Stoic Women
I've been laying down for about 4 hours, had maybe about an hours worth of sleep and am not going to sleep soon so I'm rambling since I have some stuff on my mind. Stream of consciousness about personal favorite characters, women characters in media, character archetypes, and alienation for my preferences.
So I filled this thing out yesterday.
Fun exercise, good time. (even though I feel like I'm missing some important ones from some obscure media but eh, close enough.)
Though in sharing it with other people and seeing their preferences it always makes me starkly aware of how much of a disconnect I have from others. You see, I notice that unless the other person creating the chart is a lesbian woman, most everyone fills the chart with 95% men and it throws into stark contrast why I feel so alone. This is not to begrudge anyone's preferences, that's not what this is about, it's about constantly feeling like the odd one out and hoping for some place to find more people I have resonance with.
Got me thinking a lot about the type of characters I resonate with, the type of women I like to see and some of my sadness of how some of those women get perceived by others. I've heard people refer to Major Mokoto Kusanagi as 'boring' despite the subtle emotional depth she carries if you pay attention. I saw statements on tumblr referring to AppleJack as selfish after the episode where she closed off her friends out of a sense of duty, obligation, and the shame of failure at fulfilling those tasks. Watching fanon take a woman soldier and making her a cardboard cutout while pouring endless amounts of emotional depth into characters with only barely as much lore as her. Women soldiers and guardian archetypes are few and far between, and when they exist they're either written poorly, barely a participant in the story, or when they are written well, often wildly misinterpreted by the fanbase in a way that makes me feel alienated by society as a whole.
The type of 'emotionally closed off character who thinks they don't need friends and/or is closed off because they're convinced they'll hurt the people close to them' narrative I'm looking for, shows up in men all the time. And I know why that is, men are often pigeon holed by society to be those stalwart protectors and in general are less encouraged to make bonds or display emotional vulnerability so of course these stories would exist to express that anguish. And it's a role that I'd like to see more with women because that's something I relate to. But if I ask for characters like this I'm either provided women that are written poorly or women that don't fit the stalwart guardian archetype at all. It kinda makes me think back to when I asked for music with themes/lyrics about a woman being dangerous and not in a sexy way but like in the way you see men talk about being dangerous and about 3 people even understood my question at all.
There aren't a lot of stories where a woman's emotional journey from being closed to opening up is truly explored in a fashion that doesn't hinge on romance and domestication. Sure there's some 'used to be shy now opened up because friends' narratives, but what I'm looking for is the specific kind of 'I'm emotionally closed off because I have to be this way to protect other people' emotional journey. Raven from the Teen Titans animated series is one of the few examples of emotionally closed-off woman with fear of great power opens up and trusts friends narratives without it being hinged on romance. And in Lower Decks Beckett is more of the opposite where while not stoic, uses bravado as a shield and friendship is a key to helping her confront that and be most honest with herself emotionally. Adora in She-Ra, Princess of Power has a bigger romance hinge but at least it's interwoven with her connection with her other friends so that it doesn't feel like red romance was the only source of her emotional growth.
The other big fumble I see that drives me nuts is when they try to make cool women that don't need no-body, and treat it like raising the bar by just being cool is all you need. Teela in the new He-Man series is a great example of how bad a fumble it is. They tried giving her this arc that seemed to be this commentary to how she was relegated to a 'less important' role than in the main cast, but they just made her angry with no real goal or resolution. And in what could have been a good emotional arc they flubbed it with this weird 'I'm not afraid of anything because I'm afraid of my own power RAR' and it wasn't even in a 'I'm afraid of hurting other people if I become unhinged' kind of way, it was just in a conceded 'I'm so incredible I frighten myself' kind of way. Which would have been fine if that's what they were going for, but the framing made it feel like we're supposed to interpret this as some sort of.. empowering moment, and it's just weird.
I often make a point in games with a cast of characters to have at least one woman I can connect with. It's one part of what I need and one part of a bit of a personal protest. I don't want to just Settle for men to be the only owners of the narrative I seek, I'm allowed to let this matter to me, just as anyone else is allowed to want and seek the narratives that matter to them.
It brushes up against the other more personal issue I have with people trying to place this identity of masculine upon me. There are all these weird microaggressions I've had over the years that have started to stack. People giving me masculine nicknames, titles, and terms that I accepted for a while then put a hard stop to because after a time it was like any woman-related title was being avoided and it felt like I wasn't seen as a woman. Jokes about who the man was in the relationship because I was assertive or aggressive in conversation. Someone's suggestion that I get a binder when I lamented the fact that I had difficulty finding a bra in my band size for small breasts. (and the constant suggestions in second life for flat chest, as in no-breasts, mods when I explicitly lamented not being able to find small breast mods. Small Breasts and No Breasts ARE. NOT. THE. SAME.) When people that have known me for years, that have known my pronouns for years, start referring to me as They for no discernible reason. All these things make me feel like I'm being robbed of something that is deeply important to me. Just because I don't look/present/act/talk the way you think women should doesn't mean you get to strip me of being a woman, stop trying to take that away from me.
'but you could be a nonbinary woman'
No
Shut
Up
My not aligning with what the society I'm living in says makes a woman, is not my problem. The fact that other people don't get it and feel this need to corral me into another box they think I belong in just to wrap their head around me is their problem, not mine. I am not adopting a term just to make other people more comfortable or accept me as I am. I am just a woman, I'm allowed to have this title, I'm allowed to own this as it is, I'm allowed to have this matter to me. I'd rather be misunderstood than be something I'm not.
So I look to women characters that share the things that resonate with me. Both because they fill me with joy and maybe that I'm not that much of an anomaly, that there's gotta be other people that feel like I do that understand and appreciate this kind of presentation of woman.
