[ SECRET POST #6130 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6130 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 13 secrets from Secret Submission Post #876.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Is a fic with babies misogynistic?

[(Anonymous)]

It doesn't say "a fic with babies" it says "babies ever after" which is a specific trope.

[(Anonymous)]

But why is it misogynistic if it's at the end of the fic but not if it happens sooner?

[(Anonymous)]

DA

You have to look at it with the context of most of western storytelling - a woman's story ends with marriage/babies because after that she shouldn't HAVE a story to tell. She should be at home, taking care of the kids, making her family her top priority. She shouldn't have a life outside the home; no adventures; no career; nothing noteworthy to speak of. That's the context. It's misogynistic because "babies ever after" stories add to a long list of works with the implicit (and sometimes explicit) message that a woman can't be happy without marriage and babies.

The same is not true for men. There isn't a history of culture and literature assuming that men must have babies to be happy and must stay home with the babies and put his homemaking first.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

But in "Babies Ever After," the stories of the woman and the man end at the addition of the baby. The happy ending for them both is presented as being found in the formation of a family.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Again, context. Stories with men can end any which way and be happy. He can continue to adventure, he can marry, he can get riches, he can have a baby. Stories with women, especially in history, almost always have only one happy ending - baby.

So having a man AND a woman with a babies ever after ending, it only perpetuates the culture of women needing babies for a happy ending, because that's the way almost all women stories end. But it doesn't perpetuate anything in the culture for men, because they get more varied and rounded endings.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

But doesn't that just take us back to the original anon in this thread, who posited that babies in general are misogynistic?

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

No, it takes us back to "having a m/f romance end babies ever after is misogynistic" because of the context of female stories. If the Labyrinth fanfic was with gay men, then babies ever after wouldn't be misogynistic, because, again, men ending stories with babies is only one of several types of male happy endings. It's not the babies that are misogynistic. It's the idea that a pairing with a woman needs to have babies in order for the woman to get a happy ending.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Why does that signal hatred of women? Isn't that just a form of biological essentialism?

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Biological essentialism is a form of misogyny.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

"Misogyny" is starting to sound like a magical talisman that you wield to prevent you from having to think about things that might be complicated.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

No? Methinks you're getting bad information from TERFS.

Sure, the word "misogyny" literally means "hated of women" but that's not what the word actually means anymore. No word means just it's literally definition with no context or implications, otherwise "terrific" would still mean "frightening".

Misogyny does include the hated of women, but it has grown from that very small definition to become an umbrella term that includes all thoughts and behaviors that stem from the idea that women are inherently different from and inferior to men by virtue of the fact of their biology. Lady brains, girl dinner, you throw like a girl, etc etc, are all examples of misogyny because they all stem from the idea that people born female are inferior BECAUSE they were born the female sex.

Biological essentialism (or biological determinism), is the idea that behaviors, interests or abilities are biologically pre-determined, rather than shaped by society

Biological essentialism is the idea that behavior is based on sex. Misogyny is attitudes and behaviors that stem from the idea that behavior is based on sex. QED - Biological essentialism is a form of misogyny.

[(Anonymous)]

To be fair, a lot of stories position the man's journey as "you're not a real man until you can get a woman to stay with you". And this can definitely lead to real men thinking they have to "have" a woman in order to be successful (any woman really, she doesn't matter as a person), and they start to get depressed and then angry when they can't seem to acquire the woman they have been told they can earn. They've been taught that their happy ending is also babies and marriage, but it's a little different because that's not *all* they're expected to want and be satisfied with, only one part of it.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Eh. Sort of. Recently, yes, they've started putting in most stories that the hero will "win" the girl. And by recently, I mean the last 100 years. Before that, a male story could take or leave a wife because that wasn't the center of male existence in the same way as a husband was the best way to survive as a woman. As you said, it doesn't matter which woman; it's like hiring a housekeeper - it doesn't matter to his overall storyline. So the current idea that a male story is happy when he gets the girl doesn't really have the same cultural or literary history.

And often times, the story happens after the wife is dead, i.e. fridging. A dead husband for a woman is an unhappy ending, and almost never the beginning of her story unless the story is of her finding a new husband, or a Jodi Foster film (in which she puts aside men for her kids - again with the "offspring as her entire life" trope).

[(Anonymous)]

NA

You know, Jodie Foster's character in Flightplan was originally written as a male character and they did make a few changes once they got Foster.

Also, Angelina Jolie's character in Salt was originally written as a male character (supposed to be played by Tom Cruise). They made changes when they got Jolie (as I recall, one of them had to do with her husband fighting back more than the male character's wife was originally supposed to do, which kind of pissed me off).

And Ripley in Alien was also conceived as a male character.

But I do think all of them have a different feel to them because of the original plans, maybe because that made the writers really consider what might change for a female character and what doesn't have to, which is kind of interesting, but kind of sad, too.

[(Anonymous)]

oh shut up