30 Blog Posts In 30 Days - Day #2
Okay, so in my commitment to 30 blog posts that, you know, say something, today's topic is the 'Strong Female Character' in fiction and why we should hate her (thanks to x_los for the link).
This article goes on and on and on, and quite frankly, I lost interest about halfway through because I felt that the whole thing was predicated on some pretty dodgy assumptions (primarily that SFCs are presumed by the article's author to only include physical moxy, and secondly, that while she makes a convincing case for the powerfulness of 'weak' male characters, they are literary characters, whereas her female examples for comparison are almost exclusively action movie characters - which is like, PURPOSEFULLY PROVOCATIVE & RIDICULOUS).
As far as female characters go, I have ZERO feminist conflicts with them engaging in violence or even an unconsidered, aggressive physicality that is so easily accepted in male characters. Where is it decreed that women are so much more noble or evolved or enlightened than men? This is a non-starter of an argument. Perhaps indiscriminate violence is not a great example to set, but if we truly want to be seen as the equivalent of men, we need to take the unsightly lumps as well as them. One of the main sticking points for me and feminism, both in it's halcyon days and today, is the pervasive belief that women are fundamentally different from men. Different, but equal *eyeroll*. No, we aren't. We're made from the same goop, we evolve in the same cultural and societal stew as men, we kill and fuck and abuse and love and nurture just like men do, though perhaps not in the same proportions.
I also don't have a problem with 'strong female characters' being placed in a box where they can't be anything else. WHAT?!, you say? I don't have a problem with it because I do not see that as the case in a majority of examples. It's pretty reductive on the part of the article author to say that men are permitted to be a whole host of things, but women are only permitted to be strong at the cost of other character identifiers.
Bullshit. Jane Eyre is strong and I don't recall her hauling off and socking Rochester in the jaw at any point in that novel. Take a random shot at ANY Jane Austen heroine and you'll come up with a similar answer. What about Lady Macbeth or Viola from Twelfth Night? What about Morgana from Arthurian legend, or Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones (yes, strong, villainous women are still STRONG)? What about Penelope (The Odyssey), Persephone (Hades), or Dido (The Aeneid)? Part of their role in literature is to motivate and define male characters, but there's no denying their inherent strength as individuals and NONE of them bodyslammed anyone. Since their 'strength' is not derived from physical prowess, how do you define it? If you asked 100 people what their first impression of any of these women was, you'd get many, many different answers. To me, that indicates that character strength is as varied as an individual's perception of that character. Even a modern, physical example, such as Mallory Kane in Haywire or Angelina Jolie's character in Salt, wouldn't be pigeon-holed by the 'strong' identifier, unless that's all you chose to see. The assertion that being identified as 'strong' limits a female character from achieving anything else, is self-imposed, obtuse, tinfoil-hatting from folks who claim to be tearing the delusional veil of sexism from our eyes. Just because a majority of readers don't know what reductio ad absurdum means, doesn't permit you to use it to promote your own agenda. This is sort of why I hate gender studies - we could spend the rest of our lives defining appropriate terms, finding examples and counterexamples, and arguing over the diameter of a pinhead, but it really all shakes out to high level navel-gazing and not much real progress between the sexes.
If we really want to achieve equality (and I'm no longer referring solely to fictional representation), then truly drop the pretense of it. No more affirmative action, no more gushing articles about how many fortune 500 companies have innovated by hiring women as CEOs compared to 30 years ago, no more gender identification on any kind of application anywhere, no more whining about how Natasha Romonov is just neckbeard sex bait in The Avengers movie franchise because she isn't in the center of the film poster and is forced to wear skintight leather... True equality is an ugly, difficult place, and I theorize that most women don't really want to go there. Many of us still think that we're from Venus, that we shouldn't be expected to be called upon to help move heavy stuff, and that our poorly-designed reproductive cycles entitle us to be clinically nuts once a month. For the record, I enjoy some of my women-centric cliches and wouldn't give them up in favor of men first identifying me by my name and not my gender. Sad but true. Does this make me a bad feminist? I don't think so - I think that it makes me a realist in a species that for 50,000 years, give or take, males have assumed the primary role due to their physicality. It isn't going to re-write itself in a generation or two... this shit takes time. Part of re-writing gender expectations WILL involve rather inconsistent and sometimes failed efforts at focusing the aperture. Criticism has it's place - it opens our eyes to these hiccups - but when you carry it too far, you just end up being a whiny, professional pessimist who contributes nothing but negativity to the forward momentum.
