feminist and fandom musings

[rivendellrose]

So.... Pinging off cirakaite's post on the weird thing against female characters/het/etc, and earlier discussions on the odd misogyny of fandom, nekokoban and I spent a good amount of time this evening sitting at the table talking about fandom, misogyny, fanfic, and other connected subjects. When I came downstairs, I was surprised by the timely nature of two posts on my friends-list: one, a lovely rebuttal of an article describing why "women don't actually want a feminist society" (essentially, because we would lose the 'advantages' accorded to us by chivalry), and the other... a rant about how 'useless' one of the female characters on Firefly is.

Interestingly, I had, not half an hour before, told Terra that I didn't see that sort of thing happening much in Firefly fandom, which is/was one of the reasons I like it so much.

So here's a question for all you folks out there involved, even tangentially, in fandom - do you think there really is a trend in fandom against female characters? (In the sense of people pushing away or vilifying female characters, for any number of reasons.) To what extent do you think that trend determines what people write, read, or RP? What do you think are good examples of this? Do you have any theories about why it happens?

I've got a few ideas, myself, but I'm doing some research before I really say anything... and for once, that's not just an excuse to go out and read fic. I'm legitimately curious, here, and interested to see what people think, and what can be discovered.

Comments

[sigelphoenix.livejournal.com]

I had to look up which character you were referring to ... and following my first, "Bah! Kaylee??" reaction, it occurs to me that it's pretty useless to "debate" whether or not you like a character. It doesn't seem like the poster had anything constructive to say, and it just resulted in lots of back and forth "la la la I can't hear you."

As for the rest of your post -- I'm not sure if you were referring to misogyny towards female characters, or both female characters and female fans. If it's the latter, you might be interested in a recent (and much-lauded) post by cereta called Fandom and Male Privilege. It started as a rebuttal to an "evil feminists" post in a community, but it touches on a lot of aspects of gender in fandom.

[sjen.livejournal.com]

Whoa, that's a seriously interesting post, Dora. Thanks for posting. ^^

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Blegh, sorry, I clearly wasn't paying much attention when I wrote this post. Yeah, Kaylee... and the whole debate was definitely pretty useless.

I'm still trying to figure out what I mean, in a way - I'm really interested in the way female fans seem often to have issues with female characters, when it comes down to it. Thanks for the article link, I'll definitely take a look at that!

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

Someone thinks Kaylee's useless? She keeps the whole Damn ship running! They's be totally stuck in space without her.
Plus, she's funny!

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

That was the argument most people responded with - that the whole ship would've fallen out of the sky ages ago if it weren't for Kaylee. To which the person responded that River could just as easily have run the ship as she does fly it... which confirms the icky nervous feeling I got when she took over piloting at the end of Serenity. I was afraid it would come to this exact sort of "everyone else is unnecessary" sort of mindset, and here it is.

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

Geez, you were sure right on the nose when you said you wished they hadn't had River fly the ship after Wash was killed. C'mon people, just because River is a genius, doesn't make Kaylee useless. She still can fix the ship with just about nothing to use, and no formal training. Give her a break!! Besides, when River's on one of her "crazies" who's going to fly the ship then, huh??

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I know, I know - but it's bound to be the argument, now, for just about anything. "River could do that." Well, maybe. But River's also still unhinged, folks, and she can't do everything. I found the whole "Joss should've killed Kaylee instead" angle a bit... yeah. Grrr.

Mal, apparently, which is funny since Inara comments right in the movie that he's not a very good pilot, and she won't trust him with the shuttle when they're escaping.

[sjen.livejournal.com]

YES. There is definitely this trend in almost every major fandom I follow (the smaller fandoms treat characters more evenly, I've noticed). I feel like once a fandom picks up speed and becomes bigger, it gets bored of accepted pairings and such, and moves towards crack theories and further away from canon/fanon. Sometimes characters can get bad stigma when this starts happening, because people lose grasp on the canon and start making their own universe out of fanon.

