The fantasy of woman.
So sartorias is hosting an interesting discussion prompted by the upcoming Sirens Conference. The focus of the discussion is the ways in which fantasy has come to cater to female readers, with some specific questions posed for discussion.
This started as a comment to the post, but it got too long, so I'm putting it here and linking it back in the comments to Sherwood's post, in which she posits Bella Swan of Twilight and Hariman-sol of The Blue Sword as heroines of different types of wish fulfillment fantasies. I disagree.
Why does wish fulfillment work?
I don't think we ever outgrow that desire for everything to work out how we'd like. The expectation it will is immature, certainly, as is bad behavior when it doesn't (not that this stops some people), but the desire might be part of self-awareness. That's why stories based on wish fulfillment work.
My own feeling is that first, 'wish fulfillment' has to be broken down several ways.
Mine too, which is why I'm about to say something I suspect will not be very popular: Bella and Hari are fulfillment of the same essential wish. Lonely social outcast female character (who is still shown to be desirable to "more discerning" secondary characters) is forcibly inducted into a "secret" culture by a dark, mysterious, dominant male character who is described in both threatening and desirable terms. She must learn the rules of this new culture, and in doing so her own overlooked or mocked talents and abilities come to be appreciated. She is revealed to be special in some way, even among the very special members of the "secret" culture. She is specifically targeted by antagonists to the culture. After some trial and conflict, one of her major virtues is shown to be her attractiveness to the dark, mysterious, dominant, dangerous, desirable male character, and she wins his love in a long-term, monogamous, heteronormative relationship.
The stories differ in the details, and indeed its arguable that in the details, Bella retains a greater sense of Self than Hari. However, since this would be because Bella's Self already largely matched up with the role to be assigned her in the "secret" culture, by virtue of matching up with the stereotypically feminine role assigned her in her origin culture, and also because Edward fetishes Bella's innocence and purity, neither of which argue against her as an incarnation of the Child Bride, then I wouldn't say the argument asserts Twilight as
the more feminist of the two, and that's really my concern here.
The thing is, I don't think aspects of the particular wish both narratives fulfill are bad, and certainly enough women who are fantasy writers and readers desire enough parts of this wish to have kept it popular, but it's also still overwhelmingly the only game in town, and it says some telling things about the assumptions regarding "What Women Want" both in-genre and in the mainstream. It also says telling things about who is regarded as female, but I'll get to that below. Here, I want to address the assumptions made about women's desires.
Actually, let me back up a bit, because the formulation of "What Women Want" is misleading. Your average person is aware that women want different things. However, there is a pernicious belief that all women should want the same things, and that any woman who doesn't want what has been asserted as what she should want is defective. This makes the system of sexism and gender roles nicely self-reinforcing, because not only does it regulate actual behavior, it attempts to regulate fantasies. Hari and Bella are both "free" to desire the dangerous outsider male character rather than the "safer" men of their own cultures. They are free to pick up new skills/knowledge that he will find useful or attractive. They are free to imagine what heteronormative monogamy will look like in his different culture, and to dream of how their children will be raised. They are free to express themselves in the different/expanded ways allowed to women in their new cultures.
What neither Hari nor Bella are free to do is desire multiple partners (that's a different, controversial wish fulfillment), or female partners, or confirmed singledom. They are not free to change their minds and select male partners from their origin cultures, or to desire submissive male partners. They are not free to be completely uninterested in social interaction. They are not free to reject the induction into the "secret" culture. They are not free to completely disregard the desire of the male characters who have been set up as their romantic partners. They are not free to learn skills/knowledge that are of no use and no interest to the male character. They are certainly not free to express themselves as male, or identify as male.
All of the above are ways in which the popular wish fulfillment narratives of "women's fantasy" fail actual women. While getting more stories out there that present different wishes is important, it's also important to challenge the assumptions both that this is, or should be, the wish of all women who read fantasy, and that the various narratives that fulfill this wish are presenting some kind of broad spectrum of wishes, covering a number of women's desires. I do not dispute that the differences in details in these narratives are important, nor do I dispute that there are a number of women who want what these narratives present. I do dispute that all women should want what these narratives present.
Women in fantasy and sex. How has that changed over the years?
Women who demonstrate sexual desire are not in a separate category from "marriageable" women. Also, a female character's interest in sex does not necessarily have to be subsumed in the male author or character's interest in sex. That is to say, a sex scene from a female character's POV can be about how she enjoys it, and not about how the male wants her to enjoy it (the male fixation on breast sensitivity and penis-in-vagina intercourse is...myopic, to say the least). More time can be spent on the build-up to the actual sex, because of the assumption that women need more foreplay, and since women are raised to expect to need more foreplay, the two reinforce each other. Of course, as more women think about and voice their own desires, that assumption is also breaking down.
