Gender in Genre IV

[Sci-2]

Being one of the Guys as a Superpower

It's just the sheer number of books and movies and other media that present this picture is so great that it becomes a normalized cultural default. And considering that this exceptional lady is just that—exceptional (what with ass-kicking and vampire-hunting and what not), a very insidious pattern is established: A woman becomes worthy of inclusion into a male domain only if she adopts a masculine notion of strength and associated power signifiers, and becomes exceptionally good at them.

[Isalie]

I'd say that this is a bigger problem irl than in fiction...Don't have time to read it, but is the problem that most super heros are Peter Parkers or that super hero women are Peter Parkers?

[Lian]

Being one of the Guys as a Superpower

This. So, so true.

A minor example - I was reading the summary for "Shadow and Bone", and how it was a book about the orphan Alina who has a friend Mal. Now for some reason I got the impression that Mal is a girl, and was disappointed to discover that he's a boy. As I haven't read the book I have no idea - maybe Alina has there several meaningful interactions with other girls/women, but from the summary it sounded like the central characters (all except Alina) are men.

And I'm really starting to hate the female protagonist whose best friend is a guy.

[Sci-2]

Alina has a few female friendships, so though it is a romance it does manage to have female interaction. Even the "rival" isn't so much a rival for the male as she is a snob.

[Sci-2]

The Other Half of the Sky

The Other Half of the Sky offers readers heroes who happen to be women, doing whatever they would do in universes where they’re fully human: Starship captains, planet rulers, explorers, scientists, artists, engineers, craftspeople, pirates, rogues…

“…they see women as radiant and merciless as the dawn…” — Semíra Ouranákis, captain of starship Reckless at planetfall (Planetfall).

I decided to whet appetites. Below is not only the TOC of the anthology, but also the opening bars of each movement that’s part of this symphony. At the end of this post is a widget designed with great care and flair by Kate Sullivan, our publisher, that displays the excerpts as a beautiful mini-book.

I won’t say more, the snippets speak for themselves.

[Sci-2]

Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test

My scripts had multiple women with names. Talking to each other. About something other than men. That, they explained nervously, was not okay. I asked why. Well, it would be more accurate to say I politely demanded a thorough, logical explanation that made sense for a change (I’d found the “audience won’t watch women!” argument pretty questionable, with its ever-shifting reasons and parameters).

At first I got several tentative murmurings about how it distracted from the flow or point of the story. I went through this with more than one professor, more than one industry professional. Finally, I got one blessedly telling explanation from an industry pro: “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”

“Not even if it advances the story?” I asked. That’s rule number one in screenwriting, though you’d never know it from watching most movies: every moment in a script should reveal another chunk of the story and keep it moving.

He just looked embarrassed and said, “I mean, that’s not how I see it, that’s how they see it.”

[Sci-2]

We Must Love One Another or Die: A Critique of Star Wars

Just as the boys in Star Wars are given the false choice between glory or love, the girls are given the thankless task of being feisty but unthreatening, without any guarantee of clemency for good behavior. Worse yet, since there is only one female per Star Wars trilogy, she has to be mother, sister, and lover at once to her fellow characters. That, of course, is a no-no because it blurs the sacrosanct divisions between virgin and whore—and also because it implies dominance (to underline the transgression, Padmé is explicitly older and of higher rank than her tercel boy-husband). The girl is a threat to the boy's purity of purpose, an Eve in the making; when she crosses the sexual and emotional boundary, she is speedily dispatched, abandoning her defenseless children—the girl condemned to be left untrained in her power, the boy slated to undergo the brutalization already meted out to his father. Once again, Mr. Lucas is swift to punish those who partake of the fruit of knowledge and threaten to become independent moral agents.

eta:

If the Jedi teachings are inadequate even during times of strife, they are even worse recipes for living when the exploits must come to an end (maybe that explains the need for constant upheavals in the series). Men and women who are fully grown humans can pick up weapons during rebellion or defensive war and then can lay them down and go back to being bards, healers, explorers, craftspeople, parents. The American Revolution was all about yeomen standing up to elite troops—as was the Vietnam War. When the din of battle ceases, people can think and start asking questions. The Jedi need to retain their privileges as a self-appointed elite caste, and the clones, bred only for killing, cannot stand down. So if one war ends, a new one must be started. Integration of professional soldiers has always been a major problem in human societies. In Star Wars, the slow pace and hard labors of peace appear as glamorous as doing laundry when juxtaposed with the duels and battles, no matter how pointless these are. But those who have been in real war and its aftermath know how far removed it is from the balletic, antiseptic melees showcased by Mr. Lucas.

[Sci-2]

Things I will not do to my characters. Ever.

Last night, I was asked—in so many words—when either Toby or one of the Price girls was finally going to be raped.

