I may be sorry I mentioned this, but...

[rj_anderson]

For those interested in such things there's an ongoing discussion on fictional gender politics, with remarks about LotR and Narnia (among others), in the blog.

Comments

[pameladean]

I'm not going there, it would raise my blood pressure something fierce. (I read your entry -- there is no way I am even looking at the rest of the discussion.) But I'd like to commend your immense good sense. We don't agree about gender and probably never will, but I don't feel you are either crazy or destructive in your views. This may sound like rather faint praise, but it isn't.

Pamela

Re:

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

This may sound like rather faint praise, but it isn't.

Nor did I take it as such -- as the fact that I read this about twenty times and nearly teared up over it might suggest. Thank you. The kind words are... very much appreciated right now.

I sometimes wonder why I get myself into these things. Except, of course, that it's not "these things" I'm looking for when I post about sensitive topics. I always hope it can be an interesting and informative discussion that everyone can get something positive out of even if we don't all agree, but it never quite seems to turn out that way...

Gender Roles in fiction

[(Anonymous)]

Heya,

Well, I've read most of the discussion on your blog, and would like to comment. :) I'm not going to comment from a religious standpoint--I hesitate to talk about religion at all in a public forum for personal reasons. So, I'll talk about this from a literary/cultural standpoint.

Do I see a sense of gender bias in contemporary literature(and by 'literature' I include books and visual media such as television)? Yes.

SF&F seems to be the worst offender, although it's getting better. I admit,it bugs me a bit when characters are 'assigned' a gender based on personality traits, i.e. female characters are softer, male characters are more rough-and-tumble. Arrrgh...okay, the second thing that happens a lot is a character is assigned a gender based on reproductive function. I.E. Obviously, if a character is going to have a child, she needs to be female(if we're dealing with a human society, anyway). However, it drives me nuts when an author *makes a character's reproductive ability their only defining trait*.

That's what gender bias is to me. An author who takes a certain set of (sterotypical)traits and makes a character out of them.

But, like I said, I think this is changing. The television show Babylon 5 is fantastic for well-rounded female characters. The main female character in that show(Delenn) was an extremely strong individual and retained that throughout the series. In that case, Delenn was *never* depicted as being less. Oh, her femininity wasn't ignored--it was incorporated into the character.

I don't know if I'm explaining this well. Let's see. My favorite female characters(my favorite characters, period)are ones whose gender is not incidental to who they are, but is not the be-all-and-end-all of *who* they are. If that makes sense.

Aeryn Sun from Farscape is another character like this. Her gender isn't hidden, by any means. But she's not *defined* by it. She's just...Aeryn. (and when I say defined, I mean these characters aren't burdened by what typical media/cultural standards consider 'feminine'. They are written as individuals first. Their gender informs who they are, yes, but they are 'human' first)

One of the things that I find in Alias fandom that amuses me greatly, btw, is the split on Irina Derevko. It seems that if you think the character is 'evil'(and I'm not using the term in a religious sense, more as a cultural definition), then you also think that the character has slept with everyone in creation. Not everyone has this opinion, but a lot do.

And it surprised me. Because, I thought we were past that bias in US culture. ::shrug::

Anyway, there's my two cents. I hope I didn't offend. :0)

Re: Gender Roles in fiction

[(Anonymous)]

I forgot to sign my post. Whoops! It's me, Taiamu. I wrote the above. :) Sorry about that.

Re: Gender Roles in fiction

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comment! I replied to this a couple of days ago and then LiveJournal ate it (garrrr!) and I didn't have the heart to try again right away. However, I'm here now...

I agree there is still a gender bias in contemporary media. How many well-drawn female characters are there on television, for instance, compared to the number of ditzes, shrews and bimbos? And even on higher-quality shows there's a tendency to exploit the female characters' sexuality in some way to boost ratings. (Mind you, the same is happening to the male characters nowadays -- if I see one more scene on ENTERPRISE that features Trip or Archer running around in their electric-blue underwear, I will scream. Equal-opportunity exploitation! Oh, there's an advance [/sarcasm]).

I also agree about Delenn being a strong female character -- definitely a woman, even possessing some of the traditional "softer" feminine qualities, and yet by no means underrated or lacking in influence because of it. Mind you, I was a bit more of an Ivanova fan myself. :)

The disagreement in my blog, though, really wasn't about whether sexism exists in literature (I think we all agree it does), but rather about what constitutes sexism and how seriously it might affect the perceptions and biases of the reader. At least, I think that was what it was about. :)

And word on the Irina thing, too. Even if she turns out to be "evil" (in terms of her allegiances and motives), it doesn't prove she's sexually voracious or indiscriminate. Sure, Irina uses her sexuality at times to disarm and distract her opponents, but so does our "good girl" Sydney. The idea that the villainness (if she is that, which I don't think she is) must of necessity be a tramp is cliche, pure and simple. And I think JJ is smarter than that. Most of the time, anyway.