Entry tags:
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.
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There's a lot of weird double-standards when it comes to sexuality, of which the costume thing is an obvious one. They do swing both ways, though: While the overt sexualisation of female characters reduces them to sex objects and two-dimensional femme fatales, they're very rarely presented as genuinely 'evil'... their promiscuity makes them 'bad girls', but that 'badness' is presented as erotic and alluring. Male characters, by comparison, are almost never permitted to be overtly sexual, and when their sexuality does manifest, it is usually portrayed as threatening and aggressive. Both sexes lose out: Women get the message that they must be sexually aggressive to gain power, but that female sexual power is something that should be rightfully 'tamed' by a man, and men get the message that their sexuality is horrifying and evil. Win-win!
Conclusion: genre fiction tends to treat human sexuality in a very shallow, repetitive and negative manner? The real WTF is that people are still surprised by this. :P
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Also examples of aggressively sexy women, dressed in leather, I don't know if she actually wore leather but Aeryn Sun in Farscape springs to mind. And whatever her character was in Starscape/Fargate.
You can't have ugly women in television (except for maybe comedies or comedic characters, like the black lawyer women in Bones).
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You can't have ugly women in television (except for maybe comedies or comedic characters, like the black lawyer women in Bones).
Ellenor Frutt (Camryn Manheim) from The Practice is basically the only 'unattractive' female character I've seen who is given serious treatment in a TV show. She had genuine issues which included, but were not limited to, the fact that she had body-image issues. The Practice's characters were actually really well written most of the time.
Talking about comics, because I know nothing about TV
Nightwing is interesting, because he's supposedly the most sexualised of any male in DC, yet only ever seems to just go along with the girls that hit on him, he never actually does anything himself. I think Talia has been the only major character so far that's rocked up and _not_ made out with him (this is a very good thing).
I also keep trying to figure out where Grace Choi (from The Outsiders fits into this. She's on the 'good' side, and is seen as pretty sexual, despite a history of abuse, but doesn't seem to be particularly attractive in any sort of traditional sense. Still I suppose that's why they made her gay.
I haven't seen The Practice so I can't say anything there really.
In the stories we had in that English unit, you could basically tell who the bad guys were because they were ugly. Beautiful people usually were right. Which lead to complete confusion when covering Chaucer, who made all his characters pretty, THEREFORE THERE WAS NO BAD GUY. :P
Before I forget, there's 3 GN's on your bed and two rum balls in the fridge for you. Well, the GN's are mine, but you can read them, dunno how much you want to actually read Nightwing though.
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:(
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Sorry, not leather-related tangent here, but damn do I love Ellenor Frutt.
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I have somewhat come to terms with the "no ugly women" thing(*), but there's pretty and then there's LOOK AT HOW SEXY I AM
(*)Ok, no I haven't :)
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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).
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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.
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Nice. This sort of thing is why I am always very trepidatious when I get a yen to read superhero comics.
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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).
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In from Metafandom
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.
Re: In from Metafandom
Re: In from Metafandom
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:
Which... actually makes me much *more* inclined to consider it rape than I did before.
Re: In from Metafandom
I don't think that co-ed drunk comparison was helpful. Or…. good.
Re: In from Metafandom
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.
Re: In from Metafandom
Wasn't there dodgy stuff as well where Raven was trying to manipulate him into a relationship?
Re: In from Metafandom
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.