Only Men Are Allowed To Be Perfect

[mysticalchild_isis]

Further Thoughts On Fandom Misogyny

You know, I'm disturbed by how often the male characters who treat people (especially women) like crap are the fandom darlings. They become the woobie who can do no wrong, because he's deep, he has layers, he's had bad things happen to him, he's misunderstood (especially by all those evil female characters). They often have huge communities devoted to them and metric tons of fic describing how wonderful and perfect they are. I'm not trying to criticize people for loving the characters they love. We all have our preferences, and deeply complex characters are interesting, and often feel more real.

What's really bothering me here are the gender politics that go on in fandom, and the double standard between the way female characters are treated versus male characters.

Let's take Tony DiNozzo from NCIS. Yes, I like him too. He is a complex character, he's had some wonderful moments of heroism, and he has struggled with some tough times in his life. But let's be honest: he's rude, he's dismissive, he bullies people, he objectifies women constantly, and he also tends to blame women ("it's always the wife "). Before anyone jumps in to accuse me of misunderstanding poor Tony, let's take a step back and deconstruct things a bit.

Take some time and really, truly, and honestly think about this: if Tony was instead a woman, let's say Tonia, what would you think about her? When she constantly objectified men while simultaneously dismissing and blaming them, how would you feel? When she bullied, belittled, and tormented Tim, would it seem just as funny (because, after all, she really does love Tim like a brother, right)?

There are some people who can truthfully say they'd love Tonia just as much as Tony, because it really is just about what they like about the characterization, regardless of gender. Tonia has probably also gained some brand new fans, who like her because she turns the dominant paradigm on its head- they'd enjoy watching a woman constantly objectifying men, and running roughshod over everyone.

But be honest: how many people would call Tonia a slut, a bitch, a whore, or a harpy? How dare that uppity woman torment poor little Timmy! Who does she think she is?

Let's try an opposite sort of example, and take Rose Tyler from Doctor Who. Rose consistently gets accused of being a Mary Sue, a selfish brat, a chav, and all sorts of other similarly offensive things. Imagine, however (honestly and deeply), if Rose was instead Ryan, played by someone like Bradley James. Let's say we now have a young man who doesn't have much in the way of education, but who pick things up pretty quickly, someone who's compassionate and friendly, and who loves the Doctor deeply. Ryan is suddenly reminding me a lot of a modern version of Jamie McCrimmon. How many people hate on Jamie, or call him a Gary Stu, or accuse him of being selfish for loving the Doctor? Just how many of the people who despise Rose would hate Ryan just as much?

Try taking any female character you dislike, and transforming them into a man... how does this change how you look at them? There are still going to be plenty of characters you dislike, regardless of gender, because they're still a cat hater, or a Yankees fan, or they look just like that math teacher who used to call you stupid. But how much time would you spend bashing them? Do you think there would be whole communities devoted to hating them? Would they be constantly vilified in fanfic?

But what does it matter if we bash female characters? They're only fictional, after all. I'll just say this- I don't think it's a good idea to spend a lot of time disparaging and despising women, even if they aren't real, as that's the sort of thing that can become a habit.

Yes, I'm oversimplifying things, being judgmental, and the people who see this are almost certainly the last people on earth who need to read it, but I had to throw it out there.

Thoughts, critiques, attacks, opinions?

You're very welcome to share this/link to it.

Comments

[madelynnm.livejournal.com]

I haven't read through your OP yet, butttttt I gotta ask, were you the F!S person from yesterday that posted about the misogyny?! :D

[mysticalchild_isis]

Nope- as a rule, I mostly avoid Fandom Secrets. What was the post about?

[missdeanna.livejournal.com]

Here via verasteine

To be fair, I think that when people like characters who are jerks, there's often a lot of justification to make them seem better (which you kind of touch on). In the Harry Potter fandom, it's not that uncommon for Draco and Snape fans to write those characters as being much nicer than they are in canon, or even make arguments for why they're misrepresented in canon. I think there's some uneasiness with liking a character who really isn't a nice person.

I've never felt like I had to defend a character in order to like them. All of the jerky characters I've liked have some sympathetic or tragic qualities that make me like them, but I don't see any point in pretending that they're nice people or that I'd want to know them in real life.

There is a huge double-standard when it comes to female characters, and it bothers me. Female characters seem to be disliked for a lot of things that get taken for granted in male characters. A while back on fandomsecrets, people were talking about how they didn't like Olivia on Fringe because she was boring and it wasn't realistic that she was so special. I pointed out that Walter and Peter, who get a lot of love, are both very special when it comes to their intelligence and abilities.

