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

[alias_sqbr]

Mm, a nice example of a cliche being initially played straight and then going somewhere interesting.

I tried with Xena, but it was too cheesy for me. Maybe I should give it another go someday.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

This is bugging the crap out of me because I don't actually know this.

However I'm fairly sure there should be a list of men that were mind controlled or drugged into sleeping with women in DC :P

(If it turns out that this is from a 'bat' story line, I'm going to be horribly embarrassed).

[col-ki.livejournal.com]

Sex /= evil, dammit!

You're just saying that because you like wearing corsets.

[alias_sqbr]

I agree it happens a bit with men, but imo it's not usually done in such a creepy way. There are more bad guys than bad girls where their sexuality/sexiness isn't a major focus. And either way it's equating sex with evil.

[alias_sqbr]

I have a fairly broad definition of feminist: if someone self identifies as one, makes some effort to help the feminist cause, and isn't SUPER sexist, then I count them as one. Otherwise it all gets very dogmatic and "All true scotsman"y.

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks for the awesome essay! I'm pretty sure yours took more work :)

[alias_sqbr]

I THINK it was Green Arrow. But it's disturbing that there's so many you can't figure out who I mean :)

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

Hm... I was thinking of the Green Arrow, but from what I've read, he didn't get married to Black Canary until long after, Shado raped him. Amusingly a similar thing happened to Batman, Talia drugged and slept with him and (also) got a son out of the deal.

Neither really gets acknowledged as rape though, which is disturbing.

(The other disturbing thing is that the younger Green Arrow, Connor, loses his virginity to a ghost purely because Chuck Dixon decided he wasn't allowed to be gay.* Apparently having a member of the Justice League being gay would be all bad).

* I may not have this entirely right, I'm paraphrasing an article I read awhile back.

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

Although, given the importance of visual symbolism for TV, the use of leather as an outward token of sexualized power makes sense.

[minim_calibre]

Lilah was pretty specifically bad-girl sexualized, just using older tropes. As they moved her into a more central role, and introduced the relationship with Wesley, they upped the noir/femme fatale aspect of her look until she could have come straight out of a remake of Double Indemnity.

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

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

Don't forget Selene. :)

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

"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

Honestly, I think it's less this (at least in the minds of the creators) than the fact that it's easier for a put-upon innocent to sucker the protagonists into lowering their guard. In the specific case of Saffron, it's clear that this is a scam she has run more than once because acting all helpless makes folk underestimate her.

In a similar vein, the "evil women dress sexy" is only partly about titilating viewers (and it isn't just male viewers. I have a number of female friends [queer or not] who like seeing the female characters dress up all sexy), but also as a visual cue that the character is willing to trangress boundaries for purely self-centered reasons.

Consider also that it's not just the evil women who get to dress up. How short were most of Fred's skirts on Angel? Why is it that plunging necklines seem to be part of the CSI lab tech dress code?

What's interesting here is not that female characters with power dress sexy, but how that sexiness is coded related to their moral stance. When a good woman is dressed in power-sex leathers, it's either done ironically or as a disguse.

In addition to Xena and Aeryn Sun, you'll want to add Emma Peel, Trinity, occassionally Buffy Summers, some versions of Catwoman, and two-thirds of all super-heroines to the list of strong, agressive, heroic women in sexy leather.

[dryope.livejournal.com]

Ellenor Frutt was a wonderful character. David E. Kelley actually writes some awesome emale characters, when he isn't trying to hard. Kind of by accident. As evidenced by the fact that every female character on Ally McBeal (a show overtly about modern women) sucked, whole right now Shirley Schmidt on Boston Legal (who is once again only the sidekick to two male lawyers) is the only real woman over 50 on TV that's allowed to have a carreer, a political stance, a sex life and still care about people.

Sorry, not leather-related tangent here, but damn do I love Ellenor Frutt.

Here from metafandom

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Huh. Xena was always skirting the edge of her "dark side", though. She was primarily good throughout the series, but she struggled to control her evilness. Just a thought on that.

Personally, I think Joss made an effort at giving us some feminist shows. He definitely presented us with some truly wonderful and strong female characters, which you'd be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. However, he wasn't perfect, and he fell into a lot of standard genre (and TV) traps. How many uber-short skirts did Buffy wear in the first couple seasons? How often was female sexuality shown to be a bad thing? I appreciate Joss for what he attempted to do and what he succeeded in doing, despite the flaws. He did better than most other shows.

In from Metafandom

[bluefall.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of that sort of thing in comics. The Green Arrow storyline you may be thinking of: Ollie (Green Arrow) was feverish and delusional and slept with a Dragon Lady type name of Shado, thinking she was his live-in girlfriend Dinah. This was considered "cheating" by the author and all characters involved for years, and is still thought of as such by most of the fandom.

