lyssie | Still cranky...

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Still cranky...

Fandom is why we can't have nice things. Like strong female characters.

Fandom loves cock. Fandom does not like girly bits or women... Fandom claims to like women, and yet, when female characters appear, they're dissected down to their bones and called all sorts of things from 'boring' to 'unrealistic' to 'Mary Sue'.

One of the things the recent FanLib debacle has brought into focus was something that I hadn't really been aware of. I'd probably considered it, but never actually thought aloud. This thing? Is the statistic that states that fanfic is written by mostly women.

And I have to wonder: if that's true, why is so much fic badly-written self-insertions or about men?

Why don't women write well-drawn women in their fic?

Why, if the canon doesn't complete the female character don't they?

Why do women hate female characters so much that they would rather write the males?

I've heard "but the female characters are so boring!" excuse far too many times--and yet, the male characters are just as boring, but fandom will flesh out said characters.

Why do women nit-pick the female canon characters so they don't have to write them?

Why do women hate female characters without giving them a chance?

And the only conclusion I can come to is this: women in fandom don't actually want well-rounded and well-written female characters. They claim they do, but when they're presented with one, they blow holes in her, pick her apart and stomp her into the ground.

So, here's what I think of this: if you're a female fic-writer, and you object to women as sex objects? Stop writing about men. Write about women. Make them real, give them lives, fill out their pasts and their futures.

Otherwise, you know what? You are fucking full of shit.

Nearly forty years of fanfic fandom, and still, the female characters are a minority.

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I'm glad you brought this up. This really made me stop and take stock. I was happy, looking back, to find that a lot of my fic - maybe 50%, maybe not quite - is from the female perspective, and I think (I think) that while my women may be f-d up, they are generally strong, or at least spunky.

But what I haven't done is fill in the blanks that canon leaves. There are a lot of female characters that don't get the full canon treatment. We don't get the quality of backstory on a lot of female characters that we get on their male counterparts. I think it's just been more intriguing to me to get inside a man's head, because it's harder to figure out what's going on in there. But developing the backstory, more fully fleshing out the character, is definitely a challenge when it comes to female characters because we're often given less to work with.

All I can think of is that if producers/people in charge take a 'pulse of fandom' type thing, they're going to look at the fic and the meta and find that people don't talk about the women. They talk about the boys, they talk about them constantly. But they rarely talk about the women. And that's the sort of message that the guys in charge are going to read as, "ok, we don't need women" hell, look at Supernatural! There's not a single recurring female character on that show, and fandom LOVES IT.

...er, which is more ranting. Sorry.

Look, clearly, the answer is for us both to get into real person RPing and slash Margaret Thatcher with Madeline Allbright. THAT'S THE ONLY SANE ANSWER.

So, here's what I think of this: if you're a female fic-writer, and you object to women as sex objects? Stop writing about men. Write about women. Make them real, give them lives, fill out their pasts and their futures.

Otherwise, you know what? You are fucking full of shit.

Nearly forty years of fanfic fandom, and still, the female characters are a minority.

Well, honestly, hon, you know the pseudotheory answers you are going to get; they'll be talk about wanting to "explore access to male privilege" by writing male characters as a visceral, cathartic exercise in de-oppresionizing the women of the world via slash.

*I* want well rounded, strong female characters. Hello? *waves* I always have.

My first real RPing experience was being invited into - get this - a slash-friendly Tolkien RPG back in the day. Now, this wasn't a slash-exclusive RPG, it was supposedly neutral, with the "majority of players electing to play slashy characters."

Which meant that out of forty or so characters in the game, only two were female, namely, Arwen and Nerdanel. Now, me? I had a BLAST playing with Arwen and Nerdanel (and it kinda put my Elf in a bind, because he liked them both so much he was seriously considering giving up his uber-monogamous hardcore Tolkien LACE ways and just flat out proposing a threesome, so what if Nerdanel is four thousand years older than my Elf boy, she's HOT!), and they had a blast playing with me, but literally NO ONE ELSE in the game would RP with them, because they had no cock to put out for porn. And then the hatred towards the female characters started; all the other players in the game were constantly harping on how much they hated all the female characters in Tolkien, and you'd think that they were all baby-raping grasping hussies.

