Fantasy with discussion of gender roles

[Seventh Pup]

Emberling what is the full name of the Toby Novels, (Or is the full name of the author) my google fu is lacking right now and I would be interested in reading them. 

[Salome the Persian Witch]

 

 

UF, then no. Most UF is somewhere between vaguely problematic to outright bad. The only series I've seen so far that doesn't raise many red flags is "Generation V". Particia Briggs has too many snarling controlling alpha dudes for it to pass any sort of thought through feminist analysis. (That does not mean you cannot enjoy the novels, just that to pass them off as "feminist" is plan wrong.)

It needs to deal with gender politics in some ways, as per kalbear's post.

 

 

Hmmm - for me Patricia Briggs' novels did in fact deal with gender politics and subverting a number of "traditional" expectations and roles.  The novels specifically address the status of the female werewolves and challenging the assumptions. Ie. consciously addressing the history of women's getting status from their partner despite their own personal dominance, having an extremely dominant gay werewolf and the politics around his lack of acceptance, the subject of sexual assault and abuse not just relegated to a woman's experience - but subverting the reader's expectations to realize a male character or 2 were in fact recipients of that treatment.  Much of the whole series is about what has been accepted as "how it's always been" (not only in the werewolf packs but also within the other paranormal species groupings) and how destructive that type of behaviour and thinking can be - both for males and females.

The character of Mercy Thompson (whether intentional as in challenging the status of female wolves) or unintentionally (like maybe with the vampires & fairies,etc.) acts as "coyote" - traditionally the trickster archetype which shakes up the status quo to unlock hidden wisdom.

 

Anyway, I guess for me these books pass my feminist quotient, particularly because it addresses how unhealthy "alpha male" systems can be and how important it is to constantly question and point out what isn't working.

 

Edited to make more legible. :blushing:

[Lyanna Stark]

Emberling what is the full name of the Toby Novels, (Or is the full name of the author) my google fu is lacking right now and I would be interested in reading them. 

 

The Toby Daye novels, the first being Rosemary and Rue. Author is Seanan McGuire.

[C.T. Phipps]

But overall I wouldn't say the series is likely to be transformative, like Phipps' first post described. It's representation, and it's good, and that's good. But I don't see representation as individually good; it's aggregate. Representation isn't for getting one hero I can identify with, it's for getting heroes, plural, and villains and support and passersby; it's for reaching a point where characters can be something (strong women, black, trans, whatever) without being totalized and tokenized into a statement about that identity. It's for reaching a point of saturation where a group of half women, for example, isn't seen as a threatening overrepresentation of women, and groups with more women are seen as natural variance balancing other groups that have more men, not as PC gone mad. Thus, I don't see any individual books as positive inspiring examples. I think it's much easier to find inspiration from negative examples, either because the bit that was inspiring was an accident mired in a sea of horribleness (for me, this was Piers Anthony when I was too young to know better) or because the handling of e.g. romance in Twilight is just so wrong that you get motivated to do what you can to fix the harm it causes.

 

It is one of the big albatross' to hang on the neck of the genre that white male characters get to be everything in addition to being male. It doesn't matter whether a white male character is heroic, cowardly, ugly, fat, old, smart, stupid, rich, poor, racist, or progressive because there's so many examples of such things that they don't actually have a big deal.

To keep with my X-men example: Cyclops and Toad are about as far removed from one another as humanly possible but neither is serving as representative of the white male demographic save in the loosest sense due to the privilege thereof while Rogue, Storm, and Jean bear a burden as female characters which goes well beyond that.

 

One thing I've tried to do in my writing, which time will tell if I succeeded, is I've actually tried to break myself out of the habit of thinking in terms of straight white protagonists, male or female. I've been trying to do that in all three of my series and when I create new characters, I more or less ask myself, "Is there any reason why these characters should be vanilla?" Once I started asking the question, it started to become less and less of a problem.

 

Gay characters, Hispanic characters, black characters, and other people started appearing which developed the outlines in my head--and I think the worlds started feeling more organic (to me at least). When I mentioned this to one of my fellow writer acquaintances, though, I got really disappointed when his reaction was like, "You shouldn't make a character [insert minority] because of a quota! Talk about PC."

And I was like, "I [i]make[/i] the characters, dude, I can't be PC to myself."

 

Yeesh.