To be honest, I have no idea how much I buy into it. I'd like to say very little, especially since I tend to like female characters who have the same qualities I like in male characters (is that an issue in itself? Does it mean that I prefer "masculine" females?), but it's hard to tell sometimes. Our feelings don't exist in a vacuum.

[mysticalchild_isis]

Female characters seem to be disliked for a lot of things that get taken for granted in male characters.

Very much this.

Our feelings don't exist in a vacuum.

Indeed. It's extremely difficult to sort it all out.

Basically a tl;dr that translates as YES, THAT, WORD

[eyra.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom!

I'm actually pretty baffled by Tony. I really love the version in my head (have you read Rictus? That's the closest fandom version to the one in my brain), but then the one on the show keeps making me feel vaguely disappointed. But then, not all of that is because I keep forgetting that Tony can be a dick in small-minded ways -- I also think NCIS characterization just tends to be really uneven on everyone except Gibbs.

Then also, NCIS's icky gender issues are sort of confused by their tendency to conceive really, truly awesome women who are actually pretty badass, but then the writers seem to just sort of...flail around, not knowing what to do with them or how to keep them that way in an actual plot line.

Like many people who quite like Tony and occasionally ship Gibbs/Dinozzo, I'm really ambivalent about the possibility of canon Tony/Ziva. But not because she's in the way of an OTP OMG, and not because I think he's "too good" for her. Ziva deserves better than a relationship with him. He's a fascinating character and sometimes I love him, but he's a dick, and he's a dick to her, and it kind of makes me queasy.

To answer your question, though: holy shit but I would adore Tonia. Or Toni, as I've also seen her called. But then, I love always-a-girl stories and Tony Dinozzo is precisely the kind of hyper-masculine character that is so interesting to me to see transformed like that. It's one of my favorite ways to explore characterization, to see what's different and what isn't different at all. I actively sought out Toni stories, and have loved a couple. And I would love to see that character on TV.

And while I don't have as much to say on Doctor Who, I loved Rose. I actually think she was a bit of a brat in the first series, actually, but that didn't detract from her bravery or compassion and was one of the reasons I loved her. She was real.

Re: Basically a tl;dr that translates as YES, THAT, WORD

[mysticalchild_isis]

Then also, NCIS's icky gender issues are sort of confused by their tendency to conceive really, truly awesome women who are actually pretty badass, but then the writers seem to just sort of...flail around, not knowing what to do with them or how to keep them that way in an actual plot line.

Oh hell yeah.

Yeah, when I was discussing this bit:
Tonia has probably also gained some brand new fans, who like her because she turns the dominant paradigm on its head

I was thinking a lot about Xena, and the way she was very much the barbarian hero, but a woman, and how that trope turned upside gained her so many fans.

[lydia-petze.livejournal.com]

My thoughts, you just illustrated them perefectly. I actually started out really liking DiNozzo but as he became more and more unpleasant, it actually began to put me right off the show altogether. I don't tolerate that behaviour from people in my workplace, why would I enjoy watching it.

I think the gold star example of this trope would have to be Snape, however. I loathe the character to the point of insanity, because I can't stand people in positions of power who treat those under them so badly. One or two teachers like him are the reason I went from a happy, successful student who loved going to school to someone who used to spend Sunday afternoons in tears because she didn't want to go in. It took me years to claw my self esteem back after high school chased it out of me. Why he's the fandom darling, I truly haven't a bloody clue.

[mysticalchild_isis]

I'll admit that Snape was definitely kicking around in my head when I was composing this post, but I didn't feel qualified to discuss him, as I've never been involved in the HP fandom.

I do what I can, no more...

[dharma-slut.livejournal.com]

And what I can do is write new women characters in new worlds-- AKA "original fiction."

The benefit of this is that I do not need to warp the canon in order to make the women more proactive,and I do not need to let my stories be men-driven, and I do not need to weep as yet another tv series fails the bechdel test....

(hi from metafandom)

Re: I do what I can, no more...

[mysticalchild_isis]

It is indeed an excellent way to go about things. My roommate and I half-jokingly discuss writing our own feminist YA novels. Maybe someday we will.

From metafandom

[buongiornodaisy.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm disturbed by how often the male characters who treat people (especially women) like crap are the fandom darlings.

