This is not the wank you're looking for.

[annerbhp]

I want to say something about the F word. You know the one I mean: Feminism.  Oh, has there ever been a term more misused and misunderstood than Feminism?  How often do you hear things like “Feminism is where men suck and women refuse to shave their legs, right?” and most recently “Feminism means being loud and bitchy and eviscerating people for

Comments

[annerbhp]

Hi! Welcome.

Yes, it seems the more fandom changes, the more it stays exactly the same. Personally, the reason I dabble in fanfic is usually to fill in something I'm not getting to see on screen for whatever reason, or to fix something. If I see a woman character that I don't think is being written well, then my reaction is to try to write her well. (There is actually a woman in Stargate fandom (dsudis) who did a detailed Bechdel test of each season of Stargate and has started writing missing scenes for each episode to 'fix' the lack of women and characters of color interacting. That sort of proactive critique has always appealed to me.)

Of course, the counter-argument there is that we shouldn't have to 'fix' our shows (though if we aren't going to, who is?). I would have to argue that there are many layered, well-written female characters, but people who aren't interested must somehow still read them as poorly written, or boring, and that point of disconnect is what makes me very uncomfortable, because there must be something about these characters that makes it hard for some women to connect with. Obviously something more is going on here. It's very interesting, and scary. Definitely something that needs to be investigated and debated.

[ladydreamer]

I don't know much about Stargate, but sometimes I have to take a step back at my anger at the assumptions that the writers of the show make before taking on writing the character well. One of the things that has kept my fandom thriving is the need to 'fix' everything, and I've noticed, even if I flat out make a hated female character a villain, I can usually elicit more sympathy for her than people give on the show itself. And maybe that's something to take into consideration because I write a lot of slash/femslash and have often felt that if they're not going to show me gay narratives in the mainstream, we'll just take than on for them.

[annerbhp]

I think in general fanfic gives us a lot more room to explore things that are ignored in shows for reasons of actor availability, budgets, ratings, mainstream appeal (ie. socially 'acceptable' bigotry) etc. We have endless pages to delve into the nuances (yay!) But we can only blame TPTB so much. I think the issue of gay characters on tv, etc, is in an interesting period right now as well, because mostly we are just happy to get any gay characters at all, so that issues of "well, are these all terrible stereotypes? Why is the gay guy always the side kick?" questions are still burgeoning. But, yeah, desperately need to be asked. And ideally, the tools of Feminism should allow us to critique any representation of identity.