Courtship roles, reversed

[breakinglight11]

Someday I want to write something that pointedly subverts all the male-female courtship tropes. I want to reverse all the things we tend to expect for people's behavior during the building of a romantic relationship, having the man inhabit the woman's traditional role and vice versa. And I want to do it in a way in which they both come off as

Comments

[katiescarlett29]

I LOVE IT. Can I be in it? :p

[lightgamer]

This sounds most excellent!

[witticaster]

I enjoy the idea and would love to read it, but a lot of your explanation seems contradictory to me. A "normal" man or woman is one who conforms to societal gender roles.

"I'd like to explore the notion that our traditional courtship roles are one of the most artificially constructed aspect of our gender norms."

Latching on to that, it seems your plan is to stick as closely to the other artificial definitions of "feminine" and "masculine" as possible while still overturning the courtship rituals? Thus proving that even within society's system of gender those definitions are arbitrary?

[breakinglight11]

Kind of the point I want to make is that people are allowed to pick and choose what sort of behaviors feel right to them, and that can be incorporated into whatever view you have of your gender identity. That can be who you naturally are but not have to conform to every idea society has about that in order to be so (like, for example, being a ciswoman who feels feminine but acts as the pursuer in the romantic relationship). I think that point would be most effectively made by having the traditionally opposite behavior exhibited by otherwise normative examples of the gender. If, say, a butch woman did it, it would be too easy to say, "Well, butch women act like men, so she's still acting as a normative example of her gender identity." I would want to explore that one can incorporate things that are not traditional for your gender identity without compromising the truth of it.

[morethings5]

Re: the reversed-roles knight-errant story, have you ever read The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch? It is a silly funny children's book (by an amazing author), but basically is exactly that story with an amazing ending.