Since almost all the fandoms I'm around are heavily populated by women who either 1) like yaoi slash and want their fave males with each other, so they disregard female characters, or 2) in the case of often younger teenboppers, like the male characters so much that they effectively wanna Mary Sue them and kick the female characters out because of "jealousy". You see lots of character "claiming" when it comes to part 2, and those girls scare me. ToT

Of course, anything a fandom pushes, is usually what most people draw (since I don't read fics)... sometimes even because they know it will gain them the attention from fandom that they want. And the only case where I see a more even judgement of characters is in the older crowd of ladies who know their character preferences and stick to them. I think they have their hormones a little more under control. ^^; I'm convinced that it's overactive hormones that trash characters and bring about the fall of fandom. ^o^ The balance is lost.

Uhh, I don't really have any good examples that you'd be familiar with. But any series with more male characters than females... it usually happens. And any series with a main guy and a main girl with regular interaction and not too many other guys in the picture--those tend to stay hate-free. From my personal observation.

Good luck with the research, this sounds interesting. ^__^

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I think you're definitely right about the size thing - I'm always appalled by the amount of crack-pairing that a given fandom (any large enough fandom, it seems) can attract/create. I think the initial attraction is the idea of just plain doing something new, but it boggles my mind what some people will end up with. And then there's stuff like "oh, (character x) is my favorite!" when character x is someone who has... like... a single line, in canon. That phenomenon amuses the hell out of me, sometimes.

Overactive hormones are the cause of a lot of stuff in fandom... hell, I think it's probably 90% of the reason there is fandom, to begin with.

Thanks! I doubt I'll come to any really useful conclusions, but I'm enjoying the process of thinking it all through, regardless!

[miss-arel.livejournal.com]

Aww, what's wrong with crack pairings? Crack is fun! XD

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

*Laughs* You're right, maybe my anti-crack-pairing feelings won't go over too well in this crowd. ;)

Seriously, I just kind of shake my head and snicker at most of them... except the ones that make me run whimpering upstairs to cry to Terra, of course.

[miss-arel.livejournal.com]

Hwh... for me, the issue is never so much "Is this pairing likely" as much as "is it portrayed realistically? Does the writer make it believable?" Doesn't matter what the pairing is; if the writer can't write it believably, I'm not gonna have patience for it. And for me, one of the challenges of writing any sort of pairing (it could be as canon as Wash/Zoe or as cracked out as Archer/Scar's brother) -- I want to make it believable. Like, "yeah... that could happen." Instead of just "Huh?"

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Oh, making it believable is definitely the issue in terms of writing. I just tend to avoid reading the more cracked out pairings, for the simple reason that once I've seen it written well, I have a hard time getting rid of it. Which can get confusing, sometimes.

[zinjadu.livejournal.com]

Well, first off, I still think most of the lack of het is due to the "zomg hawt boys --> make them have teh sex0rs!" phenomenon among young women who write an increasing amount of fanfiction and participate in fandoms.

As for why the women get vilifyied, I think it might have to do with the competition issue. Girls generally want to be with the hero, yes? The Main Love Interest is getting in the way. Whether it's a conscious thought or not is beside the point, the Love Interest has got to go. Now, most people get shunned/laughed at/etc. for writing Fictional Character/Author fic (and if they aren't we should go destroy them now), so they've got to have someone to smex it up with, and it might as well be another attractive young man. Hanging around that is the idea that male/male relationships last only as long as there isn't the "right woman/the teanie bopper in question" around. Not pretty, but it's in the subconscious, I think, of many.

Also, in the case where slash doesn't happen, it might be because the woman is flawed and not perfect and therefore sucks. This is not Earth!logic. It also ties into the idea that women have to be perfect and able to handle anything. Any woman who can't is obviously horrible and should be burned. So the woman is vilified and made to be "weak" just because she has flaws like a real human being. Oh noes. 9_9

As for how it determines what I read, write and how I RP, I gotta say it makes me want to read and write stuff with strong women and het and even femslash cause I'm bored to tears of the m/m stuff. I don't care, kthx. I'm a woman and I want to read about women sometimes. Also I like to play guys in RP, it's just easier for me, but I like playing out het relationships. (Granted the one I am in is sickeningly cute, but hey.) And I have played women before, oddly enough its easier for me to play women in tabletop, but they're always real and flawed, and strong in their own ways.

