Tiger Beatdown: What Do You Mean When You Say You Want ‘Strong Female Characters’?

natface:

becool-sodapop:

redlightpolitics:

These discussions about ‘strong female characters’ often elide who is being talked about, and they play into larger narratives that no one seems to want to discuss. Who gets to tell stories? Who gets to be the lead, and who is the sidekick or supporting character? Who is calling for ‘strong female characters’ and what, exactly, do they mean when they say that?

This is a great piece by s.e. I think it touches on points that are relevant to different fandoms (Buffy and Veronica Mars, just to name two included in the piece), but also comics and overall pop culture.

I think this post will be of interest to a lot of my Tumblr friends. Make sure you click through and read the articles referenced in the first couple of paragraphs – collectively, they’ve sucked me into an intellectual vortex, and all I want to do right now is go for a long bike ride and ponder what “strong female character” means in the context of YA literature.

Also, my trifecta of TV Heroines of Choice: Buffy Summers, Veronica Mars, and Kara Thrace. The latter two are only mentioned in passing (and can someone remind me when, if ever, Veronica demonstrates any notable fighting skills?), and I had to compartmentalize and prioritize a bit to avoid getting (unreasonably) rankled by a perceived implication that Veronica Mars is somehow not the best female character on screen in the past however many years.

This piece unfortunately veers off into how strong female characters are used to undermine trans women, which is amorphous and unprovable. She also uses one example — of how Tara from True Blood is criticized but Buffy isn’t (not true, by the way) — as proof that “strong female character” always means “white woman.” Which isn’t the case.

This article poses a lot of questions as a way of appealing to authority that she knows the answers to these quesions, but do you? And I think there could have been a real discussion here, but the whole thing is just retread of other people’s thoughts and half-conceived argument. Post coming up as to my own thoughts on strong female characters ™.

Where do I begin with this train wreck? The transphobia or the intellectual dishonesty?

I’ll begin with the transphobia because in my scale of shitty arguments to make, exclusionary statements rank higher in terms of how they have real concrete consequences for people’s lives.

Since (luckily) not all my readership comes from a gender studies background, I’ll point out to a fact that might not be known to everyone: many people have very valid criticisms about the exclusionary nature of feminism, at least Western feminism. One of the ways in which feminism is exclusionary can very well be illustrated by this post: the writer reads a 1500 word piece and instead of pointing to the many subjects covered (and perhaps expressing some valid disagreements), she focuses on the one paragraph about trans women. This, right here, is violence. This is how Western feminism validates and justifies the exclusion of trans women. This kind of dismissal of trans issues, subtle, short, to the point, kniving, is how certain feminisms condone and promote violence. Because how dare a writer post something about strong female characters including trans women? Because, the subtext is clear: trans women are not really women, so they could never be strong female characters. Vocal trolls will invalidate trans issues by using crude and vulgar language. This, however, is much more insidious, it’s dressed as an “innocent” argument. The goal is to hurt by perpetuating these ideas, letting them simmer in the collective because they are oh so softly worded that who would dare point them for the transphobic rhetoric they are? Who would dare trace a correlation between real physical violence exercised over the bodies of trans women and seemingly innocent reblogs about “strong female characters”? Well, I do. I denounce this nonsense as part of the transphobic discourse that legitimates the abuse and violence in people’s lives.

As to the intellectual dishonesty? Oh, this person seems to have an insight into s.e.’s mind that we don’t. Because obviously she knows what s.e. was thinking when ou wrote the piece. This person knows that s.e has the answers but instead, is toying with us. That’s quite the clairvoyant assumption there! And of course, stating that “there could have been some real discussion here” further invalidates the entire piece by implying that, of course, what s.e. wrote is not valid at all.

Well done! Advancing the cause of exclusionary and intellectually dishonest feminism! I say well done!