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Mon, Nov. 1st, 2004 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterThe boy was just watching "The James Bond Story" on Tivo, which had one of the Bond girls saying something about how sexism is most harmful when it is insidious, the point being that the sexism in the Bond movies was so overt that it was harmless. Err, right...
So that got me off on my now standard rant as to why there are not more cool female secret agents/spies/ninjas/actions heroes out there, and my god, I so wish that Alias had let Sydney be all dark and slightly amoral and sleep around and such like a female James Bond (but then we start getting into my multitude of issues with Alias). Then I started wishing that someone had written some sort of fanfic in which James Bond wakes up female and all sorts of cool things would happen and while it would have a good and nice point, it wouldn't be too polemic or anything to get in the way of the story. At that point I decided maybe I should go to bed, because some very strange thoughts were coming out of my head.
Read the last bit of Connie Brockway's My Pleasure. Alas, some of the book was ok, but I was just not in the right mood, or something, because I was getting very snarly with the book. At the end I sort of threw my mental hands up and out and out started ranting in my head on why in the world the guy always gets to be the super-cool fencer who was tortured in some French dungeon and slept around because *gasp* he had been hurt by love. And of course the heroine is more concerned with his sleeping around than his, oh say, sort of stalking her without her knowing it for the past few years or so. And of course if a heroine in a romance novel is ever hurt by love, she would never take it out on the opposite sex by having sex willy-nilly with everyone, because heroines hurt by love in romance novels always remain completely celibate and virginal so that the more experienced hero can warm her up to sex. And, ohhh, the heroine was feeling so bad for the poor widdle hero whose heart had been broken in the past and so slept around and felt debauched afterward.
I realized that if the situation had been so that the heroine were the promiscuous one and the hero had been the one feeling bad for her, I would have been wholeheartedly cheering for the hero and the heroine. I don't know if that is reverse-sexism or whatever you call it, but a lot of it is being completely fed up with how often the first situation happens in romance novels and how infrequently, if ever, the second ever occurs.
And I do realize that given the history of the world and such, it really isn't so historically accurate to have my nifty keen female assassins and spies and fencing masters and whatnot, but why why why can't I at least have heroes and heroines on a more equal level -- I mean, if the heroine can't be all stealthy and cool and such, maybe the hero could just be very nice and sweet and intellectual. But no, it's always the big, brawny alpha male. And the James Bond thing was saying how James Bond was the fantasy of every girl, at which point I sort of yelled at the TV. Maybe he was for me at a very tender age because I am not immune to the cuteness of Pierce Brosnan (I haven't watched many of the older ones at all), but I feel I really don't need a fantasy hero who goes and ruthlessly sleeps around with everyone and is in general pretty misogynistic, because despite what lots of fiction seems to think, I do not secretly wish to be dominated in the bedroom or anywhere else.
I feel a little better now that I have gotten this out of my system.
Anyway, now I want to read books with really kick-ass heroines. Bonuses for books that don't conform to standard gender stereotypes regarding sex and virginity and blah blah the girl must never sleep around if she's the heroine (evil girls, naturally, get to have evil villain sex) while the guy can go do whatever because he's a guy. Actually, what I really want is a romance novel in which the heroine is all tough and alpha-like and rescues the sweet but somewhat naive guy, but somehow, I'm thinking there aren't very many of those around. Also, the next book in which I encounter the good, virginal girl vs. the evil, skanky girl (remind me again why I stopped watching Alias?) I will throw against a wall.
So that got me off on my now standard rant as to why there are not more cool female secret agents/spies/ninjas/actions heroes out there, and my god, I so wish that Alias had let Sydney be all dark and slightly amoral and sleep around and such like a female James Bond (but then we start getting into my multitude of issues with Alias). Then I started wishing that someone had written some sort of fanfic in which James Bond wakes up female and all sorts of cool things would happen and while it would have a good and nice point, it wouldn't be too polemic or anything to get in the way of the story. At that point I decided maybe I should go to bed, because some very strange thoughts were coming out of my head.
Read the last bit of Connie Brockway's My Pleasure. Alas, some of the book was ok, but I was just not in the right mood, or something, because I was getting very snarly with the book. At the end I sort of threw my mental hands up and out and out started ranting in my head on why in the world the guy always gets to be the super-cool fencer who was tortured in some French dungeon and slept around because *gasp* he had been hurt by love. And of course the heroine is more concerned with his sleeping around than his, oh say, sort of stalking her without her knowing it for the past few years or so. And of course if a heroine in a romance novel is ever hurt by love, she would never take it out on the opposite sex by having sex willy-nilly with everyone, because heroines hurt by love in romance novels always remain completely celibate and virginal so that the more experienced hero can warm her up to sex. And, ohhh, the heroine was feeling so bad for the poor widdle hero whose heart had been broken in the past and so slept around and felt debauched afterward.
I realized that if the situation had been so that the heroine were the promiscuous one and the hero had been the one feeling bad for her, I would have been wholeheartedly cheering for the hero and the heroine. I don't know if that is reverse-sexism or whatever you call it, but a lot of it is being completely fed up with how often the first situation happens in romance novels and how infrequently, if ever, the second ever occurs.
And I do realize that given the history of the world and such, it really isn't so historically accurate to have my nifty keen female assassins and spies and fencing masters and whatnot, but why why why can't I at least have heroes and heroines on a more equal level -- I mean, if the heroine can't be all stealthy and cool and such, maybe the hero could just be very nice and sweet and intellectual. But no, it's always the big, brawny alpha male. And the James Bond thing was saying how James Bond was the fantasy of every girl, at which point I sort of yelled at the TV. Maybe he was for me at a very tender age because I am not immune to the cuteness of Pierce Brosnan (I haven't watched many of the older ones at all), but I feel I really don't need a fantasy hero who goes and ruthlessly sleeps around with everyone and is in general pretty misogynistic, because despite what lots of fiction seems to think, I do not secretly wish to be dominated in the bedroom or anywhere else.
I feel a little better now that I have gotten this out of my system.
Anyway, now I want to read books with really kick-ass heroines. Bonuses for books that don't conform to standard gender stereotypes regarding sex and virginity and blah blah the girl must never sleep around if she's the heroine (evil girls, naturally, get to have evil villain sex) while the guy can go do whatever because he's a guy. Actually, what I really want is a romance novel in which the heroine is all tough and alpha-like and rescues the sweet but somewhat naive guy, but somehow, I'm thinking there aren't very many of those around. Also, the next book in which I encounter the good, virginal girl vs. the evil, skanky girl (remind me again why I stopped watching Alias?) I will throw against a wall.