Not "if." Not "do you think." But "when," and "finally." Because it is a foregone conclusion, you see, that all women must be raped, especially when they have the gall to run around being protagonists all the damn time. I responded with confusion. The questioner provided a list of scenarios wherein these characters were "more than likely" to encounter sexual violence. These included Verity forgetting to change out of her tango uniform before going on patrol, Toby being cocky, and Sarah walking home from class alone. Yes, even the ambush predator telepath with a "don't notice me" field is inevitably getting raped.

When. Finally. Inevitably.

My response: "None of my protagonists are getting raped. I do not want to write that."

Their response: "I thought you had respect for your work. That's just unrealistic."

Verity is the bastard daughter of Dazzler and Batman. Toby is what happens when Tinker Bell embraces her inner bitch and starts wearing pants. Velveteen brings toys to life and uses them to fight the powers of darkness. Sarah is a hot mathematician who looks like Zooey Deschanel but is actually a hyper-evolved parasitic wasp. The unrealistic part about all these characters? Is that they haven't been raped.

Needless to say, I was a little bit annoyed, and I still am.

[thistlepong]

That's fucked up right there.

[dietl]

Their response: "I thought you had respect for your work. That's just unrealistic."

:bs:

[Sci-2]

One of the big problems with rape in SFF is it's never actually given much screen time. You just have a healing epiphany - sometimes induced by magic - and you move on.

(Or you have your "harsh boned beauty" slaver thrown into a gang rape by your cool protoganist as a punishment...who's gay, you know, so it makes it sorta okay b/c it's oh so "gritteh".)

It's like the stupid Inara gets raped by Reavers plot Whedon apparently had planned. Was there going to be any development on that or just one episode and we're back to cracking jokes?

[David Selig]

:bang: :bang: :bang:

Apart from everything else, "It's unrealistic" is an incredibly dumb objection towards a plot element in a series in which bogeymen, sasquatches, talking mice and other creatures like these live in modern day New York.

[Toby Frost]

That's weird and a bit sinister, really.

Any writer has an obligation to be as realistic as possible within the rules of their world - in other worlds, not to pull stupid stuff on the reader. That means that you have to give things the weight they deserve, especially if they are things that might insult the reader and/or be bad stuff the reader has actually experienced. Saying "She was raped, and now she's an ass-kicking vengeance machine" is about as sensible as saying "He was in a prison camp, so now he's got X-ray vision!" It tends to leave out the inconvenient - and hard to write - bit about being deeply scarred for life.

[Sci-2]

I think one of the challenges in writing about rape is there are so many reactions to it. Some people are scarred for life, others move on.

There's no right reaction of course but the issue in fiction, to me anyway, is when rape is used to spice up the narrative without any real attempt to examine the implications. The goal [of the troglodyte] is to have it included to satisfy some notion of "realism" but not to have a realistic examination that derails the battle against X or the search for the gods of Y.

[Datepalm]

Seems to me like Troglodyte just really thinks characters getting raped is awesome to read about. The "realism" argument is idiotic. That's not how fiction works, and it's not how genre fiction works in particular. Do these people really not know how to read? How to comprehend and process and enjoy the words that their eyes scan over? Books come in different tones, in different level of moral complexity, different level of darkness. From my marginal knowledge of the book in question, it makes about as much sense to include the protagonist being raped in it as it does to include meditations on the holocaust in The Secret Seven. FFS.

[Galleymac]

What I found creepy was how much the asker of that question seemed to be looking forward to it. Dude. Just write your extra-private fanfic and have done. And DON'T SHOW IT TO THE AUTHOR. *shudder*

[David Selig]

Seems to me like Troglodyte just really thinks characters getting raped is awesome to read about. The "realism" argument is idiotic. That's not how fiction works, and it's not how genre fiction works in particular. Do these people really not know how to read? How to comprehend and process and enjoy the words that their eyes scan over? Books come in different tones, in different level of moral complexity, different level of darkness. From my marginal knowledge of the book in question, it makes about as much sense to include the protagonist being raped in it as it does to include meditations on the holocaust in The Secret Seven. FFS.

One of the books in question is "Discount Armageddon", which is a pretty light and entertaining romp for the most part, in which a rape (especially of the main character who's also the narrator) would've been incredibly out of place. It's a really dumb suggestion.

[sologdin]

adopts a masculine notion of strength and associated power signifiers, and becomes exceptionally good at them.

that's a good article generally, but this bit kinda bothers me. why assume that "strength" or "power" is necessarily masculine?

[thistlepong]

Do y'all know of any sort of spoiler-warning-list-of-books-with-rapes?

[Sci-2]

adopts a masculine notion of strength and associated power signifiers, and becomes exceptionally good at them.

that's a good article generally, but this bit kinda bothers me. why assume that "strength" or "power" is necessarily masculine?

Well, the words "masculine notion" seem to indicate that these notions of power and strength are false cultural artifacts?