A world of 'this'.

[iamashamed]

I found this article called  'Only men are allowed to be perfect', via51stcenturyfox and her post: http://51stcenturyfox.livejournal.com/111521.html, so I thought I would link it here as well, because I love the points it makes, and I want to share it. It is about sexism in fandom, and I find it spot on. Here is a part of the article that I really love:


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 certainly the last people on earth who need to read it, but I had to throw it out there.

Check out the thread, and read the rest of it here:

http://isiscaughey.livejournal.com/665134.html?view=3484718#t3484718

What do you guys think?
I'd like a lot of people from the Lost, Torchwood, Harry Potter and Doctor Who fandoms to see this.

Comments

[pyroclasticgrub.livejournal.com]

Funny enough, my friends and I were discussing this over tea tonight, because we were all fascinated by the degree to which fans invest so much time and energy in fictional characters within fandom. They dislike certain characters because they're not the kind of people they'd want to have a beer with. Or because they're not attractive to them. And also because they are sometimes poorly written.

And with regards to female characters, my two friends (who both have graduate degrees in English lit and have...some opinions and experience in this area) agree that female characters suffer rather a lot from poor writing. And they must fall into one of many tropes (femme fatale, love interest, fucktoy, tomboy, etc...) in order to be believable. They can't just happen to be a lead character. And also, a woman.

I would also posit that flipping genders the other way (taking a male character and making him a woman) also raises a lot of questions about the way the character navigates their universe and makes the writing of that character difficult. In the case of Doctor Who, how much trouble would the Doctor have traveling through space and time as a woman?

Interestingly, the BBC website has some archival material where they discuss the conceptualization of the show in 1962, and one of the things they said was that the lead character needs to be a man because both men and women will be interested in a lead male, but only women would be interested in a lead female. Seems things haven't changed much...