Comments | aycheb: Buffyversemeta entry

aycheb

Buffyversemeta entry

Jul 19, 2007 04:41

This is what I wrote for the buffyversemeta metathon

Title: Reader, I destroyed him.

Summary: The special treatment of girl’s stories in BtVS

Source texts: All of BtVS including the S8 comic issues 1-4. AtS S1 The Prodigal, S3 Lullaby, S4 Inside Out and S5 Damage

Word count: 2642

Notes: The original prompt was azdak’s "People are gonna die. Girls are gonna ( Read more... )

meta, buffy

Comments 39

emily_shore July 19 2007, 07:44:21 UTC

Great essay. I'm not a BtVS fan but I really enjoyed reading it, and thought you had a lot of interesting insights. Maybe I'm going to have to give the show another try!

aycheb July 20 2007, 13:38:37 UTC

Glad you liked it! I hate to think how spoilery it was but the show has much to be insightful about.

azdak July 19 2007, 09:58:34 UTC

Bravo! I loved reading this - you write so beautifully, and with such erudition. I've seen so many moaning essays about how Joss is a terrible feminist that it's a joy to read an argument that looks at how the tradition of subversion is upheld throughout all his "girl's stories". And I can't believe I'd never yet come across the idea that "sex is bad for women" has biological experience behind it - this is a bit of a paradigm shift for me, because it's so obviously true (most of the time I don't hold much truck with evolutionary psychology, but this argument has a force that's completely undeiable. I can't believe I never made the connection ::whacks forehead with shovel::).

aycheb July 20 2007, 13:52:20 UTC

Good, it was fun to write. And evolutionary psycholgy aargh! I think a big part of the problem (aside from some the major proponents being as mad as badgers) is that if often takes the easy fun part of behavioural ecology, the 'just so' story creating, without bothering to follow it up with the rigourous testing or looking for mechanisms. There was one particularly insane example recently where some guy had managed to show a (barely) statisically significant correlation between breast asymmetry and phase of the menstrual cycle and was claiming that this was due to men using breast symmetry to choose the most fertile women to cop off with. You can spot them in every night club with tape measures at the ready.

azdak July 20 2007, 15:58:06 UTC

You can spot them in every night club with tape measures at the ready.

Yeah, and I know so many men who'd turn down a shag on the grounds that asymmetrical tits are a turn-off.

without bothering to follow it up with the rigourous testing or looking for mechanisms

Or even thinking beyond their own prejudices. I really ought to just point and laugh, but I can't help getting riled by them.

starryniteshade July 19 2007, 13:38:00 UTC

Well done.

aycheb July 20 2007, 13:52:35 UTC

Thank you!

stormwreath July 19 2007, 20:21:46 UTC

The only problem with this essay is that it was so good I can't think of anything else to say! :-) (Except 'well done', obviously). And I liked the vid too (not seen it before).

(Now I'm panicking because mine's due in a few more days and I've only got a bunch of notes and a rough plan, nothing coherent as yet...)

aycheb July 20 2007, 13:57:30 UTC

Thanks! And is it racking up the pressure too much to say I'm looking forward to Sunday?

stormwreath July 20 2007, 19:18:58 UTC

YES!!!

;-)

peasant_ July 19 2007, 21:03:44 UTC

Great stuff ( ... )

stormwreath July 19 2007, 23:14:40 UTC

why is female curiosity so often portrayed as the origin of sin in folklore? Their own sin as an individual, sure, I can understand that might be something you wanted to teach your daughters, but why should curiosity cause all sin generally?The feminist answer: because in a social system set up to favour men, it's much more dangerous to let girls grow up to question things and wonder "why?" than it is if boys do the same thing ( ... )

azdak July 20 2007, 10:52:41 UTC

The problem with this explanation is that if curiosity were such a disadvantage to the community, it would be reviled in men as well as women. And since the survival of our in-built curiosity suggests that it's adaptive, there must surely have been more instances where everyone benefitted from curiosity ("I wonder what happens if I put these inedible olives in brine for a year? Oh!") than suffered from it ( ... )

peasant_ July 21 2007, 10:07:34 UTC

I'm with Azdak in agreeing that curiosity is generally a useful human trait in a hunter-gatherer society. And indeed in almost any society. Conservatism does have big social advantages, that is why it is so innate, but so does innovation and risk-taking.

I am not a feminist (in the normal sense), and I view hunter-gatherer societies as not favouring men so much as recognising the value of men as regards their greater body strength and social adaptation to be a fighting and hunting force. But in terms of questioning and risk taking, it is hard to see why there should be a gender bias. Indeed since split-second obedience is generally more vital in men's roles than women's (bickering on the hunt means the animal gets away, bickering over if this is the right tuber to harvest can be imortant in reaching consensus and avoiding mistakes) I would have expected the bias to be the other way round ( ... )

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