Fans and women characters, again (and again)

[owlmoose]

Check out this blog post by s.e. smith, which opens a discussion about why so man people "just don't like" female characters. Which may seem like old ground to some of you, but it lays the issue out so simply and well, and there are some good perspectives in the comments.

It appears the above post was inspired at least in part by this really great article about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the fact that Buffy's character is dismissed by many fans as "whiny". The article makes the (should be obvious, and yet somehow it isn't) point that if half the things that happened to Buffy happened to a male character, the fans would be filled with hugs and sympathy.

I find it telling the way that we are willing to hold Buffy to a different standard. She is a different sort of superhero than we are used to. She is young, and a woman, and was the longest superhero of her kind on the telly. But it just doesn’t seem that we are willing to give her the human space of emotion to hurt the way we do some of our other superheroes.

Why is that?

Yes, why is that? I wonder.

Comments

[seventhe]

I have a half-formed thought about this -- because in FF fandom I hear a lot about how other women fans don't like the "traditional woman" characters, in "traditional women's roles" (in FF, this pretty much means white mages and/or girlfriends), and people like the lady characters who "break that mold" - ie are "snarky" or "cold / ice queens" or "fighters" or "spunky" and it has... always seemed a strange dichotomy to me. Because I consider "ice queen" to be as much of a categorization as "weak girlfriend character", and yeah you can prefer one over the other but let's not pretend you're breaking the categorization mold in doing so?

But my thoughts are only half-coalesced, on this. I DO think people expect 'more' from female characters -- just look at the Rinoa hatred in fandom, when her reaction is the most realistic and genuine reaction in the game (and she's really quite brave, Ira and I are finding as we write her, to do some of the things she did in-game and still laugh)...

[owlmoose]

Agreed, "ice queen" and "weak girlfriend" (and "warrior woman" and "gentle healer" and "everybody's mom"...) are all stock characters. Not mold breakers, just cut from different molds.

I think you know how I feel about Rinoa hatred (do not understand, do not want), and I totally agree it comes from holding women to a higher, unfair standard. Don't be too emotional, but don't be too uncaring! It becomes a game that's impossible to win.