Reading double in a double standard world

[beccaelizabeth]

Someone via metafandom was talking about canon het romance, and how they feel there's a double standard fans applied to men and women when they fall in love. A woman in love is seen as reduced to one note, a man in love is not. And they had specific examples from their fandom which I can't comment on because I don't play there. Their point is Being in love or lust, being jealous, and even doing stupid, petty things because of those feelings, does not make you weak, boring or one-dimensional.

And, okay, of itself it *should* not. But in practice, in stories, it frequently *does*.

And the characters it tends to happen to? Not so often the guys.

Granted, sometimes you get a character where their whole existence is as The Boyfriend. But how often do main characters *turn into* The Boyfriend? Not so very much. Whereas you can get a situation where a female character who is fine and kickarse in her own right gets a backstory with her father, a backstory with a boyfriend (tragic and/or unresolved), and suddenly *loses all other aspects*. The only thread of her story that gets chased up is the one about the men in her life, whether we're hearing about her past or her future. Maybe she had adventures, maybe she went to war, maybe you were under the impression her relationship to women ie her mother was actually defining to her. She has a boyfriend and some daddy issues? Bye bye individuality, hello being The Girlfriend and Daughter.

And of course it's not inevitable. But - key recurring thingy here - texts exist in a network of existing texts that between them add up to trends and expectations and existing structures. And they exist in a society, a culture, a history. In recent western culture, lived or read, men are not defined by their relation to women, as someone's husband or son. Women have been, for centuries, defined as some man's wife or daughter. Texts that concentrate on those relationships have a whole weight of bad history pulling them into a particular way of being read, of appearing to audiences already bruised in that area. And it isn't just writing someone so they are XY's girlfriend. It's writing someone so their goal in life is to become XY's girlfriend, so their future aspirations for *identity* are all about the XYs. It's an old, bad, trap of a stereotype, and it's like a black hole of suck. Maybe an individual incident doesn't suck much on it's own, but the closer it brings a story to the black hole of prejudicial suck, the worse it's going to look.

Writing a man aspiring to be XX's boyfriend doesn't have the same approaching-suck effect on *his* identity. History doesn't say entering that arrangement will make his individual self fall out and make him redefine himself so all his goals are set by someone else. Stories don't usually work that way. If an XY wants to be an XX's husband, generally, historically, he isn't giving stuff up, he's acquiring it. He's attempting to enter a position of power. And sure, individual stories don't have to fit that pattern, but that's the way the old structure slants it.

Marriage, as a word, has had different meanings when applied to women and to men. So has dating. And relationships. Think it shouldn't? This is good. But since it has, when read it will mean a different thing for different characters.

Now the wider details of their behaviour and relationships can change that. Maybe he gives up her job to follow her to a better career. Maybe he revises his perception of reality to include believing her definitions. Maybe they both learn from each other and both continue to develop in ways independent of how much kissing there has been. This is good, they both have aspirations and goals and values and norms and beliefs and definitions and they don't give up all their own because of one relationship.

But if someone is going to give up their beliefs, revise their perceptions, change worlds, change careers, drop their previous life and throw away everything because of meeting X... How likely is it that XY is the one changing?

How often is it XX, putting their life on hold or dropping it because their new priority is some XY?

It's that kind of identity-loss that makes a character one note, and while it *shouldn't* be a consequence of romantic attachment, that doesn't mean it won't be.

So I look at canon attempting het relationships, and mostly I just *facepalm* in anticipation. If the writers are very good, they can keep on giving her interesting storylines and character arcs of her very own. If however they get lazy... well, there's always that XY relationship to fall back on... and suddenly her character is indeed a one trick wonder.

Being in love or lust [...] does not make you weak, boring or one-dimensional.
Only being all that actually does.
And that's the kind of het I've had enough of.

Comments

[theillusionist.livejournal.com]

This post is full of w0rd. ♥

[beccaelizabeth]

:)

[spoggly.livejournal.com]

*here from metafandom* You summed everything up perfectly in your post, so I will only add this: YES! THANK YOU!!!

