I had thought, as a sort of exercise, of writing a short story that would be very pro-feminist, while deliberately failing the bechdel test. I couldn't think of a good setup up for it though...
I had thought, as a sort of exercise, of writing a short story that would be very pro-feminist, while deliberately failing the bechdel test. I couldn't think of a good setup up for it though...
This thread has given me a lot to think about. The protagonist in my previous novel was female, and there are several incidences of her hanging out with oth
However, my WIP is from a male POV. While the female characters are all well-rounded, have plenty of agency, and there isn't a bad-ass "not like the other girls/guy with boobs" among them, they are fairly siloed off from each other. It's not that they never interact, but I'm not sure it would pass the Bechdel test as easily as my previous novel.
I had thought, as a sort of exercise, of writing a short story that would be very pro-feminist, while deliberately failing the bechdel test. I couldn't think of a good setup up for it though...
Maybe the "women who doesn't have much use for most other women" trope comes out of our experiences living in a culture that is transitioning somewhat from being very patriarchal but hasn't shucked all its male-biased values yet. Being a girl or woman who likes traditionally male things has not only become acceptable, it is often held up as a point of pride. It is seen asrepudiation of old norms that women were only good at/for a limited number of things (being sweet, pretty and caregiving).
Add to it the complex mixed messages we still all get about the importance of female appearance and whether or not the traditionally feminine things some of us do still genuinely enjoy (makeup, long hair, high heels, bright colors, soft fabrics, tight-fitting clothes) are results of patriarchal brainwashing to be appealing to men at all times, or whether they can be genuine expressions of our femininity for our own sake.
I still haven't worked out that last question for myself.
Along with the man-with-boobs thing
That would be easy. Just have a female character constantly getting dumped on, ogled, blamed and mansplained by men, and have her fight back. She could even converse with other women about what louts all the men were. It'd be extremely feminist and wouldn't pass Bechdel.I had thought, as a sort of exercise, of writing a short story that would be very pro-feminist, while deliberately failing the bechdel test. I couldn't think of a good setup up for it though...
Sure, why not?General request for the thread: can we choose a different phrase to describe this phenomenon?
Before I try I want to say that your posts are ones I consistently read carefully as they are so clear, wise, and to the point.General request for the thread: can we choose a different phrase [than "man with boobs"] to describe this phenomenon?
Hmm. Crypto-male? Darn. Feeble attempt. I'd love to have such a phrase. I hope others can do better than me. I too have long wanted a better term.
One GofThrones comment. Arya Stark saying "Girls are idiots." That is HER viewpoint, not one generally propagated throughout the book. The series has many strong and very different women, both good and bad ones, who deal with a dangerous time and place.
I found it interesting that in Season 7 she and her sister Sansa Stark came to appreciate and approve their differences, Arya the warrior with cutting weapons and Sansa the warrior with social weapons, who nevertheless discovered a deep affection for each other.
This is the prevailing theory these days, but I have to say, it feels completely wrong to me. I acknowledge this is entirely due to my own experiences growing up. I was an atypical girl in the 1970s, but when I tried to conform - dress properly, wear makeup, etc. - it was the other girls who informed me in no uncertain terms that my attempts were laughable and I should be embarrassed to even be trying.
So yeah, I learned to take pride in being "not like other girls," because that's all other girls left me to be proud of. It wasn't the patriarchy that soured me to pretty girls who knew how to wear makeup, it was the girls themselves.
(And yes, I do recognize them as victims of patriarchy, just in a different way than I was. But I'm still viscerally suspicious of skillfully made-up, well-dressed women.)
Based on the culture my 14-year-old is absorbing, makeup isn't just for girls anymore, and it isn't (always) about conforming. I have to say, it's kind of marvelous.
Arya Stark saying "Girls are idiots." That is HER viewpoint, not one generally propagated throughout the book. The series has many strong and very different women, both good and bad ones, who deal with a dangerous time and place.
General request for the thread: can we choose a different phrase to describe this [man-with-boobs] phenomenon?