This happens in the Persona 4 fandom and is honestly the reason why I stopped watching the main comm of that fandom. They had an entire week dedicated to celebrating the fandom darling, who is an unreserved misogynist and implied to be a rapist.

Yeah, no. Say sorry, fandom. I got better things to look at.

Re: From metafandom

[mysticalchild_isis]

Indeed. I've had to leave fandom comms before myself because I just couldn't take the level of constant and unrepentant misogyny.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Here from metafandom, and this is an AWESOME post.

[mysticalchild_isis]

Thank you :D

[mawaridi.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about this topic myself today, inspired by a post higher up on my flist (I'm here via metafandom, by the way *waves*). In the post - written by a person I like very much and who actually went on to discuss this very fallacy later in her post - the OP was frustrated by comparisons between Twilight and Beautiful Creatures because someone had suggested Beautiful Creatures was like Twilight with the genders reversed. She gave many reasons why the comparison was inaccurate, but also said Ethan (the "male Bella" of Beautiful Creatures) "is kind of a dopey idiot in a way that made me stop and go "Oh, Ethan, lol," in a few places". And I can totally relate to saying "Oh , lol" when male characters behave like dopey idiots, but I think this is a good indicator of how many of us are often so much more critical of female characters than male ones. I have a lot of problems with Twilight, other than Bela being a dopey idiot, but I wonder if I would have rejected her so strongly if she had been a male character?

Another example I can think of (that I don't think has been mentioned here) is Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory; I find Sheldon endlessly endearing, personally, but I wonder if he would have nearly so many fans if he were a socially inept, asexual, hugely self-important woman who was constantly insulting her friends and prioritizing her own neurotic requirements over the needs of the people around her? Temperance Brennan of Bones is the only female character I can think of who comes remotely close to this characterisation, and she is significantly softened by being a very sexual being and having (sometimes weridly OOC!) emotional moments in most episodes. She fumbles over social cues at times, but she's far less awkward than Sheldon, and yet I rarely hear fangirls squeeing over Bones to the extend that they squee over Sheldon.

Dean Winchester has been mentioned already but Supernatural fandom in general is a major indicator of this phenomenon for me. Countless female characters have been introduced throughout that show's run and most of them have been despised by female fans. Part of that is bad writing and unexamined misogyny on the part of the writers, but I can't help thinking that part of it is female characters being held to an impossibly high standard of behaviour by female fans. Castiel is adored by fangirls and yet he has done, in my opinion, far more ethically questionable things than some of the hated female characters have done, and without much questioning from fans at all.

Comment too long, whoops!

[mawaridi.livejournal.com]

Continued from previous comment!

I wonder if perhaps the problem has good intentions at it's heart; that we are more critical of female characters (who are, let's remember, not real women) because we are wary of being sold inferior, stereotypical characterisations of women by misogynist writers, and we feel the need to fight the slightest hint of that at every turn. I think it's important to be aware of and reject shoddy and sexist characterisation (of both female and male characters), but I do think fans reject female characters on the slightest provocation and accept deeply flawed male characters with a lot of handwaving and excuses about why it is okay to like them.

I have found myself becoming attached to some female characters, like you said, precisely because they turn stereotypes on their heads, taking characteristics we are used to seeing (and accepting) in male characters and applying them to women. I loved Erica Hahn on Grey's Anatomy (although I believe I'm unusual in this) because she was so caustic and aggressive and sure of herself, it was refreshing. I like Cristina for similar reasons; I enjoy having a female character to watch who is ambitious, self-interested and who rejects "feminine" interests like motherhood and displaying her emotions because they just don't interest her. I mean, her character is kind of a horrible person in a lot of ways, but she would be if she were male as well, and I like her anyway. It's also nice that, unlike Hahn, Cristina can be caustic and aggressive and not secretly a lesbian! It shows, to me, that the writers of the show understand lesbianism and particular gendered behaviours aren't necessarily linked; Cristina is a lot like Hahn in her "unfeminine" attitudes and behaviour, but she's straight, because sexuality isn't the defining factor of behaviour for either of them. But that was kind of a tangent, sorry :)

[silverkit.livejournal.com]

Paging Supernatural fandom. Supernatural fandom. You have a call!

I love this post. I think this can be applied to so many of the shows I love, but SPN comes to the forefront of my mind the quickest. Because no one can hold a female character up to impossible standards while doting on the male characters like SPN can.

