kalpurna

I've just spent a productive few hours browsing around the Girl Wonder website, and I'm feeling a little twitchy about women and agency right now, to the point that I just tried to read a John/Rodney fic and had to close the window when there was an implication that *because* Rodney had suffered an accident that made him unable to produce testosterone, he was going to be taken off the team. I don't even know that it was going to a misogyny place, but right now? I'm not in the mood. Also, there had already been a little too much abortion-is-a-big-step rhetoric for my taste. I do recognize that with mpreg, "Why not have an abortion?" is a plot point that needs to be accounted for, but I'm really pretty intensely squicked by certain ways authors approach the problem, including guilt-tripping and heavy narrative consequences.

Anyway: women and agency. I think there's a reason I don't spend all my time with this degree of awareness regarding such issues, and that reason is that I would go insane. I can't imagine getting heavily involved in comics fandom, if only because it would be so difficult for me to ignore the rampant problems they seem to have in that area.

Even SGA is pushing it with me right now. I just, TEYLA. Why doesn't she spend a lot more time kicking ass and taking names, let alone having dialogue and history and motivations and asfajsdfljkj cannot deal. UGH. I don't GET IT.

Why is it so difficult for people (okay, mostly men) to write female characters? Here's a very simplified version: make a male character. Then cut off his dick. And yes, that's not the very best way to do it, but we're going to start with baby steps here. We'll save "understanding what makes women's experience of the world different than men's" for the advanced classes.

What's really getting to me right now is the idea of women characters existing primarily to provide emotional development and motivations for male characters. Also, rape. Rape is bothering me a lot. Especially rape that gets treated like a joke. (See: motherfucking LUCIUS, pages 1-965.) I just. AGENCY. Women who are people who do stuff and feel stuff and are the fucking point in and of themselves. Why is this hard? Why... what? There are lots and lots of women around you every day. Doing things. Being people. Open your fucking eyes.

Also, the male gaze. I don't like it. Oh, hey, and people acting like anger negates your argument, that's pretty lame.

This is the first time in quite a while that my anger at misogyny and sexism is outweighing my anger at heteronormativity! Funny how that is! (OH, fuck you, Firefox spell-checker, for not recognizing the word "heteronormativity." NOT WHAT I NEED RIGHT NOW, THANKS.) That might be because I also recently discovered for the first time that whole wank from a while back about Ginny being a slut, and defined primarily by her sexuality. According to a male reader, at least. THAT was a keeper. I guess you hit a breaking point.

I'd imagine that all members of disempowered groups feel like this sometimes, have this wave of incoherent rage and helplessness rise up within them. I just want to hunt Frank Miller down and claw his face off, you know? (Although that wouldn't be very effective, come to think of it, given that I have short lesbian-nails right now. I guess biting could work.)

Whatever. I guess I'm going to go read some mina_de_malfois or something.