On reactions to female characters

[hsapiens]

Saw this linked in rydra_wong's LJ and found that it resonated with me. Thus, I'm passing it on:

From fabu's discussion of fans and female characters:

No one is saying that you must like every single female character or you're a bad fan/bad feminist. However, if you *habitually* find yourself criticizing female characters for behavior you admire in male characters/dismissing female characters as boring (even though you spend hours developing walk-on male characters into well-rounded characters for your stories)/accusing female characters of being "Mary Sues" for having skills that you accept unquestioningly in the men, perhaps you might want to think about the bigger picture.

~~**~~

And in other news: When it's a relief to get to the refuge of work, that's a bad way to start the day. Luckily, this day hasn't gotten any worse. :)

Comments

[tejas.livejournal.com]

I just wish we'd *see* more female characters who are treated as well as male characters by the writers. Too often, they're weird soap opera caracatures.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

I suppose.

But I think of of Rydras points is that being a soap opera caricature (or underwritten, or a Marty Stu, or even having no lines/screentime) doesn't really seem to stop a lot of fanfic writers who happily supply whatever text, subtext, backstory, or depth they require for their favored male characters.

So, if fanfic writers can spin gold out of little or nothing for so many male characters, why are the deficiencies of female characters seemingly in so many cases such unsurmountable showstoppers?

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Most fanfic writers are women. Based on my own reactions and those of friends I've talked with about this, we get *so* pissed off at the poor representations of women onscreen that it makes it very difficult to overcome them. We're personally invested. When a woman character is written stereotypically, we're faced with a portrayal that mirrors the same crap we have to deal with in RL. Female stereotypes are *rarely* positive. Even the few that are, such as say the Good Mother, come with additional cultural baggage. It's *rare* when a woman is well written. Men are, by far, much more accurately represented in fiction. It doesn't hit women where we live when they're not. I can't, for example, take Sam Carter seriously. She's been ruined over the years. I have a *tough* time writing her because of that. If I try to stay as close to canon as I can (J/D are *so* doin' it ;-), I'd have to write her in such a way that would turn my stomach. So I avoid her like the plague. The only option would be to deviate very far from canon and that's an issue of it's own for me. There may be other reasons why women characters are treated differently than men in fic, but that's a big one for most folks I know. Besides, if I'm writing, or reading, smut, I *do* find women boring. ;-);-)

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

On Sam Carter in particular, I have a soft spot for her. While everyone was cringing over her "reproductive organs" line in the pilot, I *like* that woman. I love the woman who walked into a room of superior, dismissive officers and made them respect her. That line has become a joke but I honestly liked it. I'll take a year's worth of lines like that rather than the Samantha Carter who, I'm supposed to believe, as a military officer and veteran of the first contact team can't make a room filled with subordinate officers listen to her. I have nothing but pure contempt for what the writers did to MY Sam Carter.

To rediscover my love for the character, I had to seek out some extremely well written gen fic. Once she's freed from the relationship baggage and allowed to be defined by who she is, I find she's a very interesting woman. There are cool aspects to Sam that can be explored. If I can ignore Daniel's blithe comment to Sam that she should dress in native dress because that's what anthropologists do, if I can ignore Jack's making jokes with the Jaffa guards while an SGC member bleeds profusely in the prison cell, if I can ignore BOTH Daniel's and Teal'c's falling into bed with women despite their own marital status -- I can disregard some of the stupid things I hate so very much about what they did to Sam.

I am not saying that I like the Sam who makes blundering command decisions and is patted on the head afterwards by the men. I am not saying that it doesn't royally cheese me off when Sam folds under pressure that isn't even a tenth as bad as getting through the Air Force Academy would have been. I am not saying that I like the doe eyes of death. I really, really, really hate all of that shit. They continually undermine her and make her a sucky character when she isn't. Or, she didn't start out that way and she isn't crappy 100% of the time. I *can* find the woman I admire and respect inside that crap ("inside every crappily-wirtten major is a wonderful captain doctor waiting to get out!") and I have read the works of many authors who found it.

Again, the quote isn't about saying you HAVE to find a particular female character to your taste. It's to look at your reaction to a similarly written male character and compare the strength of your reactions.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

My issues with Carter come down to too much crap to ignore, from the first season on (she shoulda shot Jonas, but they wouldn't let her because she's The Girl - grr!). One of these years, I'm going to try to write something using canon Carter, but it won't be pretty. When I pull the entirety of her portrayal together, I come up with someone I wouldn't want to be in the same room with. Definitely someone I wouldn't trust to pick up a loaf of bread from the store for me.

As for the line in COTG, didn't bother me at all. :-) Seemed a touch naive, but I *loved* the attitude! :-) What's bothered me for years is the lengths they've gone to to make her The Girl rather than making her, y'know, a *character*.

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

Thinking about complaints of Mary Sue vs. Marty Stu made me stop and look at my biases. My Mary Sue threshold is much lower than my Marty Stu, I realized. It's more noticeable to me that a woman in a story would have so many accomplishments whereas I let it slide more for a male character. I have been a bit stunned by that revelation.