[C.T. Phipps]

Representation is one thing, but it is not the end all and be all of feminism. This is the equivalent of claiming that when women got the vorte (representation) in our world then men and women are equal. Women having a voice is of course good, it's a positive thing. Women having representation is also good, but it is still not in any way feminist in that it is not pushing any feminist issues current day feminists are grappling with. It is also not inherently feminist, since if we look for example at WoT, which has lots of female characters (representation) and female viewpoints, it is an absolute cesspit of failure when it comes to feminism. Another frequent offender is romance novels. Many are extremely reactionary despite featuring female leads and being written by women for women. Claiming representation in itself and women as not eye candy making it feminist is false, since that means the entire romance genre has auto-qualified for a feminist award. And trust me, it should not. Besides, this puts us at what was progressive in the early 20th century. 

 

The depiction of the Wheel of Time as a work which you consider to be sexist whereas I consider it to be progressive is an argument I doubt we will ever come to an agreement on. I consider it a feminist work in terms of both representation as well as providing strong female characters who challenged the assumption of male-driven fantasy literature by their very existence while you are focused on the gender essentialism of Channeling.

 

The Romance Genre is also a genre which is rife with unfortunate issues and assumptions, agreed, though even it also adds to the fact which is providing a variety of choices and characterization. I think you're misunderstanding my point, though, which is there is a difference between whether a work is feminist (bare minimum requirement of all fiction, IMHO) and have, as you say, feminist narratives (which is a much-much more bigger thing).

 

To put it in context, the existence of female characters is good in Westeros.

 

Brienne's character is specifically made as a contrast to the sexist institutions in Westeros, which is GREAT.

 

Which, oddly enough, I think means we agree. I was just making a point feminist shouldn't be restricted to a elite privilege of fiction because, as an academic, I deal with asshats all day long who think feminist is some sort of dirty word rather than something which should be considered a basic part of being a decent human being.

 

The fact that they struggle with the patriarchal system and how this is constantly brought up and used to define these characters is what, de facto, makes these characters "feminist". This I cannot stress enough. Your assumption here is incorrect. What you are missing here is the definition of a feminist character and a feminist narrative. It is exactly this that is the point, how the characters grapple with a patriarchal system. Cat who doesn't get to inherit because she is a woman, and then gets faced with her daughters not being traded back by Robb because they are female, and how nobody listens to her advice because she is female. Brienne who is constantly told she cannot be a knight, because of her gender. Sansa who is married off against her will, promised to several other men and she realises that she is a piece of flesh only, that she does not wish to be married ever again, since nobody will love her for herself, only take her to get her inheritance. Asha who cannot rule the Iron Isles because of her gender, Cersei who is an amazing take on internalised sexism, and her rant to Sansa about how Jaime got a sword and she was taught to dance and to please, and was married off to some man to be ridden like a horse and discarded for a younger filly is brilliance.

 

Yeah, feminist narratives are important and interesting stories. However, as mentioned, Storm and Katniss are both characters who by the nature of representation also make important strikes for a wider more larger market. Saying they're not feminist characters seems...disingenuous.

 

 

Representation is good yes, but it is not the only cure.

Saskia's leadership abilities are constantly undermined by her objectification both visually and within the narrative. It's mentioned as a "fun joke" that Iorveth only supports her since he likes to look her her boobs and want to do her. Phillippa Eilhart has one of the most egregious lesbian titillation scenes I have ever witnessed in a video game ever. Triss is objectified and damselled in short succession, which undermines any credibility she has as a powerful character.
 

Most of the stuff I read about it was that Peeta was shorted than her, and that they were basically a role reversal of the classic boy hero/pretty girlfriend narrative, although I agree with your general point that it should not be a strange thing.

 

I'm not going to try and live and die on the hill of defending The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and any critiques you want to make are probably valid ones. I, for one, would was severely troubled by the violence against women (Philippa, the Sorceress killed by Shillard, and the burning alive of Sabrina Glessig). There's also the fact that you can just stand there and watch Sile, horrible person she may be, torn to shreds before your eyes.

 

The character of Ves reads almost like a parody of fantastic female heroes given her origin begins in sexual assault, a sexual assault happens to her over the course of the game, and Geralt and Roche as her male "relatives" track down and potentially kill her rapist without any involvement from her. All the while, being one of the few human female warriors in the setting.

 

There's also yet another rape plot with Bernado Loredo which would be doubly despicable if not for the fact it worked as commentary on the fact a human woman going missing is a tragedy while a minority woman was less so (and the fact that people around Bernardo assumed they were having "consensual" sex due to being her employer--as if the power imbalance wasn't horrible to begin).

