Oh, crap, here we go again!
There’s another round of “female fictional characters and how RL women should feel about them” on the internet, and I feel the need to point out something that I haven’t seen much (or any) mention of: Criticizing how a male author writes a female character is NOT the same as criticizing a real life woman.
As usually happens whenever this debate makes the rounds, I find myself partially agreeing with both sides. It’s true that part of the problem is that source texts with multiple interesting, well-written male characters are currently more numerous and more often heavily marketed/promoted-and therefore easier to find-than source texts with multiple interesting, well-written female characters. It’s also true that many fans tend to judge female characters by a higher standard than they judge male characters. The argument among fans often ends up focusing on a false dichotomy-either the problem is sexism at the professional level OR the problem is sexism at the fan/transformative/amateur level. But there is sexism at all levels.
There really are a lot of well-written female characters that get dismissed or hated by the same people who celebrate male characters who have similar traits and behaviors and/or who are less skillfully written. It’s a good thing that other people in fandom are willing to speak out about the double standards they notice. On the other hand, there are also a lot of unpleasant misogynist caricatures and even more bland, barely-characterized, woman-shaped placeholders in canons that have enough other things done right to garner large fandoms. And I don’t like the trend of accusing women of being insufficiently feminist for being unable or unwilling to embrace or identify with such caricatures and placeholders. It gets under my skin when the character (term used loosely) we’re supposed to embrace in the name of feminism is written by a man or by an all-male team of writers, as female characters which are that severely problematic usually are. Yes, plenty of women writers have gobs of internalized misogyny, but in my observation, the very worst offenders, the ones who churn out characters who make me think Wow, this character is nothing but a collection of sexist stereotypes, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever! tend to be men. To make matters worse, I sometimes see fans arguing that women should fanwank a logical explanation for a poorly written female character’s seemingly irrational behavior and write fic which reframes every scene or plot point she was involved in to make her look better. But if even the writer admits he doesn’t know what the hell she could have been thinking and he was just writing her to reflect his beliefs about the inexplicable stuff women do or to create the maximum amount of drama for the more important characters whose motivations and personalities he has considered carefully, why bother? That writer got lazy with the work he presumably gets paid for. Why should women feel obligated to do his job for him, for free and in their downtime?
So I find it doubly problematic when self-styled feminists and feminist allies in fandom argue that women who prefer not to spend time creating or consuming fanworks about men’s fictional portrayals of women have this preference because of their own internalized misogyny. What we have here are fans of sexist texts written by men essentially saying to real life women, “Hey, you RL women, you should start liking and supporting this man’s ideas about what women are like or should be like, and you need to start celebrating his depictions of women or, if you can’t bring yourself to do that, putting some serious effort into writing fix-it fic to correct his mistakes in depicting women. You must do this in the name of feminism. If you’d rather focus on the aspects of the text that you already like and gloss over the ones you find troubling and hurtful, well, tough luck. You real women need to be respectful of fictional representations of women made up by men, or else you prove that you have something against women. It’s your problem as much as or more than it is his.”
This entry was originally posted at http://gryphonsegg.dreamwidth.org/53276.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
As usually happens whenever this debate makes the rounds, I find myself partially agreeing with both sides. It’s true that part of the problem is that source texts with multiple interesting, well-written male characters are currently more numerous and more often heavily marketed/promoted-and therefore easier to find-than source texts with multiple interesting, well-written female characters. It’s also true that many fans tend to judge female characters by a higher standard than they judge male characters. The argument among fans often ends up focusing on a false dichotomy-either the problem is sexism at the professional level OR the problem is sexism at the fan/transformative/amateur level. But there is sexism at all levels.
There really are a lot of well-written female characters that get dismissed or hated by the same people who celebrate male characters who have similar traits and behaviors and/or who are less skillfully written. It’s a good thing that other people in fandom are willing to speak out about the double standards they notice. On the other hand, there are also a lot of unpleasant misogynist caricatures and even more bland, barely-characterized, woman-shaped placeholders in canons that have enough other things done right to garner large fandoms. And I don’t like the trend of accusing women of being insufficiently feminist for being unable or unwilling to embrace or identify with such caricatures and placeholders. It gets under my skin when the character (term used loosely) we’re supposed to embrace in the name of feminism is written by a man or by an all-male team of writers, as female characters which are that severely problematic usually are. Yes, plenty of women writers have gobs of internalized misogyny, but in my observation, the very worst offenders, the ones who churn out characters who make me think Wow, this character is nothing but a collection of sexist stereotypes, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever! tend to be men. To make matters worse, I sometimes see fans arguing that women should fanwank a logical explanation for a poorly written female character’s seemingly irrational behavior and write fic which reframes every scene or plot point she was involved in to make her look better. But if even the writer admits he doesn’t know what the hell she could have been thinking and he was just writing her to reflect his beliefs about the inexplicable stuff women do or to create the maximum amount of drama for the more important characters whose motivations and personalities he has considered carefully, why bother? That writer got lazy with the work he presumably gets paid for. Why should women feel obligated to do his job for him, for free and in their downtime?
So I find it doubly problematic when self-styled feminists and feminist allies in fandom argue that women who prefer not to spend time creating or consuming fanworks about men’s fictional portrayals of women have this preference because of their own internalized misogyny. What we have here are fans of sexist texts written by men essentially saying to real life women, “Hey, you RL women, you should start liking and supporting this man’s ideas about what women are like or should be like, and you need to start celebrating his depictions of women or, if you can’t bring yourself to do that, putting some serious effort into writing fix-it fic to correct his mistakes in depicting women. You must do this in the name of feminism. If you’d rather focus on the aspects of the text that you already like and gloss over the ones you find troubling and hurtful, well, tough luck. You real women need to be respectful of fictional representations of women made up by men, or else you prove that you have something against women. It’s your problem as much as or more than it is his.”
This entry was originally posted at http://gryphonsegg.dreamwidth.org/53276.html. Please comment there using OpenID.