So I left, along with another guy in the game (a gay guy, mind you, that was SICK of all the slash and no plot and no women characters to play with), and we founded a new game, and had a blast playing with a well rounded assortment of males and females, and gay guy and I wound up writing a smokin' hot Melian and Thingol, which is a het couple by the way, and he's the only gay man I've ever met that's REALLY into the occasional hot het sex scene.

Anyway, what was my point? Oh, yes. There *are* people in fandom that want strong female characters, but honestly? I think it depends on the fandom, it depends, more importantly, how you connect to fandom - on LJ, or via some other service/board/forum?

Also, I think I may have RPed with the only straight Dean Winchester on all of LJ the other night.

I have no quick and easy answers, but I will say "hell yeah" to your rant, high five you, and propose a foraging party elsewhere.

Funny, I don't run into the women hate so much in comcis fandom; perhaps that's because, due to the sheer law of averages, we DO wind up with kickass women characters in our fandom?

Look, clearly, the answer is for us both to get into real person RPing and slash Margaret Thatcher with Madeline Allbright. THAT'S THE ONLY SANE ANSWER.

*falls over dead from laughter*

Oh, clearly. Clearly, that is the only way! ;)

When does it stop being "explore access to pointless academic phrases" and yet another excuse not to write female characters?

There's less female hate in comics fandom, because there are more men in comics fandom. Men? Are not going to sit around all day with their thumbs in their asses, picking apart the female characters (they might, however, write sappy love poetry, if the stuff I've heard about the male Rose fans on Outpost Gallifrey is anything to go by.)

Well, I think one of the reasons I tend to stay in comics fandom is that when someone tells me that their primary fandom for RP and fic is, say, Grey's Anatomy and says "OMG, I write Meredith/Derek fic and my Meredith is so cool, she's a DOCTOR!" I can say "Cool! My character is Jen Walters, and she's one of the best lawyers on the East Coast AND she can lift ninety tons AND she can stop an alien armada by flashing, and she does all of this without WHINING all the time, unlike Meredith!"

Also, on the side, who the fuck makes their primary fandom and character obsessions the people from Grey's Anatomy?

MADDIE AND MAGGIE. YOU AND ME, BABY. RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!

...

If I have a hard time connecting or becoming interested in female characters, I'm not allowed to be unhappy about them being treated as sex objects? It's really damned hard to say "I'm going to start liking XYZ, even though it runs counter to what I prefer if given my druthers, just so I can complain about how they're treated." Either you're interested in the character, or you're not.

Take that for what it's worth from a raging slash-whore; there are damn few female characters I get into. I don't bitch about them for the most part, or slam them or bash them or whatever. It's just that there have only been so many female characters I've been able to read at all without sort of going 'meh'. Kaoru from Kenshin, Scully from X-Files, Elizabeth from PotC, and Willow from Buffy. And I've even kind of gone off of Willow a bit.

*shrug* I like what I like, and get annoyed when I want to get annoyed. The two don't necessarily have to be connected, and my tastes in fiction don't have to decide my politics.

Yup. Of course, you actually listed female characters you like, so I suppose you actually like some of them.

Well, yeah. I've never had a prejudice *against* them, but I've had very clear preferences for a long time, and you seem to be saying in your original post that if I have those preferences I'm not allowed to get irritated by blatant sexism in the media I enjoy.

Which honestly, hon I love you to death and you know it, is bullshit.

I often wonder this! Ficathons like

femgenficathon and

femslash07 bring out lots of terrific work, and there are a lot of femslash communities like

saffic, but there seems to be a real dearth of communities centered around a female character - for every

tonkslove there are a million Remus/Sirius communities, though I don't find the imbalance so extreme in X-Men fic.

I was pleased to find in that fic survey meme that 70% of my fics are from a female perspective - and most of the male perspective fics were older - but I wonder how much of this comes down to sexual attraction, acknowledged or not. I'm a lesbian, and the female characters tend to be the ones that leap out of the screen or off the page. Given a choice between fleshing out a dull male character or a dull female character, I know what I'm going to choose.

It's not all about gender - I find Mulder and Scully both interesting but prefer Skinner to either - but I certainly get interested in the female characters first. So why do I watch and read excessively boy-centred Supernatural? I don't know, but my one fic was about one of the many dead women of the show.