 

So yeah, some pretty awful stuff, though. However, my wife and I discussed some of the issues of the game which from her perspective were interesting. Specifically, the character of Saskia and the fact she was a sexually active woman pretending to be a Virgin because of the local sexual mores (the dream sequence involving her having affairs), the fact Saskia (silly costume aside) was a powerful woman which Geralt wouldn't romance, the character of Cynthia seducing Philippa as a spy for Nilfgaard (titillation or not) in terms of patriotic duty, and even the fact that Poor Ves' story is just trying over and over again to live a life like she wants in a world which repeatedly punishes her for being a woman--yet refusing to let that destroy her sense of identity. Also, Iorveth was in love with Saskia but his devotion to her began with her dream of a land for racial equality, not out of romance since he never intended to share his feelings for her.

 

Deeply-deeply problematic game but I think there was more going on there than in quite a few.

[Chaldanya]

I'm on a real UF kick at the moment and because I don't have unlimited funds I'm doing a lot of re-reading.  The one glaring thing that most UF does (and even some stuff I like does) is not have any close relationships for the female protagonist of the same gender.  I also find the lack of any kind of family structure for the protagonists jarring.  Maybe this is just to fit in with the exceptionlist trope that seems to sell well but it strikes a nerve with me.  

 

I used to rave about Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series but the thing about Mercy is at the start of the series she is surrounded by male acquaintances in her work and personal life but not one female acquaintance.  And, it doesn't get any better for Mercy Thompson - every woman she meets (apart from the Alpha's daughter) dislikes or hates her on sight and that just rubs me completely the wrong way. I can not now re-read them.  I find that lack just plays into the "Exceptional Woman" persona. "I don't like other women. Other women are jealous of me.  I'm not like other women. Please accept me".  Ain't no-one got time for that shit anymore.  

 

N

[Xray the Enforcer]

Ain't no-one got time for that shit anymore.  

 

 

I am loving you so hard right now.

[C.T. Phipps]

I'm on a real UF kick at the moment and because I don't have unlimited funds I'm doing a lot of re-reading.  The one glaring thing that most UF does (and even some stuff I like does) is not have any close relationships for the female protagonist of the same gender.  I also find the lack of any kind of family structure for the protagonists jarring.  Maybe this is just to fit in with the exceptionlist trope that seems to sell well but it strikes a nerve with me.  

 

I used to rave about Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series but the thing about Mercy is at the start of the series she is surrounded by male acquaintances in her work and personal life but not one female acquaintance.  And, it doesn't get any better for Mercy Thompson - every woman she meets (apart from the Alpha's daughter) dislikes or hates her on sight and that just rubs me completely the wrong way. I can not now re-read them.  I find that lack just plays into the "Exceptional Woman" persona. "I don't like other women. Other women are jealous of me.  I'm not like other women. Please accept me".  Ain't no-one got time for that shit anymore.

 

Feminism and Mercy Thompson 5-part Essay

 

http://www.whatifbooksetc.com/2011/03/feminism-in-mercy-thompson-promising.html

 

http://www.whatifbooksetc.com/2011/03/feminism-in-mercy-thompson-working.html

 

http://www.whatifbooksetc.com/2011/03/feminism-in-mercy-thompson-gender-and.html

 

http://www.whatifbooksetc.com/2011/03/feminism-in-mercy-thompson-rape-and-its.html

 

http://www.whatifbooksetc.com/2011/03/feminism-in-mercy-thompson-river-marked.html

 

I always liked this essay.

 

Personally, one of the reasons I liked The Hollows series is it began with the strong relationship between Ivy and Rachel. The fact said relationship became less and less relevant as the story progressed was something which led to me becoming less and less interested in the story until I realized I had no interest in reading the final novel. Really, it's interesting how many female protagonists in Urban Fantasy have no female supporting casts whatsoever. I believe this began with the Anita Blake series where it was commented by Laurel K. Hamilton she grew less and less interested in any women characters other than Anita.

 

Well BEFORE the story moved from urban fantasy to porn no less.

 

In Mercy Thompson's case, she's not actively hostile to women around her but very clearly holds the male relationships in her life as the most important ones, even on a non-sexual level. This isn't a bad thing as it's actually an undercurrent of the series I find interesting: Mercy has unacknowledged privilege over the women in the werewolf world. She's the beloved daughter of the Bran, a coyote not a werewolf so the rules don't apply to her, and outside the dominance issues. One common mistake I found a lot of commentators made was they assumed Mercy was going to work for social reform.

