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Last night I made the most delicious pizza I have ever, ever, ever eaten. Garlic olive oil, fresh basil, cheese, and tomatoes, perfectly combined on a homemade crust (my first ever), in an explosion of culinary delight. I had trouble restraining myself from putting another batch of dough together to make more Right. Then.
I think I'm getting this cooking thing!
I've been doing my cartwheels faithfully (for the most part), and today I did one that I could feel was SO much better than the others. Of course, putting all my weight over one wrist is killing it, so I'm going to have to think about either (1) trying my left side, which will be dangerous to everything around me as well as to my own body or (2) something else which hasn't occurred to me yet. Stopping the cartwheels isn't a very good answer, in my opinion.
I've been thinking about female characters and misogyny and hatred of female characters. I'm starting to think that "If you don't like a particular female character, then you're misogynistic" is simplistic and unhelpful.
You guys, I sometimes don't like female characters.
It's true that while I like almost every female character that walks across my screen/page/front lawn, there are some I just can't stand. Sometimes I have good reasons for this, and sometimes I don't.
For instance, I love Kate on Lost, selfish, tough, manipulative, passive, inconsistent as she is. But there's a book I just read where you could argue the female character had those same traits and was no more inconsistent, and I loathed her. I wanted someone to pull her into the big, evil, glass pyramid and cut her heart out.* This is a very atypical reaction from me, because even when I don't LOVE characters, I usually like them alright.
Anyway, I got to thinking about some of the rhetoric I'd seen about Sam Carter, and about how if people didn't like her, then they were WRONG and misogynistic, and probably murdered kittens in their basements.**
Of course, the rhetoric from the other side about how Sam Carter was weak, uninteresting, flawed, inconsistently written, and and and... blonde(!)*** hurt me, because I think that she's awesomesauce and shouldn't everyone?
I have found that I need to be more cautious when decrying someone else's villainy. Maybe that person really was asking an honest question, or maybe they just see a particular action very differently for whatever reason. Maybe they don't understand the argument I'm trying to make because I made it incomprehensibly. Maybe they haven't seen episode thirteen, where My Favorite Female Character Ever takes out a machine gun and kills the bad guys in epic fury! (Or maybe they did and thought it was wildly out of character.)
Maybe they really do have internalized misogyny. I know I do.
I've seen people who denounce internalized misogyny turn around and hate on female characters because they interfered with their ship, or denounce other fans because they didn't love on the right female characters. I've probably done it myself, and for that, I am sorry. (And if you see me do it again, call me on it!)
I don't mean that I am not looking at what people say and thinking "Hmm, I think there's more at work here than just simple dislike." It doesn't mean that I appreciate when people use misogynistic language to try to explain away their dislike or hatred of a female character.
It does mean that it's not a simple female+hate=misogyny equation.
At least for me.
So... I'd like to know what you think.
*To be fair, I wanted every single character in that book to be dragged into the big, evil, glass pyramid and have their hearts cut out. So.
**I never actually saw this argument.
***Or this one.
Oh, crap. I still have to write my Indulgence Fic.
I think I'm getting this cooking thing!
I've been doing my cartwheels faithfully (for the most part), and today I did one that I could feel was SO much better than the others. Of course, putting all my weight over one wrist is killing it, so I'm going to have to think about either (1) trying my left side, which will be dangerous to everything around me as well as to my own body or (2) something else which hasn't occurred to me yet. Stopping the cartwheels isn't a very good answer, in my opinion.
I've been thinking about female characters and misogyny and hatred of female characters. I'm starting to think that "If you don't like a particular female character, then you're misogynistic" is simplistic and unhelpful.
You guys, I sometimes don't like female characters.
It's true that while I like almost every female character that walks across my screen/page/front lawn, there are some I just can't stand. Sometimes I have good reasons for this, and sometimes I don't.
For instance, I love Kate on Lost, selfish, tough, manipulative, passive, inconsistent as she is. But there's a book I just read where you could argue the female character had those same traits and was no more inconsistent, and I loathed her. I wanted someone to pull her into the big, evil, glass pyramid and cut her heart out.* This is a very atypical reaction from me, because even when I don't LOVE characters, I usually like them alright.
Anyway, I got to thinking about some of the rhetoric I'd seen about Sam Carter, and about how if people didn't like her, then they were WRONG and misogynistic, and probably murdered kittens in their basements.**
Of course, the rhetoric from the other side about how Sam Carter was weak, uninteresting, flawed, inconsistently written, and and and... blonde(!)*** hurt me, because I think that she's awesomesauce and shouldn't everyone?
I have found that I need to be more cautious when decrying someone else's villainy. Maybe that person really was asking an honest question, or maybe they just see a particular action very differently for whatever reason. Maybe they don't understand the argument I'm trying to make because I made it incomprehensibly. Maybe they haven't seen episode thirteen, where My Favorite Female Character Ever takes out a machine gun and kills the bad guys in epic fury! (Or maybe they did and thought it was wildly out of character.)
Maybe they really do have internalized misogyny. I know I do.
I've seen people who denounce internalized misogyny turn around and hate on female characters because they interfered with their ship, or denounce other fans because they didn't love on the right female characters. I've probably done it myself, and for that, I am sorry. (And if you see me do it again, call me on it!)
I don't mean that I am not looking at what people say and thinking "Hmm, I think there's more at work here than just simple dislike." It doesn't mean that I appreciate when people use misogynistic language to try to explain away their dislike or hatred of a female character.
It does mean that it's not a simple female+hate=misogyny equation.
At least for me.
So... I'd like to know what you think.
*To be fair, I wanted every single character in that book to be dragged into the big, evil, glass pyramid and have their hearts cut out. So.
**I never actually saw this argument.
***Or this one.
Oh, crap. I still have to write my Indulgence Fic.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 02:10 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 03:26 am (UTC)From:It's one of the reasons that while I HATE the Twilight phenomenon and the books' totally creepy gender issues, I still get the appeal, because it spoke to my inner 13 year old like crazy.
And again, where it becomes a problem is when you have those patterns and language of reinforcement that systematically normalize those problematic aspects. I find the TwiMoms phenomenon much scarier than the Twilight phenomenon, because all those 13 year old girls who swoon over the problematic tropes in Twilight might outgrow that, except that those problematic tropes are being normalized for them by their mothers within a shared context. And that's where it gets messy.
And the misogyny in media fandom works on similar principles, when that reinforcement of problematic tropes about women characters happens in a shared context that normalizes the assumptions that female characters are Sues, are weak, are not interesting, etc.
Okay. I hope that made sense.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-25 04:19 am (UTC)From:This is why I'm not terrified of Twilight in general. Because I read tons of crap when I was that age and think I turned out okay. I think. The moms thing is scary, though. And the weird paraphernalia.
The rest makes sense to me, too. It's an overall effect, though, and not an individual one--that is, people disliking a certain character happens for all sorts of reasons, whereas people disliking many female characters is a negative trend. *reads previous sentence and scratches head* Does that make sense at all?