Invisible Plane

[rinue]

Came in to work early to get a flu shot. Now my opposite arm is sore, because my brain likes to keep things lively.

Was reading an interview with Kate Beaton in which she mentioned in passing that she thinks Kitty Pryde is so popular among female fans because she somewhat uniquely doesn't have a rape backstory. I was thinking about it, and even Buffy has a degree of sexual predation in her past, which is not a shading male characters tend to have.

Ciro is somewhat preoccupied with the number of "waiflike but superpowered" female characters in genre literature (and I find his observations compelling), which extends to the female protagonist in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but it occurs to me that the superpowered female character is also usually a victim of rape or attempted rape, that we find it easier to endorse a small and vengeant female who is responding to or overcoming rape. I am sure part of this is the "last girl" response, the way that we want to see a maximally disempowered figure triumph, and can identify with that triumph when we feel the most powerless.

But in that case, why is the disempowered figure typically white, and not disabled? (Unless, of course, a mental illness is presented as a superpower.) It's disturbing to consider that we might view rape as a way of "activating" female power, or femaleness as the same "mutant" quality possessed by the X-Men - something they didn't choose and which causes them to be feared and hated, but which also has power over others, by for example making men unable to resist sex with them.

Unsettling. And hard to disentangle from the notion that these raped but powerful women can also be a symbol of overcoming entrenched patriarchy and the costs involved.

Comments

[liquidmorpheme.livejournal.com]

You're right to call it an activation, I think — it's really no different from the "motherhood" activator of female power in fiction. I think even among the most progressive of storytellers, there's still this idea that female power is in response to or reationary against patriarchy, that it is not intrinsic but instantiated by victimhood. Of course this calls into question very idea of a "female" power at all, that these powers have any kind of essential sexual distinction.

I nod to the idea that "of course" the sexes differ if we're talking about the raw physical power to do violence, but I think the very basic biological distinctions there are what compels storytellers to keep focusing on action-type protagonists as the icons of feminism (Buffy et. al.) — a powerful female action protagonist (especially a pretty waifish one) is safe because this is an area that does not depend as much on culture to maintain the disparity between men and women, and because it is clearly fantasy (particularly if we're talking about raped waifs). If the female protagonists were routinely outsmarting or out-maneuvering (rather than out-punching or out-kicking) antagonists, I'll bet audiences raised in a patriarchal culture would find them a bit less compelling.

[valancy_jane]

In Stieg Larsson's defense, his books are filled with strong woman who aren't raped (especially once you get past book one), too, notably Erika Berger & Giannini (can't remember her first name, dang it). And...dang it, there's a workout buff amazon goddess CIA-type chick whom I loved, and was so glad turned out to be more than a bit part.

Completely tangential comment, I know, but I want you to read them someday. ;) Also: I think all your short essays are brilliant, and you should talk to one of the major sci-fi mags online about being a guest columnist. Your essays are perfect columns and often science related.

Sorry so behind. Just as I finished the curriculum project of doom, I had another disaster land in my lap. I have had...30 minutes to myself today, during which I took lunch. The rest of the day I have done day job work, cleaned the garden, or cleaned the kitchen, or made dinner, which feels, sadly, increasingly like crap work.

Love you. Hang in there. Your brain is good.

[rinue]

I'm feeling fairly well apart from the SF community at the moment, although it is always possible that This Too Shall Pass. Right now it feels like I don't like the stuff they're putting out and they don't like the stuff I want them to put out. Ciro is more hopeful and also more up on publishing trends and able to contradict me, but I'm sort of feeling like I'm too good for them and they're treating me like I'm not good enough. Not that I have a better place to go, so there's that.

Re: jqeGgLvaznDjj

[rinue]

I think this comment must be intended for a different entry; it doesn't seem to relate to the subject of this one. I'm also not sure who this is.