So to end, I don't know if any of that made sense. But I think we should start a comm for fic celebrating women in fiction. It'd be great! And we'd get to see some good stuff maybe. ^_^

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

It also ties into the idea that women have to be perfect and able to handle anything. Any woman who can't is obviously horrible and should be burned. So the woman is vilified and made to be "weak" just because she has flaws like a real human being.

Very good point. It's downright weird how often people bitch about thus-and-such a female character being weak and disgusting... just because she's what I see as human. Strong women don't have to be perfect. In fact, they shouldn't be. I prefer to see female characters who have real issues and real flaws and real concerns, so long as it's not all about "he doesn't love me because I'm not pretty enough" or something idiotic like that. And even a little of that is okay - hell, we've all been there.

Hmm... we should. Except I do fear slightly what we'd end up with, since it would, by necessity, be multi-fandom. Hmmmmmm....

[zinjadu.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

What's wrong with multi-fandom? There's a lot of good stuff out there and there should be a place for it go, and a place that promotes women in fiction in general. ^_^

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Nothing's wrong with it, per se. It could just be interesting, in that we could potentially run into a lot of stuff we'd never heard of. I'd seriously be into it, though, I think. It's a worthy cause.

[zinjadu.livejournal.com]

See? Good idea. I'm all for starting it if you are. ^_^ Or if anyone else is interested in helping and pimping it. I don't know if anything like that is out here on LJ, I wouldn't be surprised, but I've never heard of it.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely up for it. What's a good community name, d'you think?

[zinjadu.livejournal.com]

Uh... name? Damn, you had to ask me first, didn't you? I dunno, just nothing pretentious sounding.

And there seems to be a bit of interest in this, from asking a few people at the club today. =D

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, nothing pretentious... hmm. Usernames are so darned hard to come up with, sometimes.

Oh good! I can't imagine there wouldn't be, it's a topic that could definitely be fun to explore and work with. Well, let's keep thinking and see if we can come up with anything good, I guess.

[zinjadu.livejournal.com]

I know. Damn. I mean, women_in_fiction I think is just a bit too long to be a username, but that'd be good. Hrm.

^_^ Yeah, I was talking in the club and one of the regulars suggested themes for weeks, or essay contest thingies, or fic and art stuff too. Heeeeeey, the first event could be an essay contest type thing for the user info blurb, outlining why the comm exists and what it wants to do. Person who articulates the comm's misson the best is credited in the userinfo and all that jazz. =D

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

You're right, women_in_fiction is one character over - 15 is the limit. women_infiction sounds like a disease, sort of. Umm... chicks_in_fiction? Definitely satisfies the "not pretentious" requirement...

Ooo, that'd be awesome! I love the idea of challenges, especially if we had one per every-so-often (month? two weeks?) that was open to whatever you wanted to do with it - fiction, essay, art, whatever. And we'd have to have a contest for community icons, too, of course.

I'm all excited, now... I really like this idea.

(...Dear LJ - do not put my comment way the hell at the bottom of my entry, randomly. Argh Kthnxdie.)

[zinjadu.livejournal.com]

Sounds good to me. Cause there are girls in fiction too, not just women. Or something. XD

I know! I think to start we should have it open for a month to make sure we keep getting more members, but once we reach a specific point we can shorten the time frame. And of course there needs to be room for icons. There's always time for icons.

Me too! ^_^

(*patpat* I hate it when it does that.)

[diea.livejournal.com]

I can say that the single greatest example I have of hating a character (characters) because they are female is the Without a Trace fandom. Oh. My goodness.

First there is Sam. Now some people in the fandom like Sam, but those are the het shipppers. The Danny/Martin slashers hate her. I have to admit that I am guilty of this. It's not really because she's a woman though, but because she's a rival for Martin's affection. They used to date. There are things that she does which are annoying, but I think it comes down to the rival issue. (and also because I think Poppy is just a bad actress, but that's not the point)

