Shut Up, Ladies

[sarahtales]

Originally published at Sarah Rees Brennan. You can comment here or there.

It made me so sad to see, in an article about Jane Austen, that even though Jane Austen remains super popular there has been a decline in respect for her as a serious artist. Because it’s ‘chick lit’… as if any genre is Automatically Bad. And as if anything a woman created

Comments

[rai_ryu]

And I’m not saying that dude authors, or any dudes, or any ladies buying into the ‘Shut up, woman’s name, shut up!’ thing are being mean, either. I’m saying, there’s a pattern we’ve all, to some extent, unconsciously adopted. I’m saying that when we think ‘SHUT UP’ about a lady we should examine that impulse.

This is perfect. So many times when bringing up this phenomenon, the only response is "How could you accuse me of being sexist?! Just cause I don't like something!"
But it exactly that we have to examine why we dislike certain things, especially if our dislike goes along with a societal pattern. There's nothing wrong with having to examine, or examining and coming to the conclusion that we still don't like the work, but it's just the resistance from so many people when they're told they should do so that is strange.

[sarahtales]

The really fierce insistence is kind of a tipoff there's something wrong there, I think, like the constant assertions that Dorothy L Sayers WAS NOT an Inkling. Methinks the world doth protest too much about ladies.

[full_metal_ox]

The really fierce insistence is kind of a tipoff there's something wrong there, I think, like the constant assertions that Dorothy L Sayers WAS NOT an Inkling.

Your observation parallels another that comes to mind, and I hope I won't give offense by taking the liberty of paraphrasing you:

But lots of people want to be very clear that Saint Mary Magdalene may have been Jesus’s friend, but she wasn’t one of the Apostles. She didn’t attend meetings! Okay maybe one but it didn’t count! They were all, all dudes. (Okay. Maybe so. But chill yourselves, why is this so hotly contested? … Oh wait I know why.)

[sarahtales]

*speechless delight*

[full_metal_ox]

And yet Paul, who never met Jesus, qualifies for the club. (I yawned through the hype surrounding The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown's Shocking Revelations Of Stuff They Don't Want You To Know!!! being hoary gray-whiskered old news to anyone decently-read in Gnostic and conspiracy literature.

Also--although this is a whole 'nother kettle of rant--Dennis Hurley, whose horse in that particular race will be immediately obvious, would like everyone to know that Albinism Does Not Work That Way.)

[aubade_saudade]

But it exactly that we have to examine why we dislike certain things, especially if our dislike goes along with a societal pattern

It's gotten to the point I side-eye anyone who calls a woman or a character "annoying" because there are so many ways to be dismissive of women and that word just seems to encompass that whole attitude of ~stfu girl make like the dodo bird and be extinct

[sarahtales]

Mmm yes. http://leupagus.dreamwidth.org/74689.html

[aubade_saudade]

Yes, exactly. Mary Sue, annoying, attention whore, even the argument of "wanting to read about men being men" and not women w penises, or the phrase "like a teenage girl" to describe everything unsophisticated and superficial and wrong w the world

In so many spaces being a girl is kind of like being a poor relation, an unwelcome guest (Jane Eyre) you better be perfect (in a non-annoying Mary Sue way?) and not step out of line or you'll get sent out packing.