What kind of characters do we find sexy, and how do those differ from what male readers find sexy?
That depends. It's assumed that most female readers are going to find a character sexy when he is tall, youngish but not younger than the heroine, muscular but not muscle-bound, sexually aggressive, good in a physical fight, and exceptional in some non-physical way. It's assumed that non-physical character traits are more important than beauty, but of course many "sexy" male characters are also described as handsome. Androgynously beautiful male characters also enjoy a lot of popularity as objects of female sexual desire, often set explicitly against the more muscular and stereotypically masculine type, who is rejected as a male fantasy object inserted into the female wish fulfillment vehicle.
Again, though, the question arises of how much these are what female readers find sexy versus what we're trained to find sexy, and how many female readers have learned to tolerate them because their own ideas of sexy are not likely to appear in somebody else's writing anytime soon.
As a sidepoint, I'm active in fandom, and I find it interesting that while women seem to have a wide range of male types they find sexy in the visual media of a lot of fannish sources, all those male types tend to get re-shaped into a narrower range of molds in the fanfic. The short, balding, paunchy fellow is rarely described as short, balding, or paunchy, for example, and when he is, it's often viewed/expressed as a kink, a deviation.
Women taking charge--competent women--women who are women, and who don't read like feminized male stereotypes
Ah, now we come to it. "Women who are women" certainly carries some strong implications about what women are, or at least should be. My question is, how much do those implications take into account the wide range of female identity? Is there room in there for dominant women, lesbian women, bisexual women, polyamorous women, asexual women? I'm not sure there's room in there for women who aren't born-women, or born-women who don't identify as women. The question is all the more tricky because I really do agree that there are characters who read as stereotypically male in female bodies, and not for purposes of exploring transgenderism, but separating those from female characters who break with feminine stereotypes deliberately is a thing I'm still learning to articulate. I'd welcome input from other people who've figured this one out.
Really, I'd be interested in input from other people on all of this, though if you're going to attempt to assert there is no sexism or gender stereotyping in genre literature, I suggest you save us both some time and effort and go read something else instead. Also, if you drop by Sherwood's post to comment, be polite.
ETA: Now unlocked for linking purposes.
This started as a comment to the post, but it got too long, so I'm putting it here and linking it back in the comments to Sherwood's post, in which she posits Bella Swan of Twilight and Hariman-sol of The Blue Sword as heroines of different types of wish fulfillment fantasies. I disagree.
Why does wish fulfillment work?
I don't think we ever outgrow that desire for everything to work out how we'd like. The expectation it will is immature, certainly, as is bad behavior when it doesn't (not that this stops some people), but the desire might be part of self-awareness. That's why stories based on wish fulfillment work.
My own feeling is that first, 'wish fulfillment' has to be broken down several ways.
Mine too, which is why I'm about to say something I suspect will not be very popular: Bella and Hari are fulfillment of the same essential wish. Lonely social outcast female character (who is still shown to be desirable to "more discerning" secondary characters) is forcibly inducted into a "secret" culture by a dark, mysterious, dominant male character who is described in both threatening and desirable terms. She must learn the rules of this new culture, and in doing so her own overlooked or mocked talents and abilities come to be appreciated. She is revealed to be special in some way, even among the very special members of the "secret" culture. She is specifically targeted by antagonists to the culture. After some trial and conflict, one of her major virtues is shown to be her attractiveness to the dark, mysterious, dominant, dangerous, desirable male character, and she wins his love in a long-term, monogamous, heteronormative relationship.
The stories differ in the details, and indeed its arguable that in the details, Bella retains a greater sense of Self than Hari. However, since this would be because Bella's Self already largely matched up with the role to be assigned her in the "secret" culture, by virtue of matching up with the stereotypically feminine role assigned her in her origin culture, and also because Edward fetishes Bella's innocence and purity, neither of which argue against her as an incarnation of the Child Bride, then I wouldn't say the argument asserts Twilight as
the more feminist of the two, and that's really my concern here.
The thing is, I don't think aspects of the particular wish both narratives fulfill are bad, and certainly enough women who are fantasy writers and readers desire enough parts of this wish to have kept it popular, but it's also still overwhelmingly the only game in town, and it says some telling things about the assumptions regarding "What Women Want" both in-genre and in the mainstream. It also says telling things about who is regarded as female, but I'll get to that below. Here, I want to address the assumptions made about women's desires.
