(no subject)
Okay, so.
I have deleted my last post. Entirely. It turned into a snafu far too quickly for me to deal with and rather than let it continue and leave a bad taste in people's mouths, I wanted to get rid of it.
This journal is supposed to be a space for happiness, joy, fangirling, safety, and discussion. Thread-jumping is okay, but only if the jumper is ready to get involved in a polite, civil, respectful discussion. Attacking other posters for their choice of vocabulary is NOT okay. Condescension is NOT okay. Disrespect and trolling of any kind are NOT okay here. (And these rules apply to ALL of my posts, not just the more serious ones.)
So this post is going to be about feminism and women in fiction. Yes, I'm going to talk about that flowchart again. In fact, I'm going to start there.
Since last night I realized that my issues with the flowchart are less the flowchart itself (and I maintain that it makes a good point in that these tropes frequently crop up in fiction, because they do. There's no denying that) and more the execution of its idea.
My issue with the flowchart is its use of specific women to highlight its points, thus reducing some of these characters down to a stereotype - which is not only demeaning, but entirely hypocritical of a blog that has, on other occasions, discussed the need for better female characters. I dare you to tell me that Sarah Connor is nothing but a Mama Bear. I dare you to tell me that there is not more to Sailor Moon than "ditzy klutz". I dare you to tell me that Ripley fails to be anything other than the Final Girl despite four movies worth the canon that provide a trove of evidence on the contrary. I also dare you to tell me that any of those women should be considered the "quintessential" representative of that trope.
Are these characters these things? Yes. Oh yes, yes, yes. But is that all they are? No. And I take offense to the implication that they are - and whether or not this flowchart was meant as tongue-in-cheek or not, that is what I took away from it. Had the images merely been left off of that flowchart I'd have agreed with it, however reluctantly - it still pains me to admit that women are not treated with the same respect and dignity that men take for granted both in real life and in fiction.
Women are - and I said this in the last post, but it bears repeating - every bit as varied as men. Some of their interests or personality types are going to fall into what some consider 'stereotypical female character' territory. Some are going to defy categorization. Some are going to fit some stereotypes but not others.
Again: THIS IS OKAY. It does not make them "bad women" or "bad representations of women". IT MAKES THEM WOMEN. I am interesting because I am the sum of all of my parts - my geekery, my kindness, my passion, my compassion, my ability to knuckle down and ride out any storm that blows my way, whatever. To attempt to reduce all that I am - hell, all that ANYONE is - to a mere stereotype is an injustice.
And yet this happens to women in fiction. A lot more than it should. Even when it doesn't, women are rarely portrayed in fiction in such a way that it DOESN'T feel as though they are set up to fail; that the choices they make, no matter what those choices are, were wrong, wrong, wrong. A woman cannot want a job because family should be her first priority. But having a girl that stays home with her children sets feminism back decades! A woman that expresses no interest in sex is a prude, but a woman who has sex with any regularity (even in serial monogamous relationships) is a slut. There is no middle ground in the way many women are portrayed in fiction.
This is not okay. It needs to change.
I have deleted my last post. Entirely. It turned into a snafu far too quickly for me to deal with and rather than let it continue and leave a bad taste in people's mouths, I wanted to get rid of it.
This journal is supposed to be a space for happiness, joy, fangirling, safety, and discussion. Thread-jumping is okay, but only if the jumper is ready to get involved in a polite, civil, respectful discussion. Attacking other posters for their choice of vocabulary is NOT okay. Condescension is NOT okay. Disrespect and trolling of any kind are NOT okay here. (And these rules apply to ALL of my posts, not just the more serious ones.)
So this post is going to be about feminism and women in fiction. Yes, I'm going to talk about that flowchart again. In fact, I'm going to start there.
Since last night I realized that my issues with the flowchart are less the flowchart itself (and I maintain that it makes a good point in that these tropes frequently crop up in fiction, because they do. There's no denying that) and more the execution of its idea.
My issue with the flowchart is its use of specific women to highlight its points, thus reducing some of these characters down to a stereotype - which is not only demeaning, but entirely hypocritical of a blog that has, on other occasions, discussed the need for better female characters. I dare you to tell me that Sarah Connor is nothing but a Mama Bear. I dare you to tell me that there is not more to Sailor Moon than "ditzy klutz". I dare you to tell me that Ripley fails to be anything other than the Final Girl despite four movies worth the canon that provide a trove of evidence on the contrary. I also dare you to tell me that any of those women should be considered the "quintessential" representative of that trope.
Are these characters these things? Yes. Oh yes, yes, yes. But is that all they are? No. And I take offense to the implication that they are - and whether or not this flowchart was meant as tongue-in-cheek or not, that is what I took away from it. Had the images merely been left off of that flowchart I'd have agreed with it, however reluctantly - it still pains me to admit that women are not treated with the same respect and dignity that men take for granted both in real life and in fiction.
Women are - and I said this in the last post, but it bears repeating - every bit as varied as men. Some of their interests or personality types are going to fall into what some consider 'stereotypical female character' territory. Some are going to defy categorization. Some are going to fit some stereotypes but not others.
Again: THIS IS OKAY. It does not make them "bad women" or "bad representations of women". IT MAKES THEM WOMEN. I am interesting because I am the sum of all of my parts - my geekery, my kindness, my passion, my compassion, my ability to knuckle down and ride out any storm that blows my way, whatever. To attempt to reduce all that I am - hell, all that ANYONE is - to a mere stereotype is an injustice.
And yet this happens to women in fiction. A lot more than it should. Even when it doesn't, women are rarely portrayed in fiction in such a way that it DOESN'T feel as though they are set up to fail; that the choices they make, no matter what those choices are, were wrong, wrong, wrong. A woman cannot want a job because family should be her first priority. But having a girl that stays home with her children sets feminism back decades! A woman that expresses no interest in sex is a prude, but a woman who has sex with any regularity (even in serial monogamous relationships) is a slut. There is no middle ground in the way many women are portrayed in fiction.
This is not okay. It needs to change.