This entry was originally posted at https://armaina.dreamwidth.org/777235.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
So I filled this thing out yesterday.
Fun exercise, good time. (even though I feel like I'm missing some important ones from some obscure media but eh, close enough.)
Though in sharing it with other people and seeing their preferences it always makes me starkly aware of how much of a disconnect I have from others. You see, I notice that unless the other person creating the chart is a lesbian woman, most everyone fills the chart with 95% men and it throws into stark contrast why I feel so alone. This is not to begrudge anyone's preferences, that's not what this is about, it's about constantly feeling like the odd one out and hoping for some place to find more people I have resonance with.
Got me thinking a lot about the type of characters I resonate with, the type of women I like to see and some of my sadness of how some of those women get perceived by others. I've heard people refer to Major Mokoto Kusanagi as 'boring' despite the subtle emotional depth she carries if you pay attention. I saw statements on tumblr referring to AppleJack as selfish after the episode where she closed off her friends out of a sense of duty, obligation, and the shame of failure at fulfilling those tasks. Watching fanon take a woman soldier and making her a cardboard cutout while pouring endless amounts of emotional depth into characters with only barely as much lore as her. Women soldiers and guardian archetypes are few and far between, and when they exist they're either written poorly, barely a participant in the story, or when they are written well, often wildly misinterpreted by the fanbase in a way that makes me feel alienated by society as a whole.
The type of 'emotionally closed off character who thinks they don't need friends and/or is closed off because they're convinced they'll hurt the people close to them' narrative I'm looking for, shows up in men all the time. And I know why that is, men are often pigeon holed by society to be those stalwart protectors and in general are less encouraged to make bonds or display emotional vulnerability so of course these stories would exist to express that anguish. And it's a role that I'd like to see more with women because that's something I relate to. But if I ask for characters like this I'm either provided women that are written poorly or women that don't fit the stalwart guardian archetype at all. It kinda makes me think back to when I asked for music with themes/lyrics about a woman being dangerous and not in a sexy way but like in the way you see men talk about being dangerous and about 3 people even understood my question at all.
There aren't a lot of stories where a woman's emotional journey from being closed to opening up is truly explored in a fashion that doesn't hinge on romance and domestication. Sure there's some 'used to be shy now opened up because friends' narratives, but what I'm looking for is the specific kind of 'I'm emotionally closed off because I have to be this way to protect other people' emotional journey. Raven from the Teen Titans animated series is one of the few examples of emotionally closed-off woman with fear of great power opens up and trusts friends narratives without it being hinged on romance. And in Lower Decks Beckett is more of the opposite where while not stoic, uses bravado as a shield and friendship is a key to helping her confront that and be most honest with herself emotionally. Adora in She-Ra, Princess of Power has a bigger romance hinge but at least it's interwoven with her connection with her other friends so that it doesn't feel like red romance was the only source of her emotional growth.
The other big fumble I see that drives me nuts is when they try to make cool women that don't need no-body, and treat it like raising the bar by just being cool is all you need. Teela in the new He-Man series is a great example of how bad a fumble it is. They tried giving her this arc that seemed to be this commentary to how she was relegated to a 'less important' role than in the main cast, but they just made her angry with no real goal or resolution. And in what could have been a good emotional arc they flubbed it with this weird 'I'm not afraid of anything because I'm afraid of my own power RAR' and it wasn't even in a 'I'm afraid of hurting other people if I become unhinged' kind of way, it was just in a conceded 'I'm so incredible I frighten myself' kind of way. Which would have been fine if that's what they were going for, but the framing made it feel like we're supposed to interpret this as some sort of.. empowering moment, and it's just weird.
I often make a point in games with a cast of characters to have at least one woman I can connect with. It's one part of what I need and one part of a bit of a personal protest. I don't want to just Settle for men to be the only owners of the narrative I seek, I'm allowed to let this matter to me, just as anyone else is allowed to want and seek the narratives that matter to them.
It brushes up against the other more personal issue I have with people trying to place this identity of masculine upon me. There are all these weird microaggressions I've had over the years that have started to stack. People giving me masculine nicknames, titles, and terms that I accepted for a while then put a hard stop to because after a time it was like any woman-related title was being avoided and it felt like I wasn't seen as a woman. Jokes about who the man was in the relationship because I was assertive or aggressive in conversation. Someone's suggestion that I get a binder when I lamented the fact that I had difficulty finding a bra in my band size for small breasts. (and the constant suggestions in second life for flat chest, as in no-breasts, mods when I explicitly lamented not being able to find small breast mods. Small Breasts and No Breasts ARE. NOT. THE. SAME.) When people that have known me for years, that have known my pronouns for years, start referring to me as They for no discernible reason. All these things make me feel like I'm being robbed of something that is deeply important to me. Just because I don't look/present/act/talk the way you think women should doesn't mean you get to strip me of being a woman, stop trying to take that away from me.
'but you could be a nonbinary woman'
No
Shut
Up
My not aligning with what the society I'm living in says makes a woman, is not my problem. The fact that other people don't get it and feel this need to corral me into another box they think I belong in just to wrap their head around me is their problem, not mine. I am not adopting a term just to make other people more comfortable or accept me as I am. I am just a woman, I'm allowed to have this title, I'm allowed to own this as it is, I'm allowed to have this matter to me. I'd rather be misunderstood than be something I'm not.
So I look to women characters that share the things that resonate with me. Both because they fill me with joy and maybe that I'm not that much of an anomaly, that there's gotta be other people that feel like I do that understand and appreciate this kind of presentation of woman.
This entry was originally posted at https://armaina.dreamwidth.org/777235.html. Please comment there using OpenID.