviation recruitment increased 500% after the release of Top Gun. McKay could have followed in this vein, spurring women to smash Wall Street’s Perspex ceiling. Depressingly, he omitted Meredith Whitney, leaving women to play mostly secondary characters.

In doing so, The Big Short followed a long and storied cinematic tradition: erasing women from Wall Street.

***

From Arbitrage to The Wolf of Wall Street, screen time in Wall Street-themed movies is regularly dominated by men, and the few women present are often characterized in the same old, lazy ways. Women rarely appear as senior executives, and in the rare instances where they do, they’re less than inspiring. In the 2012 film Arbitrage, Robert (Richard Gere) manages a hedge fund with daughter Brooke (Brit Marling). When Brooke finds out that her father has cooked the company’s books, she confronts him, like the strong female character she is. But this inspiring moment is cut off after a generous few seconds when Robert tells Brooke that he’s “the patriarch.” She storms off, and that’s that. Brooke has a high-ranking role in the company, but her actions are insignificant.

Same goes for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, in which the only high-ranker is a character named “Carol” who pitches an idea to Chinese investors, only for them to prefer male protagonist Jacob’s idea. Carol’s five minutes of fame are up just like that — we never see her again.

One exception to this trope is Margin Call, where the Chief Risk Management Officer, played by Demi Moore, has an active storytelling role. But in Feminist Erasures, Kumarini Silva chalked this up to the film featuring an ensemble cast, making it something of an anomaly.

Whether or not Silva’s right, we can all accept that Hollywood movies lack influential women in senior financial roles. In Wall Street films, women are way better at propping the men up. They can usually be categorized as one of the three S’s: spouses, secretaries, or strippers. Behind every Wall Street powerhouse, there’s a devoted wife. In The Big Short, it’s Cynthia (Marisa Tomei), the wife of Steve Carrell’s character, Mark. She spends many of her limited minutes of screen time on the other end of the phone to Mark, serving as the calming yin to his eccentric, gifted yang. Here’s one example:

TOMEI: I think you should try medication.

CARELL: No, no. We agreed — if it interfered with work.

TOMEI: You hate Wall Street. Maybe it’s time to quit.

CARELL: I love my job.

TOMEI: You hate your job.

In reality, Cynthia (real name Valerie) worked as an analyst at J.P. Morgan, before quitting to launch a clothing line and raise kids. Despite this information being in Lewis’ book, McKay portrayed Valerie in the conventional “Wall Street Wife” way.

Similarly, in Arbitrage, Robert’s wife plays the perfect corporate wife — she accepts that her husband, as a man of his profession, has affairs.

In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Winnie (Carey Mulligan) plans to marry protagonist Jacob (Shia LeBeouf). She’s not yet a wife, but is well on her way to perfecting the “Wall Street Wife” trope. She plays an emotional role, while the men (Jacob and her father, Gordon Gekko) talk business. Not only does she support Jacob emotionally, she also she gives him $100 million of her savings to invest in a fusion research company.

Opposite the Good Wives are the strippers and prostitutes. They’re presented as Wall Street’s vice — they lure men from their families, as in The Wolf of Wall Street. They’re also a symbol of Wall Street’s excesses. When asked about his expenditures, the Head of Trading in Margin Call boasts “76,520 [dollars] on hookers, booze and dancers, but mainly hookers . . . I was a little bit shocked initially but then I realized I could claim most of it back as entertainment.”

This “vice” trope is also evident in the general portrayal of women as Wall Street’s femme fatale. In Arbitrage, Robert faces jail and the ruin of his career because of an accident that leads to the death of his mistress. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps goes even further. Gordon tells Jacob “money’s a bitch that never sleeps. And she’s jealous. And if you don’t pay close attention, you wake up in the morning, and she might be gone forever.” “WTF, bro? Doesn’t this film suck enough already?” exclaims Jacob. We wish — in reality, Jacob lets Gordon’s crass sexism fly. There’s a consensus in Wall Street films — like money, women are the cause of male financiers’ downfall.

When “biographical” and “realistic” films portray women via stock characters like these, how can real women find on-screen role models? Thankfully, some of these women have taken action. Equity, the first woman-driven Wall Street film in 28 years, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival last month. The protagonist, main supporting roles, writer, director, and producers are all women. Equity proves that there’s a demand for strong, female financial figures in film — Sony recently bought worldwide rights and the movie features in popular financial publications like Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.

Let’s hope that Hollywood and Wall Street follow Equity in inspiring women to reach positions of financial leadership. Women like Meredith Whitney prove that it’s possible, but they sadly lack visibility on screen and off. Zero percent of women CEOs in U.S. financial service is an embarrassing figure. However, it’s one that can change as women begin to see exactly what they can be.