On my end, I zeroed in on the idea Mercy doesn't see herself as part of the women of the werewolf world and they don't see her, so the two worlds would never meet.
 

[Chaldanya]

Thank you for the link.  I've just read the essays.  I like what the author has to say on the various aspects of the world that Briggs has built and I like the hope at the end that perhaps the werewolf society is changing for the better.  However, the author's own biases has still mean that six books in (I've not read anything after River Marked) Mercy still does not have a close female confidante and is still in power plays with the other women in the pack.  

 

I have still avoided the last two Harrison novels! Perhaps when they come down in price more, but I just cannot motivate spending the time and money on them when I know the magically ret-conned elf-love is going to make me want to hurl.  :ack:  So yes, completely agreed on that one.

 

Lyanna: I've not read the final book of the series after hearing of the egregiously large elf-love retconn that was going to happen.  I have my own headcannon for the book:

 

In the first book Trent says something to Rachel along the lines of "in the end I will have your loyalty and subservience so completely that you won't even know that I've done it to you.  And you will beg to give me more".  That's what I am telling myself has happened.  Trent has run a long con and done exactly what he said they would do when they were mortal enemies.

 

N

[C.T. Phipps]

I maintain Ivy, Rachel, and Kisten are in a polyamorous relationship and they took down Trent.

 

Shepard lives in Mass Effect 3.

 

Tyrion went with Daenerys.

 

Mercy and the Omega form a Werewolf Women's Circle which forces concessions from the menfolk.

 

Samus Aran laughs at the zero suit being something she'd wear.

 

Jacen Solo didn't fall to the Dark Side and eventually brought Anakin back to life with the Force. Jaina became a Republic General and not the Empress of the Empire.

 

Black Widow has toys.

 

It's much nicer in headcanon land.

 

It has air conditioning!

 

:)

[Chaldanya]

I maintain Ivy, Rachel, and Kisten are in a polyamorous relationship and they took down Trent.

 

Shepard lives in Mass Effect 3.

 

Tyrion went with Daenerys.

 

Mercy and the Omega form a Werewolf Women's Circle which forces concessions from the menfolk.

 

Samus Aran laughs at the zero suit being something she'd wear.

Jacen Solo didn't fall to the Dark Side and eventually brought Anakin back to life with the Force.

 

Black Widow has toys.

 

It's much nicer in headcanon land.

 

It has air conditioning!

 

:)

 

May I subscribe to your newsletter? :) 

 

N

[C.T. Phipps]

I think there's some level of self-insert wish-fulfillment going on for a lot of these works, personally. The first person perspective is an easy one for the purposes of surrounding yourself with adoring people of the opposite sex in order to make your character feel more attractive or interesting.

 

It's an easy trap to fall into as I've had to scrap a manuscript because I was trying to create a love triangle situation and an old relationship for one of my books and a beta-reader pointed out, "You do realize you've made every woman in this book want to bang your main character, right?" Yikes. No, I had not. Because I'd only created the characters in relationship to the lead, it had become accidentally sexist.

 

Keeping that in mind for later works, though, let me avoid some of those pitfalls in future works. So much so, I got some surprising praise for my actual books from a couple of unexpected sources--people who appreciated the characters I'd created with what I'd learned.

 

If I may laud a fellow author I know in RL, I think the importance of letting authors know about these things can't be understated. The one I'm speaking of is PETER CLINES, author of the Ex-Heroes series which started with a very-very fun book which really had some problematic elements. For those unfamiliar with the book, it was about superheroes vs. zombies. There's a particularly infamous passage which I won't bother to say but involves abusing a female celebrity's zombie form. Likewise, there were no minority heroes (or even supporting characters) in his book who weren't dead despite being set in Los Angeles.

 

These were pointed out to him on message boards and by associates. In future books, Peter proceeded to introduce new female characters both superhero and otherwise, retconned a always-masked character into having been black all along, added a major new black lead (a Captain America analogue), and also had the above infamous passage revealed to be a disgusting rumor that shocked the participant involved. What I really remembered about that particular thing was Peter was really-really good about addressing the problems in his writing only a lot of his fans actually got nasty to the people who pointed out these flaws and tried to give him (unwanted) defense.

 

Crazy, huh?