Maybe this is meant to be an example of show!Brienne’s naivety, in that she's seen so little of the world that she assumes women are inherently weak and cowardly (because they're female? because they're not brought up and trained to fight?). But by then she’s already met Catelyn Stark, who I think is a strong woman. So once again, I’m disappointed at the internalized misogyny—which, once again, seems to be more a product of the show rather than of the book.
Not to derail the thread (which I think I already did earlier!), but yeah, this has always been my problem with GoT. I actually quit watching around S3, despite enjoying some of the characters and finding the acting to be uniformly stupendous. The constant rapey subtext wore me down.
Having seen the odd recent episode (Spouse still watches it), I can say they've made an effort to dial back a lot of the misogyny. But the worldbuilding does, to a certain extent, depend on it, and that's a disappointment.
Not to derail the thread (which I think I already did earlier!), but yeah, this has always been my problem with GoT. I actually quit watching around S3, despite enjoying some of the characters and finding the acting to be uniformly stupendous. The constant rapey subtext wore me down.
Having seen the odd recent episode (Spouse still watches it), I can say they've made an effort to dial back a lot of the misogyny. But the worldbuilding does, to a certain extent, depend on it, and that's a disappointment.
I still can't forget that scene which shows Craster's Keep after the mutineers take over, and women are being casually raped in the background. They have no names, let alone personalities. They're just there to be raped. That's one episode I wish I'd never watched.
Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.
I just randomly stumbled across a short list of these "tests" on Pinterest that had two I hadn't heard of before, but make sense:
The Anti-Freeze: No woman assaulted, injured, or killed to further the story of another character (for the curious, it's called Anti-freeze because the act of harming or killing women to push someone to act is called "fridging" after Green Lantern's girlfriend, who was murdered and shoved into his refrigerator for him to find)
The "Strength is Relative": Complex women defined by solid characterization rather than a handful of underdeveloped, masculine-coded stereotypes.
General request for the thread: can we choose a different phrase to describe this phenomenon?
I hate the labelling of personality traits as "masculine" and "feminine" as they are just stereotypes within our culture, not universal truths and there are many people who don't fit those stereotypes.
Do they really? I doubt it.
This seems to be another case where you don't get the point or context of the test, and again, it's not a scientific examination that will provide a readout telling you 'your story is 57% suck.' Girlfriends/wives in comics in particular, fiction in general, tend to have a terrible time of being present for no other reason than their deaths being cheap, easy pathos. They have no character, no arc, no agency, they exist simply as a prop in the story. It's the 'sexy lamp' thing. If you can replace a character in a story with a lamp and the only change it has on the plot is that now the character is out for revenge because of his broken lamp, that's a failure on the test.
Not to derail the thread (which I think I already did earlier!), but yeah, this has always been my problem with GoT. I actually quit watching around S3, despite enjoying some of the characters and finding the acting to be uniformly stupendous. The constant rapey subtext wore me down.
Having seen the odd recent episode (Spouse still watches it), I can say they've made an effort to dial back a lot of the misogyny. But the worldbuilding does, to a certain extent, depend on it, and that's a disappointment.
Seconded.I submit "Fembro" for consideration.
I agree. It seems like the ratio of scenes featuring naked, tortured women to men is about 100:5.Not to derail the thread (which I think I already did earlier!), but yeah, this has always been my problem with GoT. I actually quit watching around S3, despite enjoying some of the characters and finding the acting to be uniformly stupendous. The constant rapey subtext wore me down.
Having seen the odd recent episode (Spouse still watches it), I can say they've made an effort to dial back a lot of the misogyny. But the worldbuilding does, to a certain extent, depend on it, and that's a disappointment.
I rarely watch detective series of any kind because it seems like every time I tune one in, it begins with the naked body of a murder victim who is inevitably conventionally hot (young, slim, attractive). I guess we're supposed to care because there was a victim, but I just see it as an excuse to put boobs that have no agency on the screen. It's such a huge cliche.