Then, just this season, CBS added a new character: Elena. From the moment she stepped onto the screen people hated her. The slashers (all of them female that I know) hated her. They call her "Whorelena". They started a community called die_elena_die. As far as I can tell they hate her because she's stealing screentime from the rest of the cast, and she's a potential rival for Danny's affection. I have yet to pass judgement on her because I feel like I haven't seen her in enough episodes. (I also have a tendency to like the people everyone else hates, but that's beside the point too) I can tell you that I have never seen a character hated so vehemently as Elena. Perhaps I'm not reading the right comms, but I've yet to see anyone rant against any of the Harry Potter characters as I have seen people rant against her. It's insane, and all of the ways they attack her are specifically female. They call her a whore. They yell 'B**** must go'. All of that kind of thing. It's kind of scary actually to see otherwise sane people freak out and attack a person who isn't even real. ...Anyway that's my best example. Hope it helps a little and I haven't rambled on too much.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Ooo... yeah, I've seen that kind of thing happen. I remember some of the stuff that went on in the old days with the X-Files... it wasn't pretty. Mostly the rival stuff, like you mentioned... pretty much anyone they put up as a potential interest for Mulder other than Scully was automatically hated hated hated hated hated. Admittedly, I was party to a bit of that, so looking back it's a bit... interesting.

As for Harry Potter fandom, I've heard some pretty vicious stuff about Ginny ever since OotP, and against Tonks since HBP. Most of that's second- or third-hand, though, since I stay away from most comms and stuff in that fandom. I think the feeling is that Ginny's become a Mary Sue, and that Rowling sort of sold Tonks out. I've heard there was also much hatred coming at her from the Sirius/Remus camp, but don't quote me on that, and it seems to have died down a good deal since then.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

zomg, yes

[Jen, I saw your post on fireflyfans and hopped over to your personal LJ.]

I've seen Without a Trace on occasion before and like it well enough (though I can barely tell Danny and Martin apart and don't particularly care about them) and then this season I watched the prostitute episode ('cause hi, I'm a queer girl and thus vulnerable to some of the marketing aimed at hetero males) and I thought the potential chemistry between Sam and Elena was really interesting, and then I discovered some of the fandom, and zomg the hate. I can understand people arguing that the ensemble cast gets little enough screentime as it is, or even saying that she's a bad actress, but when you call her "Whorelena" you completely deligitimize your argument, and I keep restraining myself from making a post ranting about internalized misogyny or something. (And of course now I really wanna like Elena just out of spite.) And dude, I come from BtVS/Angel fandom and this level of foaming rage is new and strange to me.

[cirakaite.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree with the whole phenomenon of getting the woman out of the way, in at least some cases, as zinjadu mentioned above. It doesn't apply to everyone, though- I can't see any reason that I would prefer slash because I want the men myself, when I tend to be far more enamoured of the girls!

The link between the women being flawed and therefore awful is also a nasty one, and fairly prevalent. I think I commented on it a bit in my disjointed ramble, but it's a curious thing. Women are either not good enough- most of the time. Or they're too good in some way, in which case they're Mary Sues.

I haven't seen as much of it in Firefly, admittedly- but that's partly because I'm not so much in the fandom, I'm sure. And also, what there is of it that I've seen tends to be leveled at Inara, as Mal's love interest in canon. Kaylee escapes more or less- people tend to dismiss her and River as easy to get out of the way when they're slashing Simon etc. *winces* I've read too many "Kaylee is like a puppy, I want the Captain instead stories" to be comfortable.

It's scarily visible in BSG- not so much with slash, because there isn't so much slash in the fandom in general. But people who like Apollo tend to cut Starbuck to shreds for any number of reasons, from Mary Sue to being a bitch, to being a whore, to not being nice enough, to punching Apollo in one particular scene . . . It's nasty. Even though the majority of the fandom ships Starbuck/Apollo, there's a distinct thread of how Kara just plain isn't good enough running through everything.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

You did, yeah. It makes a twisted kind of sense - maybe because women lash out at people who have the faults we see in ourselves, or faults we want to root out of ourselves? Then you start turning it into a self-image issue, which might be the root of all this... considering how much of fandom is teen/twenty-something girls, often of the sort who are/were semi-outcasts in highschool.... hmm.

Huh... I actually haven't seen much leveled at Inara, which is odd since that's the one that would seem to follow the rest of the patterns I'm seeing. I've more seen it toward Kaylee, which just blows my mind. She's so cute and innocent! How can people hate her???