Two seasons full of them introducing women who were supposed to be side characters (Jo and Ellen in season 2 then Bela and Ruby in season 3) and those characters got hated on like you wouldn't believe. They got hated on before they'd even shown up!

Meanwhile Bobby and Castiel are BELOVED. Bobby has been showing up since season one, and Castiel is the new fandom pet.

And I'm not saying you must love Jo, Ellen, Ruby or Bela or that every single fan even likes Bobby or Castiel (I actually like the whole group of them if anyone was curious), but you have to admit that the pattern is a little suspicious.

Here via verasteine's journal!

[mysticalchild_isis]

I have to admit I haven't ventured into Supernatural, probably in part because I keep hearing all these stories about it.

[troubleinchina.livejournal.com]

I'm really bothered by the questions you ask here. When you ask "Just how many of the people who despise Rose would hate Ryan just as much?", I don't know how to answer it. It becomes proving something unprovable, since there isn't a "Ryan" in New!Who to compare to. [1]

Plus, I keep thinking about all the other things that would change drastically if Ryan's gender is the only thing that changed about his storyline. Ryan would become an openly gay character on the show - a show that's shown to mainstream audiences as a kids' show. He wouldn't be tragically dead or tragically evil at the end of his story arc. The Tenth Doctor would have a love interest who was male - and it would be explicit rather than the implicit bits of Jaime/Doctor. (I haven't seen previous Who.) You'd have a gay man in an inter-racial relationship from the beginning - which means Mickey would be a gay black man, something I don't see a lot of (actually, I can't think of any) in mainstream television. You'd have a canonically bi-romatic Doctor, because the Doctor's love for Ryan would be part of the same season that included his romance with Madame du Pompadour, and later seasons would show his implied romance with River Song.

There are huge impacts on the story if Rose is Ryan and nothing else changes, and while they are tied into gender, they are also tied into sexuality and what stories people are allowed to tell on "children's" television.

I think it's more interesting to discuss how people have reacted to characters within a show that share many of the same traits. Why is Gwen "the whore of Cardiff" on a show that has Jack Harkness as the lead? Why is Jack's unrequited longing for the Doctor okay, but Martha's unrequited longing for the Doctor makes her weak & wishy-washy? (And are those two things again tied into sexuality as well as race?)

[1] I actually have little opinion on Rose as a Companion, although I found the "Doctor pines after her for a season and a half afterward" a bit tiring.

[mysticalchild_isis]

I definitely over-simplified things by switching Rose to Ryan without considering the huge impact it would have. There's a huge amount of meta that could come from that- as you say sexuality and what stories people are allowed to tell on "children's" television. It's possible (even likely) that Mickey might have been Michelle, which would have also vastly shifted the landscape of the fandom.

[sailorlum.livejournal.com]

Here via ravenstar84

I don't watch NCIS or Doctor Who, but I've seen enough of what you're talking about in Harry Potter fandom to grok to your vibe. *nods*

Try taking any female character you dislike, and transforming them into a man... how does this change how you look at them?

This sounds like a fun thought experiment. :) Hmmm, let's see...I'll choose Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter (she's pretty much a Complete Monster type of character and is one of my least favorites along with Voldemort). *ponders male!Umbridge* LOL, well, the only thing different is now I have made the connection between cat loving baddie Umbridge and cat loving villains Blofeld from the Bond films and Dr. Evil from Austin Powers. Umbridge didn't have a Mr. Bigglesworth, but she did have a bunch of animated kitten plates and a cat Patronus, LOL. If Umbridge had been male, I might have made the connection sooner (I've seen more male baddies than female baddies have a Right Hand Cat, although that's technically subverted with Umbridge).

[featherxquill.livejournal.com]

Or imagine if Snape were a woman. A female teacher who was an unattractive bully who appeared to enjoy belittling the main character and was often cruel. Actually, that does sound rather like Umbridge, doesn't it? Of course, that's oversimplifying things - by the end of the series, we know far more about Snape than we ever learned about Umbridge, but it's still interesting, since most rabid Snape fangirls were that way well before we knew all of his history. That's not to say I don't like Snape - I do, a lot - or do like Umbridge - I try to have an open mind when it comes to reading fic about her, but I just can't like her - but it's an interesting thought.

There is definitely the double standard just as much in HP as any other fandom. Rita Skeeter is one of my favourite characters, and I once wrote a fic for an exchange that paired her with a character one particular reviewer couldn't resist reading. She left a comment to that effect, that enjoyed it despite thinking Rita Skeeter was one of the most deplorable characters in the whole series. I didn't mind someone disliking my favourite character, but I was kind of surprised by the comment, considering I knew that the fan in question was a huge fan of Fenrir Greyback and various Deatheaters.

