Gender in Genre, Part 2: Femmes are Useless, and Other Problems

[chinders]

Here's another installment of Gender in Genre! The first post is hereIt's not that I wish to complain that femmes are, on the whole, a put upon or oppressed group. We get our fair share of sexism, certainly, but there's a lot of privilege that goes along with being femme

Comments

[wild_irises]

Have you read Whipping Girl? And if not, why not?

(Good stuff here; I need to read it more carefully to comment more thoroughly.)

[chinders]

I haven't, but I can fix that. :)

[mrissa]

I think there are several things that can be going on there, some of them jerkfaced and some not. Here are the ones where I give people some slack depending, partly because I used to be them:

1) Some people are from environments where the opposite sex is so very much not who you are "supposed" to be socializing with in anything but a romantic way that it is worthy of comment if you have any opposite sex friends at all. (These environments are not notably supportive of intersexed people, to the point of not recognizing their existence, so the binary is entirely accurate in this description.) Some people are strongly heterosocial or strongly homosocial their whole lives, regardless of context, and that's no problem with me as long as they aren't going on and on about it or making sweeping statements about other people and what it all means

[mrissa]

"I get along better with women than with men" (or vice versa) is not the same thing as, "Men [or again, vice versa] are all lazy and stupid." But if I had an Indian friend who started going on about how all people from India are stupid and lazy, I would be more concerned for the level of self-hatred involved than dismissive.

But I do know women who live in very small, very insular communities. They're not where I live. But I have some sympathy for them, even as I want them to get themselves out.

[rosefox]

I think people tend to forget that CHA is as important as any other stat. There's demonstrable value to looking "good" (within local cultural referents) in many, many situations. The key thing is that a lot of SF/F books tend not to be written about those situations.

I'd love to see the Overton window shift. Less slogging through the epic fantasy mud, more court intrigue and social fencing. Less of dreary spaceship interiors with everyone in grey jumpsuits, more vibrant spacefaring communities where visual coding of status, celebration of heritage, and attracting a mate are relevant and important.

[mrissa]

I have run into more roleplayers who misunderstand CHA on a very obvious level than any other stat (although I maintain that it's hard to play "above your own stats" in any stat--but often in subtle ways, where CHA is often really obvious). I know a great many people who think that being charismatic means that you can get away with anything rather than that you are very good at calculating what you can get away with, among other things.

[metaphortunate]

Or, why I hope Sansa Stark wins everything at the end.