I don't know a lot about BSG, but it's interesting to see that people would be so... protective (?) of the male lead. I guess this goes back to the "I want him so no one else is good enough" strain. Kinda weird, but I suppose we've probably all been there to some extent with some character or other who rubs us the wrong way.

[gin2001.livejournal.com]

IMO, it depends on WHICH fandom. Some fandoms are much more favored on the guys, and m/m slash. Others, het dominates and the roles are even, and even others are heavier on female centric storylines, and even femslash. I will agree that the majority of large fandoms usually are male centric.

It depends on the characters in the fandom, the roles they have, the sheer ratio of sex M:F of given characters makes a difference too-- if you only have like 1 or 2 females and 5ish men (like CSI) your options are a lot more limited. And if the female characters don't gel well with other characters, that makes for problems.

I know my personal choices in fandoms/fic/pairings run along the male dominated, but that could just be a reflection of my personal likes.

And no, I can't use all those smart literary analysis words cause I'm not smart about that kind of stuff, but I still know what *I* see.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Psh, literary analysis words don't matter a whole lot in this kind of thing, anyway.

I can definitely see how it would vary, and how in the fandoms you run in it would be a totally different scheme than the ones I'm usually in - we like totally different shows, in general. It's interesting what different dynamics people can end up with, though... Out of curiosity, are the series' you're into now still as heavy on female writers as the others in the past have been? I know my fandoms tend to be dominantly female in terms of writers if not in terms of fans total, so I wonder if that's a trend over all or most groups...

[gin2001.livejournal.com]

Yes. Very much so. Every single fandom I have been in has been dominated by female writers-- het or slash, G or NC-17/FRAO. That's not to say that the men aren't there-- just they aren't vocal or writing often.

Currently worshipping at the feet of the only person in a small fandom who can write. She's just AMAZING. She just got over the 25,000 mark for NaNoWriMo last night. Freaking awesome. Oh and she's writing a fanfic100 piece or 2 a week. Yeah. Godess. I know.

The ratios of the CHARACTERS in the fandoms I currently read the most (not all are large fandoms, I only read particular pairings-- mostly slash-- and you could tell from the character numbers what ones they are if you knew them.)

M:F

20+:0
5:2
4:2
3:1
4:2
4:1


IMO, high ratios of men in the fandoms make it generally more cohesive to slash and male-centric writing. There are just more choices.

Examples from current fandoms of mine:

One female character was recently written out and replaced by another female. Predominance of fic had one particular male character with her. After she leaves, he is most often placed with one of 2 other male characters, depsite replacement by a female character.

One female is not particularly liked by a decently large subset of the fandom-- however, the side that does like her clings to a paricular pairing involving her, with some minor groups pairing her with 2 other male characters. The one that people are the most adamant about, however, is the fandom whore, pretty much. He is often slashed with the other 2 options given for the aformentioned female character.

One fandom literally LACKS women, minus 3 small roles, therfore forcing slash to be the forefront of pairings.

Too tired to go on about it right now. Ask me some more direct questions and I'll be able to anwser them, hopefully so that you understand.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

The only men I know who even write fanfic (in any fandom, as far as I'm aware) are gay men. Which kind of makes me wonder... what is it about writing fanfiction that's a completely female/gay-male occupation? Is it because it seems to focus primarily on romance?

If you don't mind my asking, what's the fandom with 20 men and (next to) no women?

Replacement women always seem to be the least popular characters of all - hell, I hated the one I can think of in one of my old fandoms. Hell, replacement characters of any kind, but the women seem to be more often hated than the men.

[gin2001.livejournal.com]

Sorry—life the last couple days has been… yeah. It’ll slow down a tad after fri afternoon… sorta. Maybe after Monday… and mind you, slow to me is insane to everyone else. I didn’t forget about this though—am sneaking it in at work.. hehehe My boss left, and I still answer the phone…

I would definitely say a partial yes to the focus of the stories on romance as a contributing factor, however I would add a few other things, leaning mostly to biological hard wiring. Since the "typical" male and female brains have been found to have significant differences in stimulus areas and interpretation/integration, I think it would lend itself to a few things. It is said, as a general collection, men are more "visual based", with everything from a higher aptitude in spatial visualization, etc. As such, hypothesis would follow that they are more drawn to visual images and such—magazines, video, etc., while women are more drawn to the analytical/emotional tasks. I remember hearing about a study where women scored significantly higher than men in interpretation of a given emotion on a face (and another where autistics couldn’t at all, but that’s a different issue). Going with the same interpretation pattern, then women would be more drawn to the emotional end of couplings—hence the stories and literary erotica. The question this does raise though, is whether or not brain chemistry in the minority of gay men who do the writing is acting essentially like the average "woman" brain. So, I guess the short answer to that question would be the majority of pieces being relatively emotionally driven.