[moljn.livejournal.com]

I agree with all this, although I think the hate for Rose might be rooted as much in what happened after she left, both on the show and in fandom, as in her actual character. Doesn't mean it's not unpleasant to read, of course, because it's really hard to separate the issues.

Concerning some earlier comments (and I don't recall if or what you replied to that, so this is just in general), I don't think it's helpful to say that the double standards tend to come from the younger segments of fandom, though. It's true that most of us have changed from when we were teenagers, and I'm guilty of the occasional ageism myself, but there is simply too much misogyny coming from fans who are in their thirties, forties, and older, to think that it's "just" or even primarily the younger fans.

[mysticalchild_isis]

Oh, I agree. I think a lot of the dislike for her character came with the way she was written in S2, and then the way the Doctor was written in S3.

There's actually a discussion somewhere upthread involving the much older fans, so we've got the ageism at both ends. I think it's easy for people to write off the sexism as coming from teens "who don't know any better" (or, as the discussion upthread says, on bitter 40+ women), rather than consider there are all sorts of people of all ages participating in this.

[webbgirl.livejournal.com]

Here from the ncis_newsletter.

So I started and stopped several responses to this post. I have very conflicted feelings about it and about the use of Tony as the example. I am a Tony fan, however I'm not blind to the character's faults and I have massive issues with how the character has been presented for the past couple of seasons. He's gotten progressively dumber and more juvenile with a few rare exceptions. He's also taken his share of lumps from the fandom as a whole. A couple of years ago there were threads and threads on one of the mailing lists about how he should be fired or in jail.

I'm also one of those people who gets called a Ziva Hater and gets told that it's because I don't want her to hook up with Tony. And that if I haven't ranted for pages about anything and everything that Tony and Gibbs have done wrong then I can't rant about Ziva. Anything else I say tends to get dismissed with that by folks who assume they know better than I what my motivations are. To be clear, I'm not accusing anyone here of that. Just giving a little perspective of where I'm coming from.

I will fully admit that I tend to hold many female characters to a higher standard. This doesn't mean that I want them to be perfect. I would just like them to be well written. With NCIS as the example, there are a total of TWO regular female characters. Perhaps because of the disparity, I have a lot less tolerance for suffering poorly written ones.

With NCIS, I suppose that I should just give up because there have been some pretty hefty gender issues going back to almost the beginning. I guess I just keep holding out hope that the writers will fix them. Sadly, the females on the show (with the exception of Abby who I also currently have issues with) tend to end up in three categories. Love Interest. Evil. Dead. Some can even be all three. (I liked Agent Lee dammit!)

I liked Ziva in the beginning. I liked that she could hold her own against Tony and throw him off his game. Then she started mooning over him and apparently lost all ability to uncover the weakest undercover op in history in the process.

I also have issues with the fact that she was excused for behavior (knocking over a wounded teammate and pointing a gun at them) that would have been loudly decried had the gender roles been reversed. It's like the writers want to tell us that she's kick ass but pull out the "she's just a girl and therefore emotional" excuse when it suits them.

Sorry, I know this went in a different direction than the original post, but I wanted to give one perspective of why in this case I do rant louder about a female character than a male one.

I do want to say that I agree there's a level of misogyny that happens in fandom as a whole that should give many of us pause. The comments I've seen when a guest actress is even announced for some shows is cringe-worthy.

[mysticalchild_isis]

I will fully admit that I tend to hold many female characters to a higher standard. This doesn't mean that I want them to be perfect. I would just like them to be well written. With NCIS as the example, there are a total of TWO regular female characters. Perhaps because of the disparity, I have a lot less tolerance for suffering poorly written ones.

::nods:: There's been some discussion in this post about the difficult line that exists between disliking a female character because she is poorly written or stereotyped, disliking her because she doesn't live up to one's personal ideal, and disliking her because of internalized misogyny. The lines are often very blurred, especially as characterization can vary from writer to writer.

[yuchun.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom!

When are the male characters ever written up as being blinded by love? And fueling the angst on the show? I think if you had had a male character portrayed as wanting to deal with the romantic situation (and getting distressed about it), he'd be seen as a whiny character (a lot of people disliked the Doctor for pining over Rose for so long). On women it works a lot better than it does on men, even if it's a hit/miss for a lot of people.