Fanfic writers can spin gold out far less than nothing, I believe, and what we do and don't grab onto says a lot about us. I do think this issue is complicated by the human tendency to caricature even well-written, complex characters -- I think of this as forcing pop culture characters into well-established cultural roles whether or not ti fits because we like the story. And then there's those whole thing about viewing the character not for herself but basing it on how she relates to the writer's OTP. Add in that fanfic is recreational and that it's often cathartic or "fix its" or enjoying a fantasy rather than a writing exercise undertaken with a careful eye to honing the finer points of characterization and plotting...well, I suppose I'm going far afield here from the point.

It's hard to separate that issue from the gender issue but my own admittedly limited and unscientific experience has produced far more vitriol against, say, Samantha Carter in Stargate SG-1, than Ethan Gold in Queer as Folk, though both characters are the subject of a lot of bashing.

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

I agree 100% here. I really want more strong and wonderful women on my television and in my books and in my fic.

This particular essay addresses something different, though: fandom reactions to female characters. And really, this is a lot like the race discussion prompted by Ronon the Barista fic a while back. Ronon the Barista isn't racist; it's the context that makes it so. It's looking to patterns in our reactions and our thoughts for what they say about our own attitudes and ourselves rather than as condemnations of the source material. Not that the source material is spotless and shiny -- I'm VERY clear that I despise what is often done to women in canon -- but looking at how we react to a poorly sketched female character as opposed to a poorly sketched male character, for instance, is illuminating.

I would so dearly love to see a show where the woman fleeing the bad guy didn't trip or break her heel or break down in sobs/tears...all so the hero can help/save/defend/comfort her. I really hate that I know what people mean to say when they bitch about someone "feminizing" a guy because I hate that complex of stereotypes and I think it's as inappropriate to women as it is to men and ultimately says that to be weak and soft and indecisive is to be female when I know that's flat out wrong.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Bingo.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Ok, I went and actually read the post (my bad, I didn't read it before, just responded to the quoted passage ;-). This looks like the typical anti-feminism crap that's been on the rise for years. Yes, we *should* use the same standards when we judge male and female characters. One of the things that means is that we're going to slam female characters who are jerks (or who are so badly written it's hard to tell *what* they are - Carter comes to mind). And, as one of the commentators on that thread mentioned, we bring our own personal morality to the table when we do. I, for example, am pretty much a monogamist. Serially, at least. :-) I will view a character who 'cheats' on a boy/girlfriend/spouse with disdain. It isn't that they're being sexually 'free', it's that they're breaking a trust (assuming exclusivity was expected by the partner). I put cheats in quotes simply because there can be all sorts of 'slippage' I'll accept in fiction that would have me walking away from someone in a New York minute if it happened in real life. Life's too short to put up with untrustworthy people in my life. If a person will break trust with a lover or spouse, they'll break trust with a friend. At least that's been my experience. Doesn't matter, btw, if they're male or female. I've never quite understood the carte blanche some men seem to think they have to behave like randy goats and not have anyone call them on it. (If I hear the phrase 'boys will be boys' one more time, I'm liable to explode. My ex-mil used to say that... no wonder her sons were so screwed up. ;-)

[hsapiens.livejournal.com]

It's sad that this topic has to be raised time and again but such is the way of consciousness raising. It's done in steps and has to be reinforced. This was the first time I thought about the Marty Stu vs. Mary Sue issue and I had the realization that I *do* view them differently. Hopefully being aware will help me free myself from that aspect of prejudice. One bit down; two thousand or so more to go.

I do view characters through my own moral lens, absolutely, but I suppose I also see that life isn't black and white and people aren't always perfect. I have my issues that I can't get over: rape, child molestation, and the like so I can totally see how infidelity is a "no go" deal-breaker. I don't think that's a problem or what's being discussed in this essay because that's an issue and not a "it's ok when men do it but the woman must DIE" reaction.

My annoyance comes not from a character's flaws but the writers' inability to see that they're flaws or to use those flaws to explore a topic or character. It's like writing a rape fic so that two characters can get together and have "healing sex" without ever understanding or acknowledging the devastating nature of rape. Just, no. And now I'm far afield from the point so I'll stop rambling. ;)

[tejas.livejournal.com]

I agree about the difference between a character's flaws and flawed writing. I can accept a character as realistic (even if I don't like them) when they're jerks and well-written as such. Snape comes to mind. No way would anyone confuse him with a 'nice guy'. Yet (and I'm a book behind, so don't tell me ;-), he's apparently at least making a serious attempt to redeem himself... without changing his basic personality, which is disagreeable in the extreme. I don't like Snape as a person, but I *adore* him as a 'good guy' antagonist. He fits his milieu.

Carter, on the other hand, has been so poorly written as to be nonsensical. Is she strong? Is she independent? Is she a freakin' Air Force officer? Who can tell? They tell us one thing while showing us something else, but the consequences don't match up with what we see. They're trying to tell us the sky is green even though we can see darn well it's blue. With a character like Snape, we *know* his flaws and they're consistent. What we don't always know is where his loyalties lie and that's intentional. We're *supposed* to question his every move. But his actions are consistent with what we *do* see and know. They're also consistently ambiguous where they're supposed to be, if that makes any sense. Carter's just all over the map. Is she 40 or is she 12? Who knows?

Farscape was a great example of women characters (and men, and others, for that matter ;-) who were pretty darned consistently written and not entirely black and white, or even sane. :-)