Except that doesn’t begin to cover any of the social influences—that was just an assessment of those abilities and their electrical activity patterns. The biology behind it.

The fandom is Oz. If you counted over the 6 seasons all the short and long term characters, and characters that people don’t choose to write about, you could probably boost that number to about 60-70: 5. But generally there aren’t all that many that are written about, even in the "rarer" pairings—between 10-20. And I’ve seen maybe 8 or 10 fics in the whole fandom that have one of 2 of the 5 women in them. I guess that’s what you get when the show is set in a maximum security prison.

The replacement girl hasn’t really gotten a chance to prove herself, and took offence at the boss’ assignment for her last ep even though it was the most beneficial for everyone involved. She’s been in all of… 4 eps so far, so they haven’t had time to do anything with her character. It remains to be seen whether or not she will be accepted. It was funny, however, that the guy they always put with the replaced girl either is still with him (and they made it AU) or they put him with one of 2 men. (One of which, I was adamant he was with in the first place, not her. lol)

[miss-arel.livejournal.com]

For the first year and a half that it aired, my family would watch "The Apprentice" -- that Donald Trump reality TV show where contestants would compete in a corporate/business setting. Each week there would be a challenge, and whichever team lost (men's or women's) would have to explain what went wrong, and at the end of the episode one of the team members would be 'fired'. As we watched, my parents and I started noticing a disturbing trend. When the women's team lost, often one of the women would be singled out for having been too agressive, too 'bitchy', for not playing ball and for being too forward. Yet if it was a man, these same qualities would be commended, and mroe often the man who would be sent packing when the men's team lost was one who didn't show enough initiative, who was considered too soft and accomodating. And it seems to me that, to a certain extent, the same double standard applies to fandom.

I have occasionally been given to strong dislike of a female character, and when that happens I try to examine my reasons for doing so. Generally it's either because I think that the character is a 'Sue', is too perfect to be realistic or interesting (i.e. Tessa in Full Metal Panic) or is just too unpleasant for me to sympathize with (Shannon from LOST). And I do sometimes wonder if I'd dislike them just as much if they were male. I like to think that I would, but I can't be sure.

I think zinjadu is right that female characters tend to be vilified because of fan's perceptions of pairings. Either character A is 'not good enough' for character B, or needs to be got rid of so B can be with character C. But I don't think this bias necessarily applies to only female characters: The really militant Harry/Hermione shippers seem to hate Ron (for being with Hermione) just as much as they hate Ginny (for being with Harry). I think any time people start to get really militant about a 'ship, when they consider it their OTP in the serious sense, they start to vilify any character, male or female, who gets in the way. And perhaps since this 'twoo wuv' sort of shipping seems to be expecially prevalant among slash fans (who are, for the most part, female), it's the female characters (who would canonically be paired with the characters the fans 'ship) who bear the brunt of the fans' vitriol. Did that make any sense?

And I think there's another kind of sexism in fandom too: I've noticed a few men (mostly cos they show up on fandom_wank) who seem to think that because male fans aren't given special privilege by female fans, they're bieng 'discriminated against'. In one now-famous wank, one lord_gribeau proclaims that if women want to discuss men, they should "invite them to the table". Because it's not good enough for a man to simply join in the discussion. No, he has to be invited. And what makes this reasoning especially shitty is that in most female-dominated fandoms, men are given special privileges anyway. It's like, having a penis lets you get away with so much more than if you're a girl. I don't have any examples on hand to back me up, unfortunately, but this is what I've noticed.

Wow, that was long-winded. And probably very nonsensical. Blah.