For me I have a harder time liking female characters, because they will often be written as the lesser species that has this Teen Twilight mindset come out and play whenever the guy needs to come out on top. Even though I'm not equally as apt to scrutiny when it comes to men (because the world has grown up finding a lot of bad qualities/actions excusable when it comes to them. I've even tested this theory out on a lot of fandom folk to see if they would like me any less if I behaved as a rampant jerk-face—which admittedly, in itself, is a jerk thing to do—and I've had people like me better for those things whereas they would complain about the same attributes in their female friends), but I will be turned off by the negative character traits if they appear. Albeit nobody can be composed of just good traits, but to glorify a person's negative side seems to be an utterly backwards mindset. I don't want to find myself disappointed in fandom, but a lot of people need to stop being stuck in the 50's.

The one thing I dislike (in either gender) is when a character is written to be the amazingly Bad Ass of Bad Assery. It just reads/plays off as Mary Sue to me. Only a few people can portray this role, and that's always because they tend to fail at their attempts of being Bad Ass or that it backfires. (Which then isn't a character who is Bad Ass.)

Who I like and who I dislike is based on character (and a shallow level of me thinking the character is hot, but that in turn comes from character personality. Sue me, I'm gay. I'm allowed to be biased to the male persuasion!). A character grows with you, in good and bad. If I dislike a character I won't stop watching the series and I won't come at fen comms with a mallet to bash my hate away. If my best friend started dating a person I could not stand, I wouldn't stop being friends because of their dating choice. Seems rather petty. Hate for a person (fictional or real) can't overshadow the love for someone. Cue a cheesy 'Love conquers all' song.

For example, Rose was my favourite companion, but I couldn't stand any of the others, male or female. On Billie Piper's new series, I love Belle/Hannah and Bambi but I can't stand the male main/supporting characters (the clientele excluded) because they're just being a bunch of twats.

But at the end of the day, the "worst" character might become my favourite simply because of their bad behaviour. See my icon for reference (Nathan from Misfits).

I hope this comment made sense with all the abuse of the parenthetical side-notes. That and I just had to comment on this entry despite my brain still trying to boot up fully from sleep. ;)

[mysticalchild_isis]

For me I have a harder time liking female characters, because they will often be written as the lesser species that has this Teen Twilight mindset come out and play whenever the guy needs to come out on top.

This is definitely a huge problem- poor writing/characterization of female character... but it bothers me that the same bad writing applied to male characters is much more easily ignored or forgiven.

Albeit nobody can be composed of just good traits, but to glorify a person's negative side seems to be an utterly backwards mindset. I don't want to find myself disappointed in fandom, but a lot of people need to stop being stuck in the 50's.

This is definitely one of the things that confuses me. Especially the way the "bad" guy often is the fandom darling, which, fine- villains can be interesting- but said character usually has reams and reams of fanfic in which he gets rehabilitated... often at the cost of women. I suppose redemption is a fascinating trope, but why does so often involve misogny?

[vikingwriter.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Here's the thing.

There are lots of characters I like who, for lack of a better word, are jerks. (House, Tony, Snape in later books, Bones) Some of them I would never want to meet in real life, because I'm not sure I could restrain myself from slapping them silly or throwing them out a window. (House, Snape) Others I would love to meet because in addition to being a jerk, they are smart, funny, wicked quick and show great potential. (Bones) Others I just can't stop watching to see where they end up. (Tony, Bones, House)

I put up with more from my fictional characters because, well, they're fictional. I do not have to interact with them, I can just watch them. So maybe I don't hold them up to the same standards. (I put up with Harry Potter being a whiny teenager because I'm not his mother and so I could just watch him change. And I think he did.)

As for switching genders on characters? I think that would be like imagining House didn't have a limp, or Ziva wasn't Israeli, or Tony wasn't born to a rich family. I don't believe people are born with traits genetically attached to their sex chromosomes. But we are raised as male or female (for the most part), and are thus treated accordingly. And so, we grow up with different expectations, different pressures, and so forth. So while I don't personally like overbearing bitchy women who try too hard (in my real life or in fiction), I understand the drive to have to be better, to have to prove we're as good as the boys (which means, use dirty tricks more than they do), to have to go through life taking no prisoners. Personally, I feel there's a better/different/more effective way, and I want to live my life on my own terms, not in reaction to the world around me. But if everyone I knew or read or watched was like that, I'd be bored senseless.