I remember, a while back, when the Doctor Who fans on lj realized that there was NO community for Rose Tyler. There was the ship comm, but there wasn't a community just for her. The people who realized this? They were the people WHO HATE ROSE. So, really, some good can come from not liking a character, I suppose.

And, in the end, I do know it isn't all about gender--really. It's just that it gets tiring to watch them worship the almight cock and then complain about how there are no female characters and/or the women are sexualized. And meanwhile, they're not actually writing the women.

No Rose community? WTF? I like both Martha and Rose (and many other companions), and I stay at the very, very edges of Doctor Who fandom. Poking at it, warily, with a long stick.

You're right - as individual viewers, our character likes and dislikes are not all about gender. But, added up, there's a big, disturbing pattern, and a lot of women standing around saying "You write it first." "No, after you."

It's funny to me, that you brought up comics earlier. I think anyone who came from the comics fandom (well, at least from five years ago or so, I'm not sure about now) had more exposure to fic with the women in it simply because there are more men writing over there. Not to mention that you can't throw a rock without hitting a female character in comics.

There are Rose comms now, and Martha comms, too. Which is good.

That's really amazing. I mean, out in tennant-love-land there are some of the most rabid Rose-lovers I've ever seen. (Okay, so most of them are teenagers with no real grounding in reality.) It's amazing that they haven't formed a Bille- or Rose-love community. And, to be fair, most ten!doc communities are really just about David Tennant fanlust, not just the Doctor.

Ah! I have found not only Billie Piper comms, but these:

rose_stills,

goldenroseicons and

rose_lives
So someone must be making up for lost time.

There was also a fic (and possibly more than one) in

tennant_love which was from deep inside Rose's mind, and which was one of the few Rose/Doc fics I could stand to read. (I'm with lilacsigil -- never could abide Rose, but I do like Martha.) Anyway...I think there may be more interest in Rose as a person out there than might be obvious at first blush.

*nods* There are Rose comms now, yep. And at least one was created by the people who hate the ship and aren't exactly fond of her. But they did notice the lack of comm for her and were a bit disturbed by this fact (when, at the time, there were Nine and Ten comms, iirc).

I'm not entirely fond of Rose, but mostly because of the overwhelmingly obnoxious 'ship that's shoved down our throats. But she does have her moments of being utterly fantastic.

I like Rose when she's not all about the men in her life. ;)

Icon love! Jean, Jean, Jean!

Icon love right back at you!

This opens up an interesting stream of thought for me. I have never been a big fan of slash. I prefer a nice, hot, het-sex fic myself. And when I write fan fic, it tends to be that. The other thing I find myself grinding my teeth over is the fact that, with many fics, as soon as the action starts to get hot and heavy, SHE is just rarring at the bit to give HIM a blow job. Does he return the favour? Does his compliment her on the beauty of her c*nt? hell, no. If she stops before he comes, he just hefts her up on the nearest handy surface and starts banging away. If she helps him come up, she's just pleased as punch to gobble up all that "yummy" semen. *FEH!*

Now, I'll tend to write about male characters (and yes, usually from the female perspective) because I'm het and I tend to get my big crushes on the male characters. However, I'll gladly give someone like Sarah Jane or Jo as much page time as the Doctor (or the Master), because they're the ones who get to be "us" in the story (just like in the original programme).

Having read your views, though, I will probably be more conscious in future of just how I'm writing my female characters. Don't look for any fem/fem from me, though. :-)

HAH. And you know, as

lucyparavel once pointed out to me, I tend to not even remember blowjobs. otoh, I'm all about the cunilingus in het fic. I suspect it's a mostly conscious bias against men getting lots of attention. Hrm.

It's funny, I wasn't thinking about this in terms of femslash. It actually stemmed from catching a comment from someone saying Elizabeth in Pirates was a Mary Sue, followed by fandoms hatred of Gwen from Torchwood. And they're not the first female characters I've seen tarred and feathered for not being some perfect ideal (which, if they were perfect, would STILL get them tarred and feathered) of womanhood that female fans want.

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*nods* And the thing is, if we want equality and balanced portrayals, we need to have the stupid women and the happy women and the sappy women and the dumb women and the egotistical women and the ones you want to slap before they even open their mouths, too. They can't all be ball-busting feminists, because, I'm sorry to say, they aren't in real life.