 

So yeah, criticism is good both online and otherwise--and it sometimes helps.

[Shryke]

I'm on a real UF kick at the moment and because I don't have unlimited funds I'm doing a lot of re-reading.  The one glaring thing that most UF does (and even some stuff I like does) is not have any close relationships for the female protagonist of the same gender.  I also find the lack of any kind of family structure for the protagonists jarring.  Maybe this is just to fit in with the exceptionlist trope that seems to sell well but it strikes a nerve with me. 

 

I suspect it's less that and more the genres roots in things like noir and detective fiction. But maybe that's just me.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Shryke - I think that is true for the lack of family, but the exceptional woman thing is kind of stark.  In detective noir, the detective isn't the exceptional guy (though often a loner) - he isn't usually the only one of his kind (more that the only difference between him and the guys he is chasing is whether they end up behind bars). 

[Kat]

It's been a couple years since I read this series, but IIRC Kelley Armstrong's books actually did have some nice relationships between the women of the underworld. They weren't set out to be exceptional. There were some other issues with the series, but that was a theme I appreciated.

[emberling]

Reminder that judging a work "feminist" or "not feminist"/"anti-feminist" is deeply reductive, likely missing the point about feminism and about literary interpretation, and smacks of moralizing. All fiction is produced in and reproduces patriarchy. Almost all fiction can be interpreted in ways that push back against patriarchy. Talking about elements of individual works, or tropes, or critical mass representations, is all very valuable and interesting. Arguing over whether something is, on balance, "good" or "bad" and where the line is that distinguishes "feminist" from "unfeminist" is accepting a broken absolutist framework of feminism as seal of ethical approval. Not that it's not tempting to do it anyway, and my first instinct was to come in guns blazing about how misguided I think the gross overexpansion of the word 'feminist' is to apply to anything or anyone that professes gender equality is, including 'separate but equal' conservative gender role essentialists and 'sexism is basically over its just a few bad apples'. But that's not the point. The point is stories are complex and open to interpretation and we should resist the temptation to reduce them to a binary good/bad score.

And urban fantasy gets really multifaceted because it's all mixed up with super-conservative romance tropes, misogynist noir tropes, empowering but reductive Strong Female Character tropes, and a female-dominated, mostly feminist authorship and readership with good intentions and varying levels of self-awareness. There are a lot of things pushing a lot of ways. I always come back to the example of Bitten because it's such a powerful story about a woman breaking free of the expectations society puts on her ... except it's mixed up with admitting her love for literal stalker, literal sociopath, and metaphorical rapist Clayton, and the weird exclusion of all other women from the story and from the milieu of the life she chooses for herself. It's a deeply feminist story at its core and a worryingly misogynistic story at almost every other level.

Kat: It's yet another one of those examples of authors responding well to criticism of book one. At least based on something I read once. Bitten is really bad as far as exceptionalism. The rest are great, though the later Elena books are still a lot more distant than the others.

[Kat]

I think I read the series out of order, so I didn't realize that.  :dunno:

[Shryke]

Shryke - I think that is true for the lack of family, but the exceptional woman thing is kind of stark.  In detective noir, the detective isn't the exceptional guy (though often a loner) - he isn't usually the only one of his kind (more that the only difference between him and the guys he is chasing is whether they end up behind bars). 

 

Oh agreed. The genre is in many ways a mashup of noir and romance, with a fantasy setting sprinkled on top.

 

It's why you get them having a lot of male relationships but no family. You have your loner in the city (noir), but she is special in some way and here's all her possible love interests (romance).

[polishgenius]

I don't think it can be described as feminist and doesn't really do much discussion of gender roles, but if we're talking about work that has good relationships between women/girls (and the lack thereof isn't just limited to noir-based UF - there's a reason the Bechdel test even exists), I'd highly recommend giving the webcomic [url=http://gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1]Gunnerkrigg Court[/url] a go (for bonus points it could be defined as UF if you look at it in the right light). It's also pretty amazing.

Terry Pratchett's Witches books, both the grown-up ones and the Tiffany Aching YA series, don't explicitly take on any feminist themes for the most part (the first one, Equal Rites, is as the title implies an exception though it's also the weakest book in the series for me) but by the end of each story, such things end up having been examined quite often.

[Slick Mongoose]

Robin Hobb deals with gender issues a lot. Most obviously in the Liveship books, but also in the Farseer & Tawny man books (although that's a bit more hidden, and pertains mainly to one particular character).