Annoying sexism and Joss Whedon

[sqbr]

Reading through the latest Feminist sf carnival I hit some links which made me go "yes! That! Grr!". So I thought I would share the joy :)

Joss Whedon and feminist cookies Makes the point that one can (and should) acknowledge the effort of feminist writers like Joss Whedon..while still calling them on their mistakes. And oh, does he make some mistakes. Also, this comment captures some of the dodginess of the "Women corrupted by power" archetype.

On a similar subject Firefly: The Trouble With Saffron, on the fact that having a sweet innocent female victim of abuse who has pity taken on her turn out to be an evil sexy seductress is, uh, kind of creepy, especially given that it's done so often. I think there's a subtext to the "Turn a victimised group who 'everyone cares about' into the villain" thing which plays on the fact that deep down people don't want to sympathise with victims, and get annoyed at having to care about them, so get a real sense of catharsis from having them turn out to have been evil all along.

It got me thinking about the sheer absurd fetishisation of the "Woman who becomes evil automatically starts dressing an acting more sexily" thing. I'm not saying that women can't use sexuality to gain power, or that being sexy is inherently bad (or good) But it's just one way to be powerful, and it plays both into the "woman + sex=evil" trope and the "Women exist to serve men" trope (since she is titillating the male viewers rather than doing what makes sense for the character) It's way overdone in Supernatural, I'd love to see an evil female character who is genuinely gross (like, a zombie or something(*)) do the whole "creepy touching" thing (in order to deliberately creep the guy out, not in a failed attempt to be sexy), then it would be actually creepy rather than a thinly veiled excuse for men to despise the women they're attracted to. And why can't a woman be aggressively sexy and dressed in leather and not evil? Actually, I guess that was Xena. Yay Xena :) EDIT: Yeah, ok, so there's MANY counterexamples to this :)

EDIT: Oh hey, metafandom :) Man, I really didn't put much thought into this post, and now I have to justify my dodgy arguments with a fuzzy brain...All disclaimers are in operation!

(*)Except I hate zombies. Hmm.

Comments

Re: In from Metafandom

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

Haha, oh Nightwing is terrible. I didn't know about the Kory storyline, only the Catalina one. They do seem to treat him like a target for this kind of thing.

Wasn't there dodgy stuff as well where Raven was trying to manipulate him into a relationship?

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

Xander does this as well, in Pack. He becomes both evil (predatory) and sexually predatory (trying to rape Buffy).

Re: In from Metafandom

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, the fact that gretel_dragon was like "Uh, you have to be more specific, there's lots of plots like that" was pretty telling :)

I think the scene in Buffy where Riley sleeps with Faith-as-Buffy was ok-ish, in that Buffy was annoyed that Riley didn't notice the difference but didn't see it as cheating per se. I think, it's been a while.

[alias_sqbr]

the younger Green Arrow, Connor, loses his virginity to a ghost purely because Chuck Dixon decided he wasn't allowed to be gay

Nice. This sort of thing is why I am always very trepidatious when I get a yen to read superhero comics.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, I missed that in my post. But I think that on the whole evil-women-in-leather are more likely to cross the line from "Scary and kind of sexy bad-ass" to "Stripper" :)

[alias_sqbr]

Hey, good point.

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm, I guess. HMM (This was one of my "Figure out what I think by talking about it" posts, and now I have all these random strangers poking holes in my flimsy arguments :))

[alias_sqbr]

She is a vampire though, they're a special case :)

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

The thing that annoys me about that, is that he has ranted many times about how he's just been waiting for the 'right' woman. And mostly running away from Mia (16/17 year old ex-prostitute, who seems to have become his father's ward) when she hits on him.

Heh. I forgot to add my last line there:

And then someone decides to go and wreck that, because they're upset about fans deciding the character is ambiguous about his sexuality. I don't care if he's straight or gay, but it was nice having a character being able to keep it in his pants (particularly one related to Oliver Queen, it made a cute contrast).