[beccaelizabeth]

:)

[seldear.livejournal.com]

So it seems the question becomes: does the fan writer (not the canon writer) not write women in romantic relationships at all because people will inevitably read in the double standard, or do they make the effort to ensure that a woman is not the sum total of her romantic relationships - particularly in a story with some form of plot?

[beccaelizabeth]

You know if you mean 'does' I think I have to opt out of answering because mostly I read fic with all men in it. Except for the one series with Martha, but that was mostly about getting two men together. Even when there's plot the genre tropes eat stuff. I like plot, but finding much of it recently? Not so easy.

If you mean 'should', then more 3D characters = yaay, but women have some uphill to work against, all that prejudice stereotype rubbish. Can't just ignore it and start over because it'll skew the reading so the writing has to know that.

[seldear.livejournal.com]

Is the mostly-reading of fic with all men related to the preferred fandom or your own preferences? And do you think that the readership (or lack thereof) contributes to the reluctance to write women in any shape or form, whether in romantic relationships or not?

Sorry. I like these questions. :)

[beccaelizabeth]

the mostly-men is because I'm a slash reader. whatever the fandom, that's what I'll be reading. actually, one of the main things I like about a fandom is potential for slash. DW&TW has canon. is fun there.

[mawaridi.livejournal.com]

I think perhaps we have misunderstood each other, or I haven't made my position quite clear enough.

You say you can't speak to my examples because you don't play in my fandom, so okay, why not provide us with some examples from your fandom? I can't guarantee I'll be able to speak to them but you never know, we might have some overlap.

So far, what I'm seeing here is a lot of very good, very true theory with which I can agree most wholeheartedly, but I'm still not seeing any examples of how it applies to actual texts, or how my assessment of the situation is wrong. My assessment being that female readers are assuming two-dimensionality as soon as a female character enters into a het relationship or becomes romantically interested in a male character, whether or not the writing actually demonstrates that her romantic subplot is obliterating all other plots and character nuances, whether or not she really has been made into a "one trick wonder".

[beccaelizabeth]

Or, you know, we disagree.

Examples: Comics. Er, pretty much in general? No, okay, there is some variety. Teen Titans, Wonder Girl, she used to have a personality and now she has dead boyfriend angst (Though when I say 'used to have' I'm talking about the title before Titans). Though I'm mostly trying to give up comics again, so maybe she got some variety. Actually Titans in general are a bad set for being all about the Daddy Issues. Blah.

I agree that it don't take much to set off some readers on this issue, assuming it's going to go bad because it has before. Associate it with enough of the bad version of a story and a good version can get lost. There's a lot of bad versions of the het romance.

[mawaridi.livejournal.com]

Yeees, but if you're disagreeing with something I haven't actually said, then we don't necessarily disagree.

(you got me with the comics example - I don't know anything about comics, but I've heard enough to believe you when you say the canon is rife with sexist stereotyping and 2D characterisation)

There's a lot of bad versions of the het romance.

Certainly. I know a lot of good ones, too, though. And if readers never read het romance because they assume it's all sexist crap, the market for good het is never going to get any bigger. One reason to be interested in pop culture is that it's such a great tool for diseminating ideas to the a-political masses. I'd rather promote the good het I find, and keep chancing it with female characters in the hopes that the romance WON'T be crap, than avoid it altogether and allow the idea that women go to pieces over love go unchallenged.

[beccaelizabeth]

*nods*

I never seek out het romance. It turns up all over stuff I've chosen to watch for other reasons anyway, mixed in with starships blowing up and suchlike. It isn't on it's own a reason for me to stop watching/reading though.

[capncosmo.livejournal.com]

[Here from metafandom]

THANK YOU. Watching the back and forth, it seemed to me the sides were actually not talking about the same thing. THIS is the post I've been waiting to see.

[beccaelizabeth]

:)