[ SECRET POST #2419 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2419 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Way early because taking dog to the vet. :c

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 075 secrets from Secret Submission Post #346.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm generally agreeing with this comment. I'd call his work "not always explicitly feminist" far more than I'd call it sexist; I think he falls into the "theoretically strong woman who has nothing better to do than nurturing messed-up heroes" trope more often than he perhaps would in an ideal world. But at a minimum, I think every substantial work by him except perhaps "Anansi Boys*" passes the (flawed but useful) Bechdel test.

Ultimately, this is a 52-year-old straight English guy. I'm not sure any men of his generation and background *do* always write from an explicitly feminist perspective. The cultural narratives we all grew up with are too strong to really allow that.

(* Anansi might pass; it's been a while since I read it. I just don't remember any women who had much to do in it except Daisy and Rosie.)

[darkmanifest]

I'm not sure I would call having competent female characters present at all implicitly feminist. There's a lot of work out there that feature a handful of amazing women, who are still part of a deeply sexist narrative. I do think Gaiman is a decent storyteller, with female characters I really like. He's just not feminist, IMO - but he never presented himself as such, to my knowledge, and it would be unfair to expect it of him just because he's not some drooling bigot.

Anansi Boys had Rose and her mother talking to each other about things other than Charlie and Spider sometimes, I think.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

I remembered Rosie and her mum had a relationship, but I wasn't sure if they talked on the page about anything besides Charlie. (Or, for that matter,if her mom gets a name besides Mrs. RosiesLastName.) If I were really ambitious I'd go get the book and check, but...

And I didn't mean to say he was implicitly feminist by saying he wasn't explicitly feminist. He's in the middle ground, with some works that are more feminist than others. I think we basically agree on this point.

[darkmanifest]

Oh, okay, my apologies, we do agree there. And nope, the mom definitely doesn't get a first name, but they talked about trying to escape and other stuff when they were kidnapped by Charlie's boss (I really liked that part, they worked together and rescued themselves with plain common sense...it's moments like that that keep me reading Gaiman's stuff despite the flaws).

Thank youu

[applemagpie]

For actually adding something insightful and intelligent to this whole 'is Neil Gaiman sexist' discussion

Re: Thank youu

[nyxelestia]

I think one problem is if a male writer creates a few good female characters or comments on it (much like Whedon or del Toro), then they get set-up as some kind of feminist amongst bigots in media, when reality is much closer to, they aren't sexists in an industry that is very sexist. Of course, not sexist =/= feminist, so when these men inevitably fall short of feminists' expectations, they get branded as sexists, often by people who were bitter and resentful beforehand about all the brouhaha surrounding what they always thought of as 'not that extraordinary, why are you people so obsessed over this?'.

[thene]

Ultimately, this is a 52-year-old straight English guy. I'm not sure any men of his generation and background *do* always write from an explicitly feminist perspective.

Terry Pratchett.

[(Anonymous)]

John Scalzi and Jim C. Hines as well. [Though they aren't 'English' both are very vocally in the corner of feminism.]

[(Anonymous)]

They are both at least a decade younger than Gaiman. A decade is a long time in the struggle for equality.

[(Anonymous)]

You think Terry Pratchett writes feminist friendly stories?!

Oh honey, you need to get yourself back to feminism 101 right away.

[thene]

Thanks, anon, I needed that laugh.

[(Anonymous)]

DA [and disclaimer: I know I'm taking this more seriously than probably intended]

It actually is pretty debatable at times, since a lot of his earlier works in the discworld series fall into the 'awesome sexy lady reward to a man!' routine [albeit usually the 'funnier' 'gifted to the man who doesn't deserve her' route], while using female characters that fit 'sexy fantasy ladies' to a T and essentially had the same personality a lot of the time. Even the novel he wrote that was about equal rights seems to have no actual impact on the universe since Esk isn't mentioned again until a novel published twenty years later *and* during events that supposedly take place afterwards, another female isn't mentioned even trying to apply, despite how many events take place there. Which, imo, makes Esk come off as the exception to their rule, not an actual change of the rule and really takes away from the feminist theme [I guess] of the book.

The witches themselves also have some potential problems from a feminist perspective...but I'll stop babbling here. I will add that I say this as someone who likes his novels. I just think people tend to like to shove aside his problematic characters because 'Hey, fun witches!' sometimes.

tl;dr: He tries, but even his stab at taking on a story about equal rights ends up having problems, plus some of the female characters his written do mean how much he considers himself a 'feminist'/wrote from a feminist perspective is kinda up for debate.

[thene]

since a lot of his earlier works in the discworld series fall into the 'awesome sexy lady reward to a man!' routine

I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of which characters you're referring to? Pratchett's early work spends more time sending up this trope than embracing it, imo. Mort does dumb things due to a crush on a girl and then ends up with someone else entirely. Teppic finds out that his crush is his sister so lets her become queen. I also don't see much sameyness in these Sexy Fantasy Ladies if you mean all his young female characters in general...? I honestly think Pratchett is the reason I find it hard to forgive male writers who don't bother writing women well. I do think he can be gender-essentialist but what he does best is write sincere satirical reflections of British culture, which is also pretty gender-essentialist.

(One of the reasons I was LOLing is because one of his major publicity boosts in his early years was when Equal Rites was read aloud on BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour, and he says that it got him a fair bit of fanmail from people who assumed he was a woman.)

Yet another DA

[(Anonymous)]

Terry Pratchett is undergoing what I like to call Rudyard Kipling syndrome. When someone was really advanced for their peak career and called a [cause of choice here be it feminism, racism, abolitionist, anti-soviet, pro-fire using, you know whatever social change was happening] suddenly now finds themselves quite a way behind the zeitgeist instead of leading it. Terry Pratchett was rad-fem in the 80s, mainstream feminist in the 90s, mainstream in the 00s, and is now sexist, but without changing his position or style at all. Just society and has changed around him. Give the guy props for putting his neck and rep on the line back in the day (cause the guy really tried, and really went out on a limb back then) and don't stress too hard about where you measure him. Take his books as being of historical value, a measurement of how far we've came. He's been kipling'd. It'll happen to this generation's radical-whatevers soon enough too.

Re: Yet another DA

[thene]

I'm not sure that comparison holds, because it is 2013 and I cannot name many fantasy/sf writers of his level of popularity who are doing better at writing women. Can you?

I think there's this equating of 'feminist' with aspirational female characters who are not constrained by broad currents of societal sexism, whereas what Pratchett has always done is write believable and funny things about women who live in sexist cultures much like the one around him. I'm not sure that this is affected by time so much as age; younger readers might have more need for the aspirational characters, older readers might have more need for characters whose lives are subject to the same stresses as theirs. (You see this in online feminism in general imo - people want to talk a lot about media tropes and not so much about workplaces or parenthood or householding that have more of an effect on women's lives.)

[(Anonymous)]

since a lot of his earlier works in the discworld series fall into the 'awesome sexy lady reward to a man!' routine

I'm honestly having a hard time thinking of which characters you're referring to?

Well Cassanunda got Nanny Ogg in Lords and Ladies...which is close I guess.

I suppose the closest actual example would be Carrot and Angua making the Disc move in Men at Arms. Technically the noble hero got a sexy blonde, I guess. Although if I recall she could be a real bitch at certain times of the month.