[miss-arel.livejournal.com]

Also, I don't know if you've seen this, but it's a very interesting, well-thought-out essay on the idea of male privilege and gender bias, not just in fandom,, but in Western culture at large. Very interesting stuff.

*uses her other 'women-who-can-kick-your-ass' icon*

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yeeeaah, that article... was special. I'd heard a tiny bit about the guy who got all ranty about men needing to be invited to the table in fandom, but more than that I've heard the same argument from men about academia and, of all things, just plain reading.

Normally I try very hard to be a male-positive feminist (in fact, I'd prefer a term that gets across that all I'm looking for is equality, where a lot of men seem to read "feminist" as "she wants women to subjugate men"), but these attitudes just make me sick. Men don't feel invited to read? Men don't feel that they can hack it in universities because of all the women who are working hard? Men feel threatened in the workforce because women are taking their jobs? Guess what - you have to actually work for things. It sucks that there isn't as much funding or research on prostate cancer as there is for breast cancer, but that's because the people affected by breast cancer get out there and raise money and awareness. As the article pointed out, we don't see men doing that for prostate cancer. You bet I hate that there aren't enough men at universities who are actually working hard and succeeding, but the answer isn't to lower standards (mine or the university's), but rather for men to quit whining and step up to the plate.

...I'm totally going to get flamed for that last bit, and I admit that I'm probably overstating it. But that's the impression I get sometimes.

[sigelphoenix.livejournal.com]

I'd prefer a term that gets across that all I'm looking for is equality, where a lot of men seem to read "feminist" as "she wants women to subjugate men"

Okay, I can't hold it in -- I'm going to sermonize for a bit. :P

"Feminism" is a term that has definitely been hijacked by the opposition and stomped into the mud in order to scare off its members. (I mean, all the "feminazi" or "man-hater" or "crazy lesbian" stuff all comes from anti-feminists, and there is very very little basis in reality for those labels.) Unfortunately, this twisting of language has seeped into mainstream culture, so your general layperson will hear the term and run screaming. I do feel the same discomfort that you do, that people will misinterpret my use of "feminist" and back away from me slowly.

But ... I really think this term is something that can be reclaimed. Sort of the way "queer" has been, you know? And so I use the label "feminist" for myself, and I try not to make a bunch of disclaimers around it ("I'm a feminist, but that doesn't mean I ______!") And so I'm going to try to, I don't know, recruit you or whatever, to use it too, because what we need the most is for people who are feminist to *use* the term, so it starts becoming ours again rather than the opposition's. It is easier, and in some ways more logical, to try to find a new term ... but there are so many parts of "feminist" or "feminism" that are still good, I really want to keep it.

Sermonizing off. Thanks for listening. :D

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

I think a part of it has to do with the scarceness of good female rolemodels or female characters that a girl can identify with. Because the stick-thin, DD-breasted flawless and confident female character is meant as an object for man rather than subject for woman, perceiving this may lead to a kind of rejection of the character. The male-lead is often an idealized man while the female-lead is idealized from the male perspective, making for dissonance of identity for the (especially teenaged) female fan.

"Is this who I'm meant to be like to get the guy? But I could never be like that, it's an impossible ideal. Hey, maybe if the guy wasn't really into that either, I could have a shot..."

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot of sense, especially for TV/comic books/movies, as the traditionally male genres. So, by extension, maybe we should be happy that young women are refusing these role models, even if it seems that they're refusing women as models at all, because what they're actually denying is the male idealization of women. That's a really interesting way of looking at it.

[barn-swallow.livejournal.com]

Ok, I am going to come back sometime when my brain is working better and read this all. But meanwhile I am friending you, if you don't mind (I liked your comments on the "Race in Firefly" post they linked on the cortex... uhhh on chickpea's LJ).

The more I hear about sociology the more I want to learn =P Even if it does turn your brain in circles.

- Kate

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Welcome (and I love your icon) - I'll look forward to seeing you around!

Sociology, anthropology and psychology... they turn your brain inside out, but boy is it a fun process!

[sigelphoenix.livejournal.com]

Also, if you want more (more than you can read in a single night!) discussions on female characters in fandom, check the recent posts on metafandom. I haven't even begun looking through it all!