And you're right, though. Because if a woman is actually all of those things, she'll still get nailed--Sam Carter, from SG-1 has this problem. Now, a part of that was because the writers only had her for a canvas, so they painted her with broad strokes and tried to make everyone happy.

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lyssie.livejournal.com - 2007-05-30 07:06 (UTC) - Expand

First I want to say how much I'm enjoying reading the comments you've started generating. The discussion is opening my eyes as a writer as well as a reader. I try to keep all my characters well-rounded. I have a real problem with stereotyped, one-dimensional characters at any time (with the possible exception of the Daleks; though heaven knows they get waaaaaay overused.)

Now den --
It actually stemmed from catching a comment from someone saying Elizabeth in Pirates was a Mary Sue, followed by fandoms hatred of Gwen from Torchwood.

WTF??!! Elizabeth a Mary Sue??? Getoutahere! I *love* Elizabeth. She's a gutsy, brave, headstrong (and I mean that in the best way), and self-assured woman living in a time when women were not supposed to be any of those things. And not only that, she's *gorgeous*. In a film that, with the exception of her, is all-male, it's good to have a strong female character the little girls can identify with. *sheesh*

Are these same people the ones that moan about Hermione Granger? (I'd rather moan about the way Cho Chang is written...but that's just me.) What about Jenny Weasley? I've yet to watch the Torchwood series (though I've got it here on DVD somewhere...) But still...my complaint would be not the quality of female characters we have to choose from, but the quantity.

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lyssie.livejournal.com - 2007-05-30 19:24 (UTC) - Expand

I've never understood female fan indifference to hatred of female characters, whether they're well-written and have depth or not, either. With some fic writers my pet theory is that they slash the pretty men that they themselves would like to boink and see any canon female love interests as competition, which is batshit insane, because hello, fictional characters, but fandom and sanity so seldom occupy the same area code.

I just can't get interested in writing anything without a strong female protagonist. And I RP female characters almost exclusively, which gets me accused of really being a man. Go figure.

Fandom and sanity really don't occupy the same area code. Sigh.

I'm wondering what the stats are on men playing female characters and vice versa... Of course, the men aren't filling in the gap of fic about women, sadly.

Heh. Well, you know how I feel about this... but, you're right. As I've muttered about on and off, I'm really tired of hearing this "We're subverting the text by taking the female characters out of it!" that I've heard from slash writers. Now, of course, all slash writers aren't this way, but as soon as someone spouts some Woman's Lib bull they got off a website when I ask them why they've not only *removed* the woman, but more or less castrated a male character to serve in her place, the only answer I can come to is that they are uncomfortable with themselves. And hey, this is not all their fault. We live in a society where male sexuality is something to be encouraged, but female sexuality = bad. If you're a woman comfortable with yourself and your body, you're a whore (as much as I hate it when people bring up the 'Madonna/whore complex). Basically penis = good, vagina = BAD BAD DIRTY. And thusly, slash is a Way Around the Shame, rather than the Liberating Force some people claim.

I don't hate slash, I just hate it when people lie about why they read/write it.

Er... anyway... I think I was saying... hrm. Women are catty creatures. Step into any HS, and you learn that quickly. Men may be pack animals, but women are harpies who are in constant competition. I suspect for the ones who do have that mindset, any female characters, and especially confident, self-assured female characters come across as subconsciously threatening. Cutting them down, pulling them apart, revealing all their flaws and them doing away with them is a twisted act of self-preservation. It's a means of reassuring one's own self-esteem. And it's only the ones who really are self-assured and confident themselves who don't feel this need to 'eliminate the competition.'

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Well, when I say that, I mean in terms of what is presented to women as acceptable. Full frontal female nudity isn't included in films for women, it's for men, and the reason seeing a penis is such a big deal is because men have their own issues with genitalia, and, lo, the film industry is still largely male oriented.

Ah....but female full-frontal is legs-closed, thus hiding the vagina and all its rose-petally beauty. Male full-frontal as shocking, but acceptable is limp and non-threatening. When either the legs are open or there is an erection, then it enters the realm of pornography (in the current way of thinking).

