fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #703 ]

[ SECRET POST #703 ]

⌈ Secret Post #703 ⌋

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

101.

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102.

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103.

[Madman]

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104.

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105. [repeat]

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106.

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107.

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108.

[FFVII]

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109.

[Soul Eater]

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110.

[Psych]

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111. [attack]

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125.

[xxxholic]

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[Abe Sapien]

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166. [repeat]

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174.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 13 pages, 314 secrets from Secret Submission Post #100.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 2 3 - broken links ], [ 1 2 3 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 - too big ], [ 1 2 3 - repeat ], [ 1 - personal attack ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I think this is what the secret op is talking about.

They say they don't automatically like every single female character, and you immediately think they "have shitty, sexist reasons for hating" them.

Nobody is going to like every character in everything ever, and some of those disliked characters are bound to be female (or male, or asexual aliens, etc). That doesn't mean they dislike them because they're female (or male or a tree or whatever).

But people tend to have unreasonably high standards for female characters as opposed to male characters.

Yes, in the course of enjoying a show you may dislike characters of al genders, races and creeds, but when a particular person or a fandom in general overwhelmingly dislikes all, or almost all, of the female characters, you can probably say with a degree of certainty that there's a sexist pattern.

I don't think it's about unreasonably high standards; I find that a lot of female characters just aren't written well or are written flatly/not given that much attention, and that makes it hard to like them. And thus, there's a disproportionate number of female characters being hated on compared to male characters.

So...I mean, I don't hate a female character insomuch as I just hate they way they're being written? A lot of them have potential, but then they come off on screen as...just "Augh, why! T__T" or sometimes they even start off really good, and then...somehow, the writing just takes them downhill. It sucks.

I guess I'm just drawing on my time in the BtVS/AtS fandom where people called misogyny because there were those who found her annoying. But the truth is, she did get annoying as a character later on in the series. Ditto for Dawn. By contrast, I didn't find a lot of character hate* for females that remained well-written: Fred, for one. Faith, Cordelia, Drusilla, Darla. Even in Firefly, there's generally been love for Zoe, Kaylee, River, who're also all quite well-written.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree that sometimes, people can set unreasonably high standards and that does get somewhat irritating. It's like, if she gets angry and yells, she's a bitch, etc, etc, and don't get me started on the people who hate on women for getting in between their slash 'ships or something.

But I also don't think the above is the sole cause or even the major cause of fandom female hate. There's a legitimate reason behind it, too, which lies in the actual writing of female characters.

*This is drawing entirely upon my own experience, so it is possible that I just wasn't looking in the right corners of fandom and missed some of the hate.

Can't it be both?

Don't get me wrong, I do agree that sometimes, people can set unreasonably high standards and that does get somewhat irritating. It's like, if she gets angry and yells, she's a bitch, etc, etc, and don't get me started on the people who hate on women for getting in between their slash 'ships or something.

But I also don't think the above is the sole cause

Yes.

And you caught me before I could edit out "major cause" because what I meant by "not major cause" is that they are both equally responsible but that didn't quite come across the way I wanted. DX;;

I'm sure that sometimes that's it. But often the male characters are written just as badly and aren't hated on anywhere near as much (and when they are, it's usually in the form of "oh, isn't it so cute?")

So? The secret op wasn't talking about disliking all or most female characters. They were saying that not loving every female character is not the same thing as hating characters just because they're female, and that some people act like they don't realize that.

And I agree with the secret op on this complaint. When you say you dislike a female character, regardless of who the character is or why you dislike them, people tend to automatically jump on the assumption "you hate her because she's female! you're a mysogynist!"

Treating female characters like they can't possibly be hated or have bad character traits or simply be unlikable simply because they're female is just the flip side of the coin as treating female characters like they're ALWAYS hatable and unlikable simply because they're female.

This, man. Seriously. A couple days ago everyone was jumping down my throat because omg, I don't like Ginny from Harry Potter? MISOGYNIST. Despite the fact that I had a valid reason and explained that I set the same standards for both males and females, OMG MISOGYNIST. YOU DISLIKE EVEN A SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER, SO THEREFORE YOU MUST DISLIKE ALL OF THEM.

I wish I knew who the secret op was, I'd send them some money. XP

Weren't you the one who was like "I hate Ginny because she's a slut?" Haha, yeah, that's a totally valid reason!

Yep, that's me. Damn, what the shit was I thinking! Hating a character for having a negative personality trait and a shit personality in general? What misogyny!

