Genderswap Pride and Prejudice

[lettered]

So, I really want to do a Pride and Prejudice fic wherein all the Bennet girls are boys, everyone else is the gender they are in the book, and both Mr. Darcy and Mr. Lizzy (

Comments

[essie007]

Oh no, you did not offend me. I think you make very good points which I pretty much agree with entirely.

I don't think passing the Bechdel test is necessary for something to be a feminist work or even a good work in general. And I do think a lot of times women aren't in the story because that's not what the story's about.

But the thing is I like women. I like to read about women, and one of the main things I love so much about P&P (and much of Jane Austen in general) is that it's about women. It has female characters I can relate to and admire. It's about the relationships between women, between sister and sister, mother and daughter, female friend and female friend. I do enjoy my slash as much as the next girl, and I love the idea of genderswap as a means of examining societal views on gender and homophobia. My gut reaction though when you take all those female characters and make them male is "Ah! Too many dicks on the dance floor."

It's a feeling I sometimes get after having read a lot of slash fanfiction (which is why I brought up fandom in general) and it's the reason I had so much trouble getting through the LOtR books. I kept wondering "but where are all the girls?"

I think I would actually be much more interested in reading genderswap!P&P if you just genderswaped Lizzy. Of course that causes problems with the whole inheritance thing, but that might be interesting to read in any case. It's not so much that I don't want to read about men or the relationships between men. I do! I am very interested! I guess I just have a little trepidation with taking every female character and turning her into a man (and not doing the same for the men - thus eliminating girls). All that being said, I would still read genderswap!P&P even if there were no girls to be seen

[lettered]

Well, yes. The reason the Bechdel test is important is the simple fact that there are less women in stories than men, and for the women there are, the plots are male-centric.

I felt it was inaccurate to say fandom in general because femslash, gen, and het are large parts of fandom. There's plenty of het that doesn't pass the Bechdel test, but I believe the generalization we want to make is about male slash fandom in this instance.

Turning just Lizzy male almost bothers me more than turning all the Bennet progeny male, because of the way Jane's, Mary's, Kitty's, and Lydia's stories are all background. It seems to say the only important story is that of the son, and the others are unimportant by nature of being women's stories. If all the Bennets are men, then the other stories aren't as important merely because they are not Lizzy's story. And just Lizzy as a man still would not pass the Bechdel test in any case.

But that's just my feeling about it. I definitely agree with the too many dicks reaction, but leaving pussy in the story just for the sake of there being pussy seems to defeat the point.