Oh SING IT!

if there was one thing that kept me OUT of PotC after DMC was all the ranting about "Mary Sue" Elizabeth. And Mary Sue Kara. And Mary Sue ANY-FRELLING-BODY. Were people celebrating that Elizabeth was being rather anti-historical and wielding a sword and flintlock pistols like they weigh nothing? No. She was "too perfect" and therefore despised, and yet all her faults were ALSO labeled. ARRRGH. It frustrates me so much. (couple that with the popularity of a (het) pairing that I can't stand and the general derision of MY (het) pairing (because Will/Elizabeth wasn't cool enough, yanno), and I could barely dip my toe in).

Fandom can't EVER look at a female character and see her as just that character, it always becomes weighted down with that character having to hold the entire weight of femininity -- and somebody's always pissed off. Sure it'd be nice if there were more women characters, but even that turns into an excuse, doesn't it? BSG has four main female regular characters, and there's nowhere near four times the meta or female centered fic for BSG than in something like Supernatural where there aren't any female regulars at all. (And because I'm fair like that, SPN fandom going by the main newsletter watch list, is also three times bigger, so factoring out the size, maybe we do write more fic with women in them, but... anyway... I had a point. I know I did.) Lost my rant in the detail.

To a tangent of sorts: I'm continually surprised there aren't more slashers in BSG, with the prevalence of good-looking guys, but I guess that's because they've mostly gone to SGA and SPN, and only dabblers like me are around.

Admittedly I'm in fandom more often for the pretty, kick-ass guy, but combine that with a pretty, kick-ass chick and that is how things oughtta be (thus Kara/Anders, yes). If I ruled the world.

it always becomes weighted down with that character having to hold the entire weight of femininity
Which is why I like shows/books/comics with more than one female character, to avoid the "one symbolic woman" problem. (Well, I don't watch BSG, because I'm scared of apocalyptic shows, but otherwise, yay BSG!) It's a problem in the source material (see any movie where the heroine is super-tough until suddenly she needs saving for plot reasons) and it's a major problem in fandom. Bechdel's law should be compulsory for all shows, then I'd have more fantastic women to read and write about. (Supernatural, I'm looking at you - more Jo, Ellen and Mary, please!)

Yeah, as much I enjoy watching Supernatural (which I do, for the pretty and the mytharc), I've found I can't write fic for it because I don't have an "in." The addition of Jo and (especially) Ellen helped, but when I found myself genderbending Sam because that was the only way I could deal with it, I threw up my hands and stepped back to just watching the show. But then again, some people can write epics with Dean/Tessa the Reaper, so I guess it's my own deal.

I used to be more into comics but the return of the company wide crossover, an upsurge in gratuitous violence (IMO), and a baby all made following the stories too hard. But yeah, Jen Walters, Jean, Birds of Prey, etc. were some of my favorites for awhile. :)

The Mary Sue Elizabeth tag annoys me as much as Mary Sue Sam Carter does. For one thing, the men are just as Mary Sue. But it's ok, because they're BOYS, so fandom never rants about it.

Elizabeth/Jack? Because, honestly, Pirates is one of the best examples of why there should be OT3.

BSG (and Farscape) are two of the exceptions to the rule, generally. Although they're both dominated by a het pairing. But the other interesting thing is that, despite the prevalence of women, there aren't as many of them as there are of men on BSG. I tried to do a "88 Lines about 44 Women" filk for BSG, and discovered that there aren't 44 women to fill it with. Not even 44 bit-part women. Even counting KACEY. So while it seems weighted towards women, that's only in the main cast.

I think BSG gets more fic and meta about the women, if only because there's enough variety, that you can find one woman in the lot that others will like.

Trucco has brought the slash, I imagine that may start to change (also, it'd be kinda hot if he started kissing boys, but that's my Torchwood-influenced brain noting that).

We should rule the world. Obviously. (also, Sam Anders gets more fic outta me because fandom doesn't like him)

hmmm, could you do 44 MEN for BSG? No question there are more men, but 44, that's a lot. I can get to 25 pretty easily, but after that I'd have to go ep-by-ep to come up with them.

Sam Anders gets more fic outta me because fandom doesn't like him
Hee. And I have the same stubborness. It explains Sam, it explains my liking for Will and WIllabeth, and even Sinclair probably. But I don't think increasing popularity is going to make me go away from them -- I'm pretty fixed unless canon does something to change it.