Well... that's just one girl's opinion...
This article goes on and on and on, and quite frankly, I lost interest about halfway through because I felt that the whole thing was predicated on some pretty dodgy assumptions (primarily that SFCs are presumed by the article's author to only include physical moxy, and secondly, that while she makes a convincing case for the powerfulness of 'weak' male characters, they are literary characters, whereas her female examples for comparison are almost exclusively action movie characters - which is like, PURPOSEFULLY PROVOCATIVE & RIDICULOUS).
As far as female characters go, I have ZERO feminist conflicts with them engaging in violence or even an unconsidered, aggressive physicality that is so easily accepted in male characters. Where is it decreed that women are so much more noble or evolved or enlightened than men? This is a non-starter of an argument. Perhaps indiscriminate violence is not a great example to set, but if we truly want to be seen as the equivalent of men, we need to take the unsightly lumps as well as them. One of the main sticking points for me and feminism, both in it's halcyon days and today, is the pervasive belief that women are fundamentally different from men. Different, but equal *eyeroll*. No, we aren't. We're made from the same goop, we evolve in the same cultural and societal stew as men, we kill and fuck and abuse and love and nurture just like men do, though perhaps not in the same proportions.
I also don't have a problem with 'strong female characters' being placed in a box where they can't be anything else. WHAT?!, you say? I don't have a problem with it because I do not see that as the case in a majority of examples. It's pretty reductive on the part of the article author to say that men are permitted to be a whole host of things, but women are only permitted to be strong at the cost of other character identifiers.
Bullshit. Jane Eyre is strong and I don't recall her hauling off and socking Rochester in the jaw at any point in that novel. Take a random shot at ANY Jane Austen heroine and you'll come up with a similar answer. What about Lady Macbeth or Viola from Twelfth Night? What about Morgana from Arthurian legend, or Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones (yes, strong, villainous women are still STRONG)? What about Penelope (The Odyssey), Persephone (Hades), or Dido (The Aeneid)? Part of their role in literature is to motivate and define male characters, but there's no denying their inherent strength as individuals and NONE of them bodyslammed anyone. Since their 'strength' is not derived from physical prowess, how do you define it? If you asked 100 people what their first impression of any of these women was, you'd get many, many different answers. To me, that indicates that character strength is as varied as an individual's perception of that character. Even a modern, physical example, such as Mallory Kane in Haywire or Angelina Jolie's character in Salt, wouldn't be pigeon-holed by the 'strong' identifier, unless that's all you chose to see. The assertion that being identified as 'strong' limits a female character from achieving anything else, is self-imposed, obtuse, tinfoil-hatting from folks who claim to be tearing the delusional veil of sexism from our eyes. Just because a majority of readers don't know what reductio ad absurdum means, doesn't permit you to use it to promote your own agenda. This is sort of why I hate gender studies - we could spend the rest of our lives defining appropriate terms, finding examples and counterexamples, and arguing over the diameter of a pinhead, but it really all shakes out to high level navel-gazing and not much real progress between the sexes.
If we really want to achieve equality (and I'm no longer referring solely to fictional representation), then truly drop the pretense of it. No more affirmative action, no more gushing articles about how many fortune 500 companies have innovated by hiring women as CEOs compared to 30 years ago, no more gender identification on any kind of application anywhere, no more whining about how Natasha Romonov is just neckbeard sex bait in The Avengers movie franchise because she isn't in the center of the film poster and is forced to wear skintight leather... True equality is an ugly, difficult place, and I theorize that most women don't really want to go there. Many of us still think that we're from Venus, that we shouldn't be expected to be called upon to help move heavy stuff, and that our poorly-designed reproductive cycles entitle us to be clinically nuts once a month. For the record, I enjoy some of my women-centric cliches and wouldn't give them up in favor of men first identifying me by my name and not my gender. Sad but true. Does this make me a bad feminist? I don't think so - I think that it makes me a realist in a species that for 50,000 years, give or take, males have assumed the primary role due to their physicality. It isn't going to re-write itself in a generation or two... this shit takes time. Part of re-writing gender expectations WILL involve rather inconsistent and sometimes failed efforts at focusing the aperture. Criticism has it's place - it opens our eyes to these hiccups - but when you carry it too far, you just end up being a whiny, professional pessimist who contributes nothing but negativity to the forward momentum.
Well... that's just one girl's opinion...