Actually, let me back up a bit, because the formulation of "What Women Want" is misleading. Your average person is aware that women want different things. However, there is a pernicious belief that all women should want the same things, and that any woman who doesn't want what has been asserted as what she should want is defective. This makes the system of sexism and gender roles nicely self-reinforcing, because not only does it regulate actual behavior, it attempts to regulate fantasies. Hari and Bella are both "free" to desire the dangerous outsider male character rather than the "safer" men of their own cultures. They are free to pick up new skills/knowledge that he will find useful or attractive. They are free to imagine what heteronormative monogamy will look like in his different culture, and to dream of how their children will be raised. They are free to express themselves in the different/expanded ways allowed to women in their new cultures.
What neither Hari nor Bella are free to do is desire multiple partners (that's a different, controversial wish fulfillment), or female partners, or confirmed singledom. They are not free to change their minds and select male partners from their origin cultures, or to desire submissive male partners. They are not free to be completely uninterested in social interaction. They are not free to reject the induction into the "secret" culture. They are not free to completely disregard the desire of the male characters who have been set up as their romantic partners. They are not free to learn skills/knowledge that are of no use and no interest to the male character. They are certainly not free to express themselves as male, or identify as male.
All of the above are ways in which the popular wish fulfillment narratives of "women's fantasy" fail actual women. While getting more stories out there that present different wishes is important, it's also important to challenge the assumptions both that this is, or should be, the wish of all women who read fantasy, and that the various narratives that fulfill this wish are presenting some kind of broad spectrum of wishes, covering a number of women's desires. I do not dispute that the differences in details in these narratives are important, nor do I dispute that there are a number of women who want what these narratives present. I do dispute that all women should want what these narratives present.
Women in fantasy and sex. How has that changed over the years?
Women who demonstrate sexual desire are not in a separate category from "marriageable" women. Also, a female character's interest in sex does not necessarily have to be subsumed in the male author or character's interest in sex. That is to say, a sex scene from a female character's POV can be about how she enjoys it, and not about how the male wants her to enjoy it (the male fixation on breast sensitivity and penis-in-vagina intercourse is...myopic, to say the least). More time can be spent on the build-up to the actual sex, because of the assumption that women need more foreplay, and since women are raised to expect to need more foreplay, the two reinforce each other. Of course, as more women think about and voice their own desires, that assumption is also breaking down.
What kind of characters do we find sexy, and how do those differ from what male readers find sexy?
That depends. It's assumed that most female readers are going to find a character sexy when he is tall, youngish but not younger than the heroine, muscular but not muscle-bound, sexually aggressive, good in a physical fight, and exceptional in some non-physical way. It's assumed that non-physical character traits are more important than beauty, but of course many "sexy" male characters are also described as handsome. Androgynously beautiful male characters also enjoy a lot of popularity as objects of female sexual desire, often set explicitly against the more muscular and stereotypically masculine type, who is rejected as a male fantasy object inserted into the female wish fulfillment vehicle.
Again, though, the question arises of how much these are what female readers find sexy versus what we're trained to find sexy, and how many female readers have learned to tolerate them because their own ideas of sexy are not likely to appear in somebody else's writing anytime soon.
As a sidepoint, I'm active in fandom, and I find it interesting that while women seem to have a wide range of male types they find sexy in the visual media of a lot of fannish sources, all those male types tend to get re-shaped into a narrower range of molds in the fanfic. The short, balding, paunchy fellow is rarely described as short, balding, or paunchy, for example, and when he is, it's often viewed/expressed as a kink, a deviation.
Women taking charge--competent women--women who are women, and who don't read like feminized male stereotypes
Ah, now we come to it. "Women who are women" certainly carries some strong implications about what women are, or at least should be. My question is, how much do those implications take into account the wide range of female identity? Is there room in there for dominant women, lesbian women, bisexual women, polyamorous women, asexual women? I'm not sure there's room in there for women who aren't born-women, or born-women who don't identify as women. The question is all the more tricky because I really do agree that there are characters who read as stereotypically male in female bodies, and not for purposes of exploring transgenderism, but separating those from female characters who break with feminine stereotypes deliberately is a thing I'm still learning to articulate. I'd welcome input from other people who've figured this one out.
Really, I'd be interested in input from other people on all of this, though if you're going to attempt to assert there is no sexism or gender stereotyping in genre literature, I suggest you save us both some time and effort and go read something else instead. Also, if you drop by Sherwood's post to comment, be polite.
ETA: Now unlocked for linking purposes.