Then there was the Nightwing storyline, where an alien shapeshifter took the form of his girlfriend Starfire, and they had sex, and Starfire broke up with him for cheating on her.

Then there was the Superman Porno Tape thing, which has pretty much the same connotations....

Really, there's a lot of that sort of thing going around in comics.

[msilverstar]

Martha on Doctor Who gets to wear leathers sometimes, and she kicks ass quite nicely.

Zoe in Firefly, despite being the sidekick, is the best one I can think of. She is strong and wears leather and has the only really rational head in the place and avoids most stereotypes and has an inner live and a love life... Bloody shame it is so rare.

[blackjackrocket.livejournal.com]

I donno, sexy evil guys in a lot of shows tend to wear more leather. Look at Guy of Gisbourne on BBC's Robin Hood. They go out of their way to have him wear leather pants and even leather jackets in a time period where it would make no sence for him to do so, because he's hot and evil.

[blackjackrocket.livejournal.com]

I wonder how this will effect views of my original work. I have the primary villian--a woman--wearing outfits that show off her body. She does this because she knows she's insanely hot (and she is, which is funny because she's one of those people who's not particularly attractive, but is HOT) and she's all about showing herself off in every way (not just her body but her power). And she also sleeps with two guys over the course of the series, two years apart and both shown in flashback. I wonder if people will equate the two situations because honestly that's not what I'm going for.

Re: In from Metafandom

[brownbetty]

And also the time Catalina had sex with him, even though he was saying “no” which seemed kind of skeevy, but it was treated like she was just sort of… bold.

Re: In from Metafandom

[bluefall.livejournal.com]

My favorite part is how Devin Grayson flat-out called it rape - or, actually, I think it was something weird like "no, it definitely wasn't consensual but I wouldn't call it rape" or something bizarre like that - and like, nobody cares. She's an important piece of the Batfamily battle during War Games right after. Dick never comments on it.

And just to make it all that much muddier, Gail Simone's currently using her as a significant character in Secret Six, and this was her comment on what happened on the roof:

As for the 'rape' scene, I have some feelings about that. I don't think Nightwing could be completely forced even under the weird circumstances. I think that makes him a participant, even if he is somewhat diminished--but 'diminished' for Nightwing is different than getting a co-ed drunk at a party. I still don't think he'd be involved if he didn't want to be on some level. He might've felt it was a huge mistake ten seconds later, but he'd hardly be the first person male or female to feel that way. I'm not avoiding it because it's 'dangerous,' or anything. It just hasn't come up yet.

Which... actually makes me much *more* inclined to consider it rape than I did before.

Re: In from Metafandom

[brownbetty]

OMG, Simone, *facepalm*

I don't think that co-ed drunk comparison was helpful. Or…. good.

Re: In from Metafandom

[bluefall.livejournal.com]

"He must have consented, because he would have stopped her if he didn't want it" is a totally okay thing to say, right? Not skeevy at all?

Although TBH, I'll totally admit to a double-standard on Catalina myself. She really intrigues me, and I sympathize with her the same way I do Catman or Deadshot, these people who are bad and do evil things but are complicated and sometimes seem just a step away from redemption. I want to see her get the chance to shine and get better treatment as a character. On the other hand, flip Nightwing for Black Canary and Tarantula for Bane in that rooftop scene, and Bane would be absolutely dead to me. I'd want him gone, and anything that tried to treat him as a protagonist would creep me out and piss me off.

It's a weird thing to realize about myself and I'm still trying to unpack it.

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

I know exactly what you mean, to the point of writing a novel whose whole point was to kinda... subvert the good-girl/bad-girl paradigm. It's not perfect, but I think it's at least interesting, or more interesting than the traditional Bond movie relationship. The villain is this child soldier turned killing machine who actually becomes more comfortable with her sexuality as she turns to the good side (but changes right out of her "bikini top and daisy dukes" and into Kevlar when it's ass-kicking time), the hero she falls in love with is the one making all the sexually aggressive double entrendres, and the entire "turn to the Dark Side" trope isn't about tying him to a chair and straddling him while she talks about how good it feels to be baaaad, it's about arguing philosophy and morality and there's only one small "if you were on our side, we could be together" line to get across the subtext.

Plus, car chases!

Oh, and does Emma Frost/Black Cat/She-Hulk count? Emma Frost and Black Cat (or Catwoman, to get right down to it) used to be villains, but all three characters are aggressive, do-gooders, and own their sexuality.

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).