And I'm not sure if any of this makes sense, matters, is applicable, but I'm throwing it out there regardless.

(Oh, and am here from ncis_newsletter. Thanks for the interesting conversation.)

[mysticalchild_isis]

As for switching genders on characters? I think that would be like imagining House didn't have a limp, or Ziva wasn't Israeli, or Tony wasn't born to a rich family.

You're quite right that it's a total oversimplification. Someone else upthread pointed out that either of the examples I used would hugely change the landscape of the shows. I just wanted a quick thought experiment to make people stop and think for a minute.

via metafandom

[nothingbutgold.livejournal.com]

nu!kirk came off as a pretty big jerk to me in STXII when i first saw it (and that was the first trek thing i'd ever seen, so i wasn't able to compare him to TOS!kirk). pretty ridiculous that there's so much uhura hate in the nu!trek fandom since she's relatively assertive or whatever, i don't even know which qualities they pick on her for (besides messing up the slash OTP of the fandom -- and the misogyny that results from that type of thing happening is a whole other problem), but kirk gets a pass because he's a ~hottie.

Re: via metafandom

[mysticalchild_isis]

Being a jerk often even seems to be considered an admirable trait in male characters (especially attractive male characters). Of course, the women (as discussed in the thread about Dr. Pulaski, on pg one) tend to just get called bitches.

[jack-infinitude.livejournal.com]

I think that when it comes to female characters, we -- female fans, that is -- tend not to like them because it is so easy to see ourselves in their moments of weakness. I think that's a part of it, anyway -- it's so easy to see the ugly parts of ourselves reflected back at us in the behavior of female characters...and truly, who wants to know the ugly parts of themselves?

I also think that it is the natural behavior of fans to excuse the bad behavior of their favorite characters. Tony's not my favoritest favorite, but he's pretty high on my list...and hence, I don't find his behavior as annoying as when I first started watching NCIS. (Though I'm going to agree with those up-thread and say that I find my personal head!Tony to be more satisfactory than what I get on the television.)

[mysticalchild_isis]

truly, who wants to know the ugly parts of themselves?

This is very true.

[gwendolynflight.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I don't get the character hate thing. Why are you watching this show if half your energy is devoted to finding reasons justifying your hatred of the female characters? Nuts, I tells ya.

[mysticalchild_isis]

I highly agree- I think my energy is better spent in more positive ways- but the sheer volume of bashing that goes on in fandom shows that plenty of people seem to find some sort of pleasure in it.

[dejla.livejournal.com]

I can only applaud.

Gibbs can be a pain in the ass, but Tony irritates me so much that I have a hard time watching him. The more that I watch NCIS, the more I find that how they treat the female characters really bothers me. It almost seems as if it's a kneejerk reaction by the writers or the editors -- they can't write an intelligent woman who's not obsessed with something in her past or has some sort of flaw that makes her doomed to fail or die. I'm thinking Paula Cassidy here.

I like women. I want to like female characters on a show. I don't usually start watching a show because of the male leads -- Mentalist is an exception, I admit -- I watch it because of the women.

Thank you so much for this post. I feel better now.

[mysticalchild_isis]

Thank you.

Yeah- NCIS disappoints me so often, because they will come up with these awesome, strong, wonderful female characters... and then they screw them over. I wish I could sit down with the writers and point this out to them.

[quean-of-swords.livejournal.com]

HERE HERE.

I think that some people are unaware of these enculturated ideas of femininity and masculinity that are a part of all of our brains. I've liked many a bastard-y male character, and found myself disliking female characters with similar qualities. Sometimes, I catch myself and analyze it... But yeah.

I COMPLETELY agree with you on Rose. She's never been my favorite character on NuWho, but I never thought she was a Sue or Horrible. What's the point?

Yeah, and the fact that it's the girls of fandom doing most of the major Hating makes me very unhappy. Why do women have to hate other women? Its stupid competitive nonsense, it's divisive, and pointless.

[mysticalchild_isis]

Why do women have to hate other women? Its stupid competitive nonsense, it's divisive, and pointless.

So much this.

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

All of this, yes.

And a female-Tony would be early-Ziva, and I seem to recall fandom's reaction was to call her all sorts of evil things (and it wasn't just from Kate fans).

