Snaps and snails, and puppy-dogs' tails

 

It bothers me that even in very good fics by authors that I actually know support women’s emancipation, there can be found these undercurrents planted by the patriarchate way of thinking. Every time one of the protagonists jokingly comments something along the lines “if I had a daughter, they wouldn’t be allowed to date before they turned thirty” or threatens their daughter’s potential boyfriend with shotgun (or refers to a shotgun in this issue), it makes me cringe.

 

If the character spewing these things comes from the kind of circumstances where this kind of thinking is seen as normal for the character, I can grudgingly accept it (like for example in Brokeback Mountain fics – both the era and the region the characters come from support that kind of thinking), but when it’s said by otherwise pretty forward thinking characters in modern times, it just makes me grind my teeth. I know most of the time it’s supposed to be a “joke”, but unfortunately the subconscious thought behind these kinds of jokes is that a) women can’t take care of themselves, b) they are more or less the property of their father, and c) that women – especially young women – should not be having sex because it “ruins” them – and thus all boyfriends are bad.

 

Let’s tackle these. Yes, obviously women are physically weaker than men (in general). But where comes the idea that women need protection? Wouldn’t it be more productive of the fathers to teach us to protect ourselves, as well as to teach men to respect women? Because really, the ground issue here are those men that do not respect women – who see women as something less valuable than them, or maybe something not really human at all – who see us as things, or pets or something else they are entitled to by simply existing (this really baffles my mind, how can anybody think they are entitled to “have” another person?)

 

At a time when mostly everybody in the western world has pretty easy access to some kind of contraceptives, it just sounds idiotic to me that women couldn’t acceptably have sex just as often, as young and with as many partners as men do. I know my growth environment has given me a very “liberal” views on this subject – quite many of my female classmates had some kind of consensual sex for the first time between ages 11…15 (yes, their boyfriends were mostly of the same age as them). I had sex the first time when I was sixteen.  And for clarification, by sex I mean any kind of activity by another person that happens between your (or their) legs by mutual acceptance – I refuse to talk about “virginity”, which is an archaic and medieval concept and doesn’t define a damn thing.

 

I’m not saying I would want anybody (either boys or girls) have sex as early as some of my classmates did, it’s better for your psyche to wait that both you and your partner are emotionally a bit more mature (I’d say at least 16..18). Also, it’s better to have a stable relationship before plunging in to your first time. But the rules in my mind are the same to both girls and boys. If anything, considering that boys generally mature more slowly than girls, they should be a bit older than their female peers when starting their sex life.

 

I know we (slash writers) like to write about men, because – well – the more men the hotter it gets. And considering that female characters are the underdog from the start – there are (usually) a lot less female than male characters, and they have (often) less significance – this leads to the situation where women characters sometimes become totally insignificant.

 

Internalized misogyny and subtle antifeminism are actually pretty serious problem in (slash) fanfics – there are a lot of female characters that get undeserved hate that would not be there if they were men – mainly their crime is being the current/ex-girlfriend/wife of one of the leading male characters. Let’s see the ones that first come to mind from my fandoms… Melanie and Lindsey (QAF), Keller (SGA), any girlfriend (the Covenant), any girlfriend of Sam and Dean’s that stays longer than one episode (Supernatural), Tauriel (the Hobbit), the ex-wives (Brokeback Mountain), Tonks (Harry Potter), Kate Argent (Teen Wolf). Yes, I know Kate Argent is a canonical bitch of the first order, but she gets more hate than Voldemort and Sauron together, and I’m sure she wouldn’t be so universally hated if she was (a good looking) male.

 

Not to mention how easily women can be totally erased from existence in A/B/O –fics. That would really require it's own separate post.

 

So could we, as writers and readers, to remember that female characters have a right to their existence without being vilified, and the right to be treated equally to male characters? And could we spare a thought to whether we really want to write/read stuff that more or less subtly gives support to the archaic patriarchate beliefs and rape culture? I’m not saying we shouldn’t write about these issues at all, but we should think whether our writing gives the air of accepting those things or whether we are handling them as actual problematic matters in society.

 

(This whole rant sprang from one asshattery comment uttered by John Sheppard in an unnamed SGA fanfic.)