fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #549 ]

⌈ Secret Post #549 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Going to be doing some advertising until the 15th!

livelongnmarry [LJ comm] - fandom auction type place! For a good cause.
Juxtapose Fantasy [website, art/fic] - Yaoi/slash fans - have you visited JuxtaposeFantasy yet?

Secrets Left to Post: 12 pages, 298 secrets from Secret Submission Post #079.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 2 3 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, generally it seems like women relate to male characters better than men to female ones, probably due to differences in socialization/culturation~~/indoctrination~~ between men and women. It's been well-researched that in young adult literature, girls will read about male and female protagonists but boys are less likely to read a book about a female protagonist. However, After a while a great many of us females feel left out, ignored, and forgotten because yes, we get that you consider male to be the "fundamental" of humanity, and that women are the other, but can't we have a basic human plot of our own?

The question is, why won't boys read stuff with female leads. If you look at it, what female-lead series are popular with boys? The only thing I can think of off the top of my head are Tomb Raider and Metroid, both video games featuring leads with a tendency to kick butt (basically considered a male activity in our society, even though in situations with no social consequences males and females are about equally physically violent). I think this has to do with the fact that male is "default" and female is "other" In our society (when in fact, biologically, the reverse is true, but let's not go there, that doesn't have any sort of value in this argument). Our little boys are socialized to be afraid of being perceived as female or womanish. They often have crises of identity if they perceive themselves that way. But it's perfectly socailly acceptable for a girl to be a "tomboy" and almost all girls go through a tomboyish phase or engage in tomboyish behaviors. Boys are trained not to identify with female characters unless the only thing about those characters that is female is their appearance. It takes highly masculinized female characters to overcome this, generally.

WHY is this? Because western society, and much of eastern society, is a heteronormative patriarchy that uses sexism and gender roles as a form of economic and social control. Undermine the heteronormative patriarchy, maybe we'll get some nice female leads. Until then, expect shit like this.

*Slow, building clap*

*bows* Thank you, thank you, good to know my major's worth something, even if only on the interwebs.

I only hope my Honours degree might serve me so well. So far it just gets me accused of showing my Internet Penis for citing the OED. :(

It was relevant, I tellsya!

OED LOVE.

It will tickle the fancy of your inner English geek AND your inner History geek. CAN YOU HANDLE THE SKULLFUCKING INTENSITY OF OED'S POWER!?

Don't talk about skullfucking in front of the English major; it gives her disturbing ideas about Henry Jekyll.

You're not the only one with disturbing ideas about Henry Jekyll. Utterson was kept up all night tossing and turning with images of Jekyll's room, "where his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise and do its bidding."

Really, Utterson? And what kind of biddings are you dreaming Jekyll is undergoing, hmmm? Hmmmmmm?

Hahah, for one of my literature electives I wrote a paper about how Stevenson uses layers of gay subtext by making it look like Jekyll's bonking Hyde, and then implying that Jekyll's bonking men AS Hyde, and using the fact that Jekyll and Hyde bicker like lovers to comment on the way Jekyll bonks men as Hyde, and uses the fact that they seem very, very, VERY gay as Jekyll hides his homosexuality behind the fictitious character of Hyde to comment on what hypocrites his readers are for reading shilling shockers and considering it okay because they "learn" some shallow lesson that sounds good on paper at the end. 99 on that paper, pretty brilliant. Probably my best work ever.

Oooh, I wanted to write that paper! Well, not the wider part involving readership, but basically, I wanted to argue that the subtext in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is very, very gay. Even the landscape is described in a manner similar to S&M. But I chickened out, figuring that the internet was just breaking my mind.

Instead I wrote about how Dracula is a proto-feminist text with the characters of Mina and Lucy representing the New Woman of relative independence (Mina is still my 19th century literary heroine), and rather than being sexually liberating (like modern depictions like to paint his attacks as, grrr), Dracula serves to be a conservative force which disempowers them.

Wow! That Dracula bit sounds clever.

And my prof is very fond of discussing pedo and homo in Victorian literature, so I knew the piece would go over well. Actually, he was the one who kept on going "zomg jekyll is the gay!" Well, not like that, but it certainly felt like it at times. He was also convinced that the guys in Dorian Gray were slutting it up with each other, which was funny. Hmm... trying to think of the other pieces he held that sort of belief about. I'm sure there were a few. He was great. I wish I could have him again.

Well, it IS Dorian Gray, after all, so I can't blame your professor for that interpretation. The head of my Honours department once famously described In Memoriam as, "Tennyson gets over his old dead boyfriend to find a new dead boyfriend... Jesus."

Man, I'll miss my department.

That's the best description of "In Memoriam" that I have ever heard.

ugh, so used to TV titles that I fail at proper notation.

Er. :P

what female-lead series are popular with boys

I think comics aren't that bad in this respect; see Modesty Blaise for example, or Wonder Woman, or the female heroines of the Marvel universe: all as badass as it gets. Which leads me to

Boys are trained not to identify with female characters unless the only thing about those characters that is female is their appearance.

I hadn't thought about this before, but... damn.

Wel, it's a natural outcome of the way boys and girls are socialized. Girls are socialized to identify with everyone, and they're taught that it's acceptable to try on male roles. It's only when they refuse to give up those male roles after trying them that they're punished. Boys are typically not taught with a focus on understanding and identifying with others, and they're punished harshly for trying on female roles.

Also, there's considerable writing about this in the analysis of slasher films. The reason the protagonist is almost always female is so male viewers can separate themselves from the fear and weakness she goes through... and she's always masculinized in the end by getting a knife. Also, consider the rules scream lays down: i.e. she has to be a virgin. What does that tell you?

[ SECRET POST #549 ]

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