Sady Doyle is a better feminist than you
Recently, Sady Doyle of "American Psycho was just boring and not a horribly offensive and gross how-to guide on violence against women" (trigger warning for violence and rape-related book excerpts at the link) wrote an article about George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series:
So why don’t we just cut to the chase, here? George R. R. Martin is creepy. He is creepy because he writes racist shit. He is creepy because he writes sexist shit. He is creepy, primarily, because of his TWENTY THOUSAND MILLION GRATUITOUS RAPE AND/OR MOLESTATION AND/OR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SCENES. And I could write a post about those, to be sure. But you know what would be easier? I could just count them. One by one by one. (Source)
And she does? Kind of. She only counts about four or five of the women (basically only the ones who get POVs), and she ONLY criticizes the women - Cat is too invested in her children and making dumb decisions, Arya is too much of a sociopath tomboy, Sansa's not enough of a sociopath tomboy, Brienne is too ugly and full of Jaime lust, Cersei is too pretty and full of Jaime lust. etc. You know, I'm kind of tired of this. Not just from Sady Doyle, and not just about ASOIAF, but about how female characters, even in books written BY women are held up to these excruciating exacting standards of feminist power that is unreasonable.
Are Martin's books intensely creepy and full of unnecessary grimdark ridiculouslessness? Yes. Are they also one of the big fantasy powerhouses with multiple female points-of-view and different reactions to the awful society they live in? Also yes. But ALSO, anyone who is criticizing this article is getting shit on for being upset that their toys are being thrown out of the sandbox; Sady jokes about that's what she has set out to do in the beginning of the article, people are linking this in response (even though brand nerdery and media nerdery are different animals, imo), and in general implying that people criticising her article are all angry fanboys and not feminists at all, even though this article was first brought to my attention by gingersomethingblogging about her critique of it.
to sum up, Sady Doyle is cheesing me off lately with her slams against women in media, and she's not the only one - Bitch, Jezebel, etc. have been doing this for a while too. Let's discuss.
eta: THIS article is a great, worthwhile deconstruction of the problem's in Sady's article. Awesome!
So why don’t we just cut to the chase, here? George R. R. Martin is creepy. He is creepy because he writes racist shit. He is creepy because he writes sexist shit. He is creepy, primarily, because of his TWENTY THOUSAND MILLION GRATUITOUS RAPE AND/OR MOLESTATION AND/OR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SCENES. And I could write a post about those, to be sure. But you know what would be easier? I could just count them. One by one by one. (Source)
And she does? Kind of. She only counts about four or five of the women (basically only the ones who get POVs), and she ONLY criticizes the women - Cat is too invested in her children and making dumb decisions, Arya is too much of a sociopath tomboy, Sansa's not enough of a sociopath tomboy, Brienne is too ugly and full of Jaime lust, Cersei is too pretty and full of Jaime lust. etc. You know, I'm kind of tired of this. Not just from Sady Doyle, and not just about ASOIAF, but about how female characters, even in books written BY women are held up to these excruciating exacting standards of feminist power that is unreasonable.
Are Martin's books intensely creepy and full of unnecessary grimdark ridiculouslessness? Yes. Are they also one of the big fantasy powerhouses with multiple female points-of-view and different reactions to the awful society they live in? Also yes. But ALSO, anyone who is criticizing this article is getting shit on for being upset that their toys are being thrown out of the sandbox; Sady jokes about that's what she has set out to do in the beginning of the article, people are linking this in response (even though brand nerdery and media nerdery are different animals, imo), and in general implying that people criticising her article are all angry fanboys and not feminists at all, even though this article was first brought to my attention by gingersomethingblogging about her critique of it.
to sum up, Sady Doyle is cheesing me off lately with her slams against women in media, and she's not the only one - Bitch, Jezebel, etc. have been doing this for a while too. Let's discuss.
eta: THIS article is a great, worthwhile deconstruction of the problem's in Sady's article. Awesome!