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Annoying sexism and Joss Whedon
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.
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.
Here from metafandom
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.
Re: Here from metafandom