GenderBender Redux

Everyone's gonna have to wait for a sec while I do this:

Ian Tregillis writes:

Thank you for the kind words.

I just watched your book trailer and read your post on In Obscura-- HOLY CRAP you had me at magic/secret history/ancient conspiracies.

Also: Millennium rocked my socks. Thank you for that.

OMG! I have no words. Thanks! It's a travesty that I have to wait until July to read the sequel to Bitter Seeds, though. JULY! Someone could have made the movie already!

Gentle readers, SERIOUSLY, read Bitter Seeds. I mean it. Do it.  I'll wait...

cgeye:
I am not watching Lost Girl because of the changeling/faerie stuff and a similar project. But hey, if someone is actually able to do a succubus and not have it be ridiculous, more power to them.
 Sasha:

Since you've mentioned the show before -- what do you think about the weaponized sexuality idea w/r/t Vampire Diaries, specifically Elena/Katherine? 

Ah, interesting! It doesn't bug me because unlike when Moffat does it, it's not salacious. I get the sense that he's way titillated by Adler but with Vampire Diaries, that's who the characters are. Katherine, of course, is the true femme fatale of the show but what's interesting about her is how often her power structure shifts. And you start to get the feeling that what she really longs for is somewhere to fit. I feel like she hasn't come to terms with her history, and that she's been fighting being the Petrova for her entire life. Katherine made the determination that she wouldn't be a victim, but at the expense of her humanity. Elena, on the other hand, refuses to be a victim but hangs onto her humanity, which is what makes her strong. This isn't a weepy girl who likes being fought over, or who likes being protected. She hates what being the Petrova means, but she's also accepted it in a cool way so who knows where that will take her. Whenever someone, whether it be Stefan, Damon, Alaric or anyone else, decides that they will concoct a plan that will protect Elena, it never works out. She finds out and sticks her nose in. Not only that, but she isn't constantly screwing things up, either, not like that character would on a lesser show. In fact, for someone who is ostensibly so important that everyone must keep her alive and protect her, Elena is largely responsible for driving the show. She doesn't accept the inevitable, or the destiny that the vampires and other supernatural creatures accept so readily. And she's starting to infect everyone around her with her individuality, too.

You can create the situation but have the characters react to it differently. Elena could be passive and inert, like Bella, but she isn't. And that's why the show works. They will create situations for the characters and then they actually go, "So how does Caroline react to this? How would Tyler behave after this happened?" I love that about the show and because the characters are so well defined, they can blow through plot like no other show.

So while you can, on the surface, see Katherine and Elena as purely sexualized women, it's so obvious to me that they aren't.

Wills:
Well. I don't want to get too bogged down here. I appreciate the thought that went into all of y'all's posts. Guys, look. It boils down to this for me -- no, you do not have the right to tell me what is misogynistic and what isn't, just as I don't have the right to tell a minority person what is racist and what isn't. Your opinion on this is not informed. You may have an idea about what is misogynistic and what isn't, but that has absolutely NOTHING to do with WHAT ACTUALLY IS. Because sorry, but women make that determination. That being said, there are varying degrees of what women will find misogynistic. So I am only speaking for me, to you, when I say that you don't get to dictate that to me.

I say this without anger or rancor. I just find it curious that so many men are so ready to fill me in on what misogyny is, or what feminism is. You think we're on the same page here, but we're not. You think, as far as I can glean, that Moffat's Adler is a forward-thinking woman, a reaction to modern femininity, a woman who owns her sexuality. But really, Moriarty owns it, doesn't he? To me, this is similar to the women who take pole-dancing classes because they find it empowering to own what was devised as a male fantasy. That's a crock. Women don't have to own it. They can fucking ignore it. This is the same as the folks who find The Woman to be a feminist horror film. It isn't.

This isn't to say that a female character who uses sexuality as coercion, or even as a weapon, is always across the board a bad idea. It's not at all. But when that's all a female character is then yes, we are going to have a problem. And that's all Adler is. I do appreciate that people read that scene as Adler removing physical clues for Sherlock, but that's not how Moffat intended it, that's not how the actors read it (much to my dismay), and if you really think about it, simply removing clothing isn't going to cut it because Sherlock's gotten physical clues off hands and fingernails and faces and hair and eyes and feet and ears and from posture and body language and vocal inflection... the list goes on and on. So you're all being a tiny bit too clever (like Moffat wants you to be) to find some value here. But it's Moffat who is forgetting what Sherlock's power is here. IF Moffat intended what you all read into it -- and he didn't, but IF he did -- then wouldn't it have been MORE interesting if she'd been fully clothed and Sherlock STILL couldn't get anything from her? My God, that would REALLY set him off. He wouldn't be able to stop thinking about her. How does she do it? How can she confound him like that?

I'm sure you'll have reasons for why her being naked works better. I'm a little surprised, though, that you are both ignoring the stone-cold obvious FACT that Moffat did NOT intend it the way you read it. Which certainly puts the two of you head and shoulders above Moffat, FWIW.

Moffat reversed the power structure, as you put it, in a very obvious, lazy way. He wasn't at all inventive about it. He stopped at "dominatrix." How that character could possibly confound someone like Sherlock is beyond me, since she is such an obvious construct. And at the end of the day, that's the biggest disappointment -- that she was so one-dimensional. And then there's the further degradation of the character by having her need to be rescued. Blech.

And if you haven't seen Moffat's treatment of women in Doctor Who, then sure, I can imagine that this is completely flummoxing to you!
Women can and should be about many things, just as men can and should. The only reason female characters get singled out is because a large segment of the population seems to think it's okay to use them as objects. The current political climate doesn't help, as it is apparent to a lot of folks that discussing what rights a woman has is a normal discussion to have.

For a look at a real woman doing real things, check out Steven Soderbergh's Haywire. And read this article, which is a pretty even look at the film and contains some interesting ideas about women in film. For the record, I have read something recently with a female character who is using sex as a coercion tactic and it not only works well, but the character is fascinating and you want to know more about her. I won't say what it is at the moment, but maybe later. Just know that it CAN work, if you're not lazy about it and you bother to look below the surface to the character and figure out what makes the character tick.

And that is all for the weekly rant!