It would be indeed rather hot to have Sam going around boykissing. Too bad I like Sam/Kara and Helo/Sharon better than Sam/Helo or I'd be writing the last all the time. *g*

And God Sparrabethers... the 'ship that frelling ATE the Fandom on LJ. think rabid Sam/Jack-ers and you've pretty much got the image. It was one of those things where it was SO popular and SO rabid, that I hated it on general principle. I KNEW there'd be a ship war when spoilers started leaking for AWE (cuz, dude, how much more obvious could it be that J/E wasn't going to "win"?), and yep, that's what happened. So much hating on Will and Elizabeth, both together and separately. But Jack got to skate through. At least it's done now, and the crazies are jumping off the fandom bandwagon.

Were people celebrating that Elizabeth was being rather anti-historical and wielding a sword and flintlock pistols like they weigh nothing? No. She was "too perfect" and therefore despised

ICAM, as much as Jack was amusing and Will was pretty what made me love Pirates was Elisabeth, I was so expecting her to be the love interest/ damsel in distress like 80 percent of the big action/blockbuster movies and then she end up being so much more, and then I go check the fandom reaction to such a kick ass character, and why, why I was surprise that was mostly about Jack and slash and how much of a mary sue she was, and of course how evil and mean she was when she tricked poor innocent Jack...WTF Why was I even surprise again?

and my big issue with AWE is about her, I hate that after all she's done, her last shot in the movie is her waiting for Will, Couldn't they just show her ship or something? even if I know there is no way she would spend 10 years doing nothing, I would like to see that, but that's the problem with having no imagination, like my sister tells me;)

It's late, I'm tired, but let me put out a hearty "AMEN!"

What's sad is that what you've pointed out has been said before and it seems that as time goes on the bashing of female characters just seems to get worse. I remember Nostalgia bringing up this topic, what two years ago, and boy, did people go off.

Admittedly I write fic for the RRP (relationships, romance and porn), but I have to have my female characters strong and likable (if not wholly human and as flawed as the men) or I can't write.

Anyway it's late, I'm tired and I can't get another coherent thought out.

Oh, god. I do remember Nos' talking about this (she's also the one who went, "...there is no Rose community. WTF."). I think I remember agreeing with her, too. Though I might have been not particularly vocal about it.

I had no coherency left last night. *g*

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For some reason, Farscape fans seem to be bewtter about this (Lyss pointed out to me that Aeryn is the one female in fandom that doesn't get trashed by the fanbase, really). I think this is possibly due to both the strength of the sorce material and the fact that as a whole, they seem to be smarter than your average fan...

Well, Farscape is one of the few exceptions. It's very hard to find people who think Aeryn sucks.

Although I'm sure there's tons of ooc Aeryn + Baby = Painful Romance Novel Cliches fic out there. I'm sure there's less than there is for Sam Carter, though. Or even the Harry Potter girls.

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lyssie.livejournal.com - 2007-05-30 19:56 (UTC) - Expand

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lyssie.livejournal.com - 2007-05-30 20:13 (UTC) - Expand

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I didn't used to be so fearless. I've just reached a point where I want to hit things, and thus, my anger at fandom gets the better of me. Not that I think it needs to be ignored.

And sadly, I'm sure very few male characters get death wished upon them (Jonas Quinn is the exception to that rule, and fandom hated him because he replaced Daniel Jackson). It's only the women who come under that sort of fire.

Men tend to be less annoying in this respect.

These are things I've wondered about ever since stumbling into the world of online fandom 5 or 6 years ago. Before that my fandom experience was hanging out at the comic shop discussing the minutia of continuity or why such and such is cooler. All of my fandom friends were guys. Since coming online it seems the fandom is dominated by women. I was and still am mystified by what seems to be an almost overwhelming prevalence as slash in almost all fandoms. I've heard all manner of reasons, but it's just not something I've ever quite gotten my head around.

I'm not even sure where this is going other than to say that I've also found it strange that fandom seems to dominated by female fans and yet most of the emphasis is on the male characters. I won't say in certain fandoms that I'm not more drawn to the men than the women, but it's a matter what about the character interests me, not whether it's a man or woman.

