Yet more on villains
...when people bitch about women fancying villains, why is it that the whiners always bring up the thing about women wanting to heal the villains because of a misguided mother instinct, or that the villain-fancying women are just like the ones who send love letters to murderers and the like...
...and nobody ever brings up the idea that maybe the women identify with the villain?
Seriously. So very often, in all my Beauty and the Beast-type ships, it's the villain character I bond with, especially since the female is very often just a pretty face. She doesn't often have that much of a character anyway. Why is it that we so rarely talk about that? That women write porny fanfic because they see, in that villain character, some male version of themselves and thus someone they fancy because they understand what it feels like to be dispossessed, different, the Other? You know? To be someone who's seen to be from some different and magical and dangerous world and thus a stranger amongst the normals or the skinny femme emotional brother to the butch muscular one, or the mad scientist (read: nerd)? Time and time again, the villains are the unmanly ones and are shoved into categories similar to female categories within the patriarchy. And so often, they are the ones who use their brains rather than their brawn and their emotions/psychology rather than brute force. And so often they are estranged from society because they are brainiacs--and that estrangement is universally felt by smart fangirls because you're ostracised far more when you're a female brainiac, so the whole "going nuts because you're smarter than the rest" thing really resonates. Remember how Frankenstein was written by a highly intelligent feminist woman? Exactly.
Not all villains are like this, of course, but I am really astonished how many people have missed the parallels between many villain archetypes and what smart women have to go through under the patriarchy. Is it a patriarchal thing in and of itself, to assume women are just dumb to fall for the dangerous guy? Or perhaps they are, just, you know, too smart for the dull heroes and see the crazy villain might actually know where they're coming from?
Seriously, why is it that we don't talk about this more?
...and nobody ever brings up the idea that maybe the women identify with the villain?
Seriously. So very often, in all my Beauty and the Beast-type ships, it's the villain character I bond with, especially since the female is very often just a pretty face. She doesn't often have that much of a character anyway. Why is it that we so rarely talk about that? That women write porny fanfic because they see, in that villain character, some male version of themselves and thus someone they fancy because they understand what it feels like to be dispossessed, different, the Other? You know? To be someone who's seen to be from some different and magical and dangerous world and thus a stranger amongst the normals or the skinny femme emotional brother to the butch muscular one, or the mad scientist (read: nerd)? Time and time again, the villains are the unmanly ones and are shoved into categories similar to female categories within the patriarchy. And so often, they are the ones who use their brains rather than their brawn and their emotions/psychology rather than brute force. And so often they are estranged from society because they are brainiacs--and that estrangement is universally felt by smart fangirls because you're ostracised far more when you're a female brainiac, so the whole "going nuts because you're smarter than the rest" thing really resonates. Remember how Frankenstein was written by a highly intelligent feminist woman? Exactly.
Not all villains are like this, of course, but I am really astonished how many people have missed the parallels between many villain archetypes and what smart women have to go through under the patriarchy. Is it a patriarchal thing in and of itself, to assume women are just dumb to fall for the dangerous guy? Or perhaps they are, just, you know, too smart for the dull heroes and see the crazy villain might actually know where they're coming from?
Seriously, why is it that we don't talk about this more?