Pairing Meta: The Appeal of Snake/Otacon from a Male Perspective

[outofmysystem87]

Whilst I am still working on my second story (thanks to Khronos_Keeper and Imre_Nico for agreeing to be my beta-buddies), I decided to do something I promised to do for a long time: an essay about Snake/Otacon slash from a male perspective. I managed to write this pretty quickly, so if you need clarification/elaboration/etc, feel free to ask.

Essay

Comments

[runcible_spoom]

I'm actually reading The Feminine Mystique right now, so I see how you're trying to analyze gender roles through the lens of tradition here. I also get your points that there's a streak of macho running through the gaming community, and that many gamers (of both genders) are nerds whose tastes and activities don't stick to traditional gender roles.

Those would be good subjects for a full, researched, cited essay. However, you go through a lot of generalizations to get from there to Snake/Otacon. Also, you completely lost me when you brought up "radical feminism," especially where you say radical feminists think that "reason and the intellect are in fact male in nature" - I'm by no means radical, but I'm gonna defend my far-left sisters here and say that is in fact the view of ANTI-feminists - the "biology is destiny" people, whereas feminism is about biology NOT being destiny.

It's an obvious hot button, and the way you brought it up alienates the reader somewhat. Otherwise, you made some good points - if you're interested, write more about gender in gaming, because it's an interesting subject!

[outofmysystem87]

I thank you sincerely for your balanced and measured comments.

Yes, I admit, I did generalize a lot. I had to cover a lot of intellectual ground to get the points that were relevant to the fandom. This was never meant to be a definitive, inarguable journal article, simply a topic of serious discussion.

As for radical feminism, I agree that the "biology is destiny" people do often argue that men are rational and women are emotional (or from Mars/Venus, or variants thereof). But I have heard the same argument, albiet in different terms, made by some feminists. Carol Gilligan, for one, argued that men and women have different approaches to moral reasoning. I've heard some arguments that reason is 'spiritually male,' that science is male, etc. I concede not ALL feminists act that way. As I said I support gender-equality feminism and individualist feminism (i.e. the "women are human too" type of feminism).

And I do apologize if I alienated anyone, that was not my intention and I believe I have been misinterpreted.

ps. Your icon is genuinely funny.

[runcible_spoom]

Oh, yeah. I get what you were trying to say now - the men-are-logical, women-are-intuitive thing. You worded it pretty strongly, but I do see what you were referencing.

Thanks! Feel free to swipe the icon if you'd like!