[mysticalchild_isis]

Indeed. I don't imagine that female Tony would be hugely popular.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thelostcity/]

I haven't read any of the comments to this entry, so maybe this question's been asked, but I'm curious as to how there is any difference between "fandom misogyny" and "real life misogyny"? You say as that's the sort of thing that can become a habit, but I think you have it backwards. It's already the habit, we the viewers are just carrying it over into our fictional spheres. It's just "more okay" to say it about a fictional character because it's only the "anonymous" person (even if it's a logged-in user) who's going to complain, as opposed to that real-life person who will call you on it. Someone you can see and hear and touch (and who gets in your face) is going to be more of a deterrent than a "random" user posting "Hey! Not cool!" even if they were to say all of the same things that real-life person would.

Until societies stops hating women or feeling threatened by them or whatever, people are going to love the characters that put down women, because it's the cool thing to do. And then they get away with it because "he's got issues" or "layers" or any of the numerous excuses you posted. That and because the woman is "such a bitch/prude/whore/insert adjective-of-choice."

Sorry if this isn't coherent. (FYI - I'm female, and I agree with you, and Tony is one of my favorite characters, too (don't watch Doctor Who))

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thelostcity/]

Also, NCIS is written almost entirely by men (as is a lot of television, I think...but I don't actually know so don't quote me on it), which has a LOT to do with the way female characters are written/portrayed (as in: poorly) and why the cool kid/frat guy is just SOOOOOO AWSUM!

[clytemnaestra.livejournal.com]

There are so many awesome points in this post & the comments!

I'm not even sure how I navigated my way here, honestly :P But I'm glad I did.

I have lamented about this trend in The Big Bang Theory as well. That show has a metric fuck-ton of gender!fail, but one of the things that really gets me is how the smart, nerdy women (or rather, woman, because as of s2 there was only one ... haven't seen s3) have to be either sluts or bitches or both. In order to be on the same level as Sheldon & the gang, Dr Leslie Winkle is both bitchy and portrayed as slutty - which gets into the whole conceit of "women who like sex in and of itself and have more than one partner are automatically sluts, while this is totally normal behavior for men" - Gag!
The one exception that I've seen is Dr. Barnett, who becomes Leonard's girlfriend in s2. She is a Medical Doctor, and when she enjoys sex, it's a positive thing. But, she's also clingy and not Leonard's "true love" or whatever.

I haven't seen NCIS or Dr. Who, but there are so many other examples of this on tv! Thanks for pointing it out, even if the people who need to read it probably aren't the ones reading!

[mysticalchild_isis]

which gets into the whole conceit of "women who like sex in and of itself and have more than one partner are automatically sluts, while this is totally normal behavior for men" - Gag!

Oh yeah- don't even get me started on the double standards when it comes to sexuality. Nightmarish.

I haven't seen the BBT myself, but it's rare to find TV shows that aren't chock full to the brim of this sort of thing.

Glad you found your way. :D

[mysticalchild_isis]

It's definitely more about how society looks at gender roles than anything else... but it would be nice if people thought more about why they like/dislike certain characters, instead of going with the knee-jerk reaction.

[lucifuge-5.livejournal.com]

This is a really interesting post. Despite being in the due South fandom for quite some time (first as a lurker and then become active), it wasn't until earlier this year that I stopped to think about Stella Kowalski. FWIW, she's one of few dS characters that I'm not crazy about. I don't hate her (never have really), but I've never warmed up to her either.

IMHO, the dS fandom as a whole tend to woobiefy RayK and demonize Stella. Granted, a lot of the grr aimed at her is partially due to how she came off (dismissive and cold of everyone, bordering on rude to Fraser)in her three show appearances. Some of the old school (which to me means pre-2007) stories have her be unbelievably bitchy to the point that I wondered *what* was it that RayK ever saw in her. But then, we never get to hear her side of the story, do we? It's true that we get some hints of how intense her relationship with RayK has been since they first met (I'm thinking of the dS episode "Strange Bedfellows"), but we never really hear the reason she broke the marriage up.

Now, if one was to reverse the genders (making RayK a woman and Stella a guy), it would be quite . . . disturbing. So, in this case, even though the general fandom perspective might be skewed, I like them both in their canonical genders.

A note of interest: I actually wrote an AU ficlet from Stella's POV (!) that, while cracky (basically she owns the club that is in "Chicago Holiday"), has made me understand her a LOT more.

Sorry for the babble, but this is a topic that gets me all rattled up.

[mysticalchild_isis]

It's true- Stella isn't an easy character to like, but switching the gender dynamics of Ray and Stella definitely problematizes the whole thing.

It took me awhile to like Thatcher, too, but I read some fic from her point of view that definitely helped.