Part of it is I think that a lot of women don't like other women in general. Some women feel they have to constantly compete with other women. Women seem more likely to pick one another a part than guys are. No matter how well written a female character is there will women who want to tear her apart for no other reason than she is a woman, particularly if she's a strong woman. Perhaps this a cynical point of view, but it's what I've found in fandom and real life.

To paraphrase Jane Austen, "You are very severe on your own sex."

I think all of us who came from comics fandom first are probably a little less likely to dismiss the women. As I noted above, there's a larger number of men in comics fandom, and back in 1999, they were still actively writing fic. About EVERYONE male or female. There's also the fact that, in comics, you can't throw a rock without hitting at least one female character.

I'm not even saying the slash is the problem, though. Some of that is a kink people like, some of it isn't. Whatever floats your boat. What I am saying is that I can find fic for almost every male character out there, some of it simply fleshing out his life. But I can't do the same for the female characters, because women are boring, less interesting, the canon text doesn't flesh them out, whatever.

Also, I think you're right (and

nique, who made comparisons to high school, iirc), women are conditioned to think that they should be in competition with each other, so they pick faults. Which is really sad, given that said conditioning was because women were competing for men. ~~And all of these so-called feminists who write slash are simply playing right back into the patriarchy.~~

*coughs* Sorry. Got a little wanky there.

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Ugh. The men in straight porn are ugly, yes.

We can objectify the men (and women) all we want. I'd just like to be able to throw a stone and find fic about female characters that doesn't demonize them, demoralize them or ignore them completely in favor of the worship of the almighty cock.

But... Lesbians write boyslash. I've been told that, a lot, in various places.

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lyssie.livejournal.com - 2007-05-30 20:59 (UTC) - Expand

I love, love this post so much and all those amazing replies. I have to say my involvement with fandom is mostly about reading fics in about a dozen shows/books/movies/comics so I'm at least aware of what's going on in most of them and the thing that they have in common is what I hate the most about fandom itself, the inherit sexism.

I'll never understand the intense hatred reserved for most female characters, the eww het mentality that I find in stories and meta, is like the guys can't do anything wrong and women are always to blame and they can never win, no matter the characterization and considering the percentage of women in fandom this is just appalling.

Bottom line is I need to have a strong female character for me to actually love a show/movie, it is the main reason I like but I'll never love SPN, it just doesn't work for me regardless of how pretty the boys are, and also the reason I love OT3 but don't read much slash.

We women rock so much, now if only fandom would realize that;)
*off to read the rest of the replies*

they can never win, no matter the characterization and considering the percentage of women in fandom this is just appalling. This is exactly what made me write this post. Because I keep seeing this commentary on how there aren't enough women/they're boring/unrealistic... And yet we're a fandom that's mainly women. And we're not writing about women, we're writing about men.

It's a mental disconnect that made me go "WHAT." In one of the fanlib posts on

life_wo_fanlib, someone made the comment that most men aren't interested in writing fic. Which they aren't, sadly. But if they were, I wonder how much of their fic would be about women--not that it would fill in for the lack of women writing women realistically.

I don't need a woman, all the time. But I do want there to be a good reason for her not being there--although in SPN, I'd need a woman, since I find both males boring.

It's hard to change forty years of ingrained "women aren't interesting" sadly.

Word. I'm a little mystified by the way some fans insist they're being progressive and edgy by stripping all the women from their fanfic 'because the writers can't write women well' (on their show). As if it's a feminist stand or something.

Ohhh kay. Whatever, I guess, but I prefer to make my feminist stand by taking the female characters and writing them in a way that makes them MY version of a strong woman. I prefer proving the writers of a show wrong!

I don't know. This is a topic I could rant on about for months, so I'll just stop now and say that I think

nique's comments are rather insightful.

*g* Yeah, I figure you and I could fill PAGES with ranting and commentary, at this point.

The funny thing is, we're getting more and more women in media -- Painkiller Jane has Mo' and Jane (and five guys), Torchwood has Tosh and Gwen (and three guys), Doctor Who has Rose, Martha and Jackie (and one guy); SG-1 has Sam and Vala, Lantis has Liz and Teyla... Do we need more? Hell yes.

I'm getting off-track, though. *beats Ron and the SG writers for not putting more women in*

In conclusion, fire bad, tree pretty. And I shall now go menace the cat with my Replicarter figure.

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Still cranky...

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