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but vampires are being given such a shit reputation right now, I thought it was best to point out the badass, non-sparkling variety.

Re: Here from metafandom

[alias_sqbr]

Oh yes, as I kind of said with the first link: the fact he does dodgy stuff doesn't mean he's automatically an all-around evil sexist, he does some pretty good stuff too, and is definitely better than average. But the average is pretty bad :)

[alias_sqbr]

Shh, my being a closet goth has nothing to do with this :)

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I'm just posting here to say how much I love Xena. And the best thing about her, at times she was sexual, but for most of the time, she was just downright powerful - and portrayed in a way where she didn't use her sexuality to achieve results (with a few exceptions, and that was with Hercules, so meh).

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm, that's a good point. She wasn't in a corset, but she was pretty sexualised in her way, certainly more than Lindsey.

[alias_sqbr]

They are getting pretty woobified, I can't help but think of that Buffy episode with the "We love vampires" group :)

[alias_sqbr]

That's true. I have a tendency to make broad generalisations and not think of all the counterexamples, and then everyone is all "What about blah" and I feel silly :) Though Zoe's leather is more practical-cowboy/warrior than sex-fetish.

here via metafandom

[mikou.livejournal.com]

And why can't a woman be aggressively sexy and dressed in leather and not evil?

How about Trinity from The Matrix? And then there is Sarah Connor and Alias' Sydney.

I do agree with you, however, about how absurd the cliche is. It's lazy storytelling and it usually leaves me feeling cheated.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

Lindsey was hot.

I can't remember how much of that was delibrate sexualisation, but he did seem to be delibrate contrasting Angels repression, with regards to the sexy. But yeah not in the same way or amount that Lilah was hot, I suppose.

Re: here via metafandom

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Sarah Connor's an interesting case in both cinema and TV versions because while there's undoubtedly an aesthetic appeal to her she's depicted as sexy in a way more associated with male action stars for a female audience than vice-versa. The strength and competence is assumed to be part of the hotness and the clothing is practical and "coincidentally" sexy (tight jeans, sleeveless vest to show off muscly arms) rather than near-lingerie or fetishwear.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I'm with the _allecto_ rant on this one. I think Whedon might as well qualify as "super sexist". Och aye!

[fourthwave.livejournal.com]

Just thought I'd drop by and say a quick thanks from The Hathor Legacy (http://thehathorlegacy.com) for the link. Really compelling post (and awesome comments-section discussion!).

[alias_sqbr]

I think fans can get a bit paranoid about Executive Meddling to "prove" characters are straight, but there is the odd really obnoxious example and that sounds like one of them. Ew.

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm. I agree those things come into it too, it's one of those messy situations where there's good and bad reasons for things being done the way they are, and it's often a matter of opinion where any individual instance lies on the continuum. I'm not sure I can articulate quite how I disagree with you so I'll have to leave it at that :)

Good point on the good girls in leather thing though. Hmm. (I didn't put a lot of thought into this post and was figuring out what I thought as I went along, these comments have been good food for thought)

[alias_sqbr]

Mmm.

[alias_sqbr]

Well, I don't think sleeping with two guys over 4 years is all that promiscuous :)

But yes, it is interesting and a bit worrying writing a story which ends up skirting certain cliches and tropes without that being the primary intention. I realised with horror recently that one of my characters is, on paper, a cliched "male character in fantasy written by women": he's had an angsty past, is stuck in a (matriarchal!) society that doesn't respect him, has supernatural powers, and is charming and attractive but still has lots of enemies since he refuses to fit in. But there's more to him than that, and I try to both avoid and poke at the common cliches (and poke fun at him, which doesn't usually happen if they're a sympathetic main character)

So I guess the trick is to question the usual assumptions and only apply them when they really do fit the character. Good writing can rescue even the most tired or problematic situation. I've recently been reading a lot of Octavia Butler, and she has a lot of situations like that, ie Fledgeling, the story of a 50 year old vampire who looks like a small child and is cheerfully sexual. I mean, it was creepy, but not weird anime creepy :)