Ben Shapiro says that a woman can't play 007 because it wouldn't satisfy men's 'wish fulfillment fantasy'

Outspoken right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro has boldly claimed that a woman cannot possibly play the role of 007 in a James Bond movie because it wouldn't 'satisfy male wish fulfilment'.

As you may have read in the news in the past few days, the next James Bond movie is reported to star Lashana Lynch as a new version of 007, who has been tasked with tracking down Bond and bringing him out of retirement.

As Lynch is both black and woman, you can imagine that a fair few fragile men on the internet have been severely triggered by this news, including Mr Shapiro, who is no stranger to making ridiculous comments.

Speaking on Tuesday, edition of the radio show for the conservative website The Daily Wire, the 35-year-old said, in a very elongated and drawn-out criticism of the casting:

There's this movie trope that 130 pound, soaking wet woman can knock over a 200 pound man who is physically trained. That's absurd. It's absurd in the extreme. One of the things about the Bond series is that Daniel Craig is ripped beyond belief and he can beat the crap out of anyone, so at least that part of the movie is plausible. If you're talking about somebody who is a bowling ball of a human going into other people and breaking them up, that makes a lot more sense, there's less suspension of disbelief along those lines, if it turns out that the hero is actually physically large. And that is one aspect of James Bond. 

And then there's the other aspect, right, because Bond is about the guns and the girls. When it comes to the seduction of women, there is a very very large difference between a woman and a man. I'm not even going to get into the lesbian aspect of this because I don't know if this character is going to be a lesbian -- let's assume she's not, for a second. Let's assume that she's just black, female James Bond which means she's bedding the handsome men. That is not in any way a wish fulfilment fantasy for the men who typically watch the Bond films because a disproportionate share of the Bond audience is male. So unless you're completely shifting the character, it makes no sense. 

It also, on a narrative level, makes no sense at all because the challenge for James Bond, to be completely sexist about this, ok -- the challenge for James Bond is conquest, right? That's obviously been part of the trope of this series, is this conquest-driven mentality by James Bond. Now they're trying to make it so that he has to be in a relationship in every movie because they're trying to make it so that he's not an abuser of women, understood, ok? But that was always the appeal of Bond -- that in every movie he was going to somehow seduce the most beautiful women in the movie into bed with him. And this is what made him an idol to millions of men who, of course, would like to seduce beautiful women but are incapable of doing so because there's a natural challenge to it. 

Now, let's say that there's a beautiful woman playing James Bond, like Lashana Lynch. And now she wants to seduce the most handsome men. Is that in any way difficult? Because men and women are different. 

It's almost too easy to mock Shapiro for such a bizarre and pointless comment but that's what the internet does best.

Shapiro has attempted to offer some sort of comeback but only made some vague attempt at to mock Jason Campbell of Media Matters for America, who originally shared the clip on Twitter.

Ben Shapiro: definitely shaken and mildly stirred.

HT Media Matters for America

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