When is a character essentially gendered?

Yesterday I finished reading Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey. Having read good reviews of the book and hearing it described as "the fantasy novel you wish Jane Austen had written", I had expectations of a historical romantic satire, with an interesting fantasy twist. Unfortunately, the novel didn't quite deliver.

Simply put, the book was far too gendered for my taste. I want to be cautious here, because I think this is an area in which feminists sometimes do more harm than good. They obsess over the representation of women in literature and cinema, and in doing so sometimes turn characters into gendered objects. In my ideal feminist world, female characters aren't considered good representations of women because they aren't considered as representations of gender at all. They are just characters. Fictional people with interesting motivations and complex personalities. Sometimes women are reduced to their biological or social roles by the critical feminist, who insists that a character's worth should be evaluated in terms of how successfully she represents women.

Um... squee?

Allow me to indulge my feminist and geek sensibilities all at once for a moment. Being proud of my geekdom, I am of course familiar with the term 'fanboy'. For those who aren't, here are a couple of definitions:

Wikipedia- Fanboy is a term used to describe a male who is highly devoted and biased in opinion towards a single subject or hobby within a given field. Fanboy-ism is often prevalent in a field of products, brands or universe of characters where very few competitors (or enemies in fiction, such as comics) exist.

 The Urban Dictionary- Fanboy: A passionate fan of various elements of geek culture (e.g. sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, video games, anime, hobbits, Magic: the Gathering, etc.), but who lets his passion override social graces.

I was thinking about the term 'fanboy' the other day, and began to wonder if there was a 'girl' version of the term. Lo and behold, there is. I can't help noticing, however, that the definitions of 'fanboy' and 'fangirl' seem a little uneven. Note, from the very same sources:

Wikipedia- The term fangirl can be used to describe a female member of a fandom community (counterpart to the masculine "fanboy"). Fangirls may be more devoted to emotional and romantic aspects of their fandom, especially (relation-)shipping. However, it is commonly used in a derogatory sense to describe a girl's obsession with something, most commonly a male teen idol or an aspect of Japanese pop culture. Fangirl behavior can vary in intensity. On one end of the scale are those that, while harboring a crush on a particular actor or character, are perfectly capable of understanding that the fulfilment of the crush is never going to happen. On the other end are the girls who are said to be obsessive in their claims on a fictional character, even fighting with other fangirls over who 'owns' the character in question.

The Urban Dictionary- Fangirl: A rabid breed of human female who is obesessed with either a fictional character or an actor.

Uh... rabid? Excuse me, give me my term back! I'm a girl, and I'm a fan of lots of things.

I hereby declare myself a non-rabid, non-hormone-driven, passionate, geeky fangirl of the following:

• Neil Gaiman (including, but not limited to, the Sandman comics)
• The Princess Bride (yeah, that's me in the t-shirt)
• The Obernewtyn Chronicles
• The Lord of the Rings films
• Robin Hobb's fantasy worlds
• Narnia

Don't you dare diss my fangirldom.

Sex tips?

It always puzzles me somewhat when people laugh feminism off as the pointless preoccupation of bra-burners and hairy women. Sure, bras turned out to be kind of useful and some of us like our legs hairless, but that doesn't mean the ideals of feminism are beside the point. (I blogged about the continuing need for feminism here.)

Then, every so often, something comes along which reminds me of the depth of ignorance behind such callousness. This time it was a book entitled Sex Tips for Husbands and Wives from 1894. This book is part of a recent trend for republishing books which predate the 1960s (i.e. second wave feminism) and contain advice on relationships and families. The idea is that the books, with their outdated values and prudish suggestions, are supposed to be funny.

It's kind of nice, in a way, that the old-fashioned, often sexist, advice seems absurd enough to be funny. It shows we've come a long way. But this book crossed the line. It's publisher, Summersdale, advertises the book with the following excerpt:

"While sex is at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured... One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: give little, give seldom and, above all, give grudgingly… Most men are by nature rather perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety of the most revolting practices."


Which might seem funny, until you remember that second wave feminism wasn't all hype. This book, when first published in 1894, was for real. Sex actually was "at best revolting and at worse rather painful" for many women, and this was considered natural.
 
Am I really supposed to find that funny?

Princesses and Pornstars

In my eyes, my mother will always be the ultimate feminist. She never campaigned for her right to work or vote, she never wrote essays or participated in protests. But she is a passionate advocate for women's rights to their own bodies. She has worked alongside many women who have had those rights violated. She is a homemaker, but she is a homemaker because that's what she wants to be. She is not a homemaker because she feels societal pressure to be so. If anything, she has had pressure in the opposite direction. Her greatest life ambition was to raise children and to devote her time to her family, and she did this despite the disapproval of her pro-career generation.

My mum would never call herself a feminist, though. To her, feminism is embodied by single career-women with little respect for family. To her, feminism means man-hating.

Emily Maguire, in Princesses & Pornstars aims to debunk exactly these kinds of myths. She discusses why feminism is about equality, and why equality is still something we need to strive for. In recounting her own experiences and those of many friends and acquaintances, she shows that feminism is not a dirty word and it is not a fight that is behind us.

I was especially drawn to the chapters about marriage and child-rearing. Compared to women in generations gone by, I am exceptionally lucky. I have political rights. I have intellectual rights. I have rights in the workplace.

But.

I am a young woman with no desire for a white 'meringue' wedding. Or domestic 'bliss' of the suburban white-picket-fence sort. Or children.

People seem to find this extremely threatening.