Dating three guys before getting married to a fourth is a negative personality trait?

Considering it was in the span of like a year and a half, I'd say yes. Not that I expect everyone to have the same high expectations for things that I do, but for some reason no one seems to be able to handle that I don't expect them to have the same opinions or standards, even though I should apparently just have the same as them. At any rate, coupled with the fact that she turns into a total Sue, I think she's a bad character.

A girl having relationships, dating some friends and having fun instead of sitting at home and defending her innocence?

WHAT A WHORE

hint: your pretense at "high standards" just shows how broken you are

Re: 149.

bamf-girl.livejournal.com - 2008-12-09 16:18 (UTC) - Expand

Re: 149.

paperclipchains.livejournal.com - 2008-12-09 09:08 (UTC) - Expand

Re: 149.

bamf-girl.livejournal.com - 2008-12-09 16:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: 149.

paperclipchains.livejournal.com - 2008-12-09 21:27 (UTC) - Expand

I gotta agree. There's a big difference between hating certain characters who are female and hating certain characters *becasue* they are female. I wish more people would figure that out.

Of course, but there's also a big difference between hating a character for valid reasons and hating a character for sexist tropes that have been culturally ingrained as reasons to hate women that don't really stand up to scrutiny.

Nope, not at all. The OP is complaining that s/he was called a misogynist. I don't know why I should give him/her the benefit of the doubt over the person who made the allegation in the first place.

Call me biased, but having been in the same boat, I tend to give the person being accused more of a benefit of the doubt than the person doing the name calling.

WAY too many people throw 'misogynist' around in the defense of their favorite female characters. Most of them really DON'T seem to know what the term means. To be perfectly honest, I've gotten to the point where I can't take anybody in fandom who uses the term seriously, because so many people misuse it.

Call me biased, but I tend to favour the person making the "misogyny" accusation. Sure, people throw the word around WAY too much, but the people they throw it at are usually the ones who wonder why "I hate her because she's a slut" is sexist.

Is it still sexist if I dislike promiscuous male characters too? If I say I dislike a female character for a certain trait, should I also explain I dislike male characters with the same trait? If I said I disliked a male character for a certain trait, I doubt you would require me to explain why I also dislike female characters with that trait.

You're pretty much showing to be the exact kind of person the secret is complaining about. Assuming a person's dislike for a female character stems from the "being female" aspect of the character and not from any actual negative character traits the character has. Like if a promiscuous female character was a promiscuous male character instead, they suddenly wouldn't mind.

That's an ignorant and frankly insulting assumption to make. So, rather than automatically just assume mysogyny or sexism, why not accept that not every character is going to be liked by everyone.

What you're completely missing is that the word "slut" is misogynistic in and of itself, and not a valid complaint. Yes, even if it's used on a male character. There is nothing wrong with having several sexual partners in a short period of time, as long as you don't hurt anyone. Yes, truly.

Haha, you're totally ignoring my point in order to make me fit your archetype, but whatever. Lots of people claim that they dislike male characters for the same behaviour - take a look at the poster above, though! She condemns only Ginny for having dated multiple people within the span of a year, and even calls it a "character flaw" but Ron with his frequent PDAs really gets off scot-free.

Basically it comes down to context. There is no real "are you espousing sexist views" litmus test. And frankly, I don't give a damn if it's "offensive" to people that someone called them sexist or misogynist. Suck it up and examine your assumptions, examine your opinions. Consider the possibility that you ARE being sexist, then people won't be pointing it out to you all the damn time.

I find it strangely ironic that you're telling someone else to "suck it up" or not caring if something is offensive.

And you just sort of proved my point - you won't accept someone saying they don't like a female character for Reason X without also saying they don't like a male character for the same Reason X. "She condemns Ginny for Reason X, but why isn't she also condemning Ron? Huh?"

The point is, that disliking a female character and disliking a character because they're female are not even close to the same thing, and you really do need to learn to suck it up and realize that not everything directed towards someone who happens to be female is a form of sexism or mysogyny.

THIS.

Hm...In my experience (and in scanning the f_s comments in particular) the word is used pretty much the same against "Why is slut sexist" people as it is against, "Her character flaws bother me" people. That is to say, the "usually" in your sentence consitutes about 50% of the time, while the other 50%, it's being used against people who aren't sexist at all.

Given the high chance that we're all misinterpeting each other, I still tend to favor the accused rather than the accuser - at the very least, they're usually not the ones who start the name-calling.

If it's 50/50, we're technically both right in our approach.

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