on female characters "not being good enough" for main male characters

[tielan]

Thoughts by bookshop on "Why can't a woman be more like a man?":

Oh, and let us not leave out Gwen/Arthur, and Gwen/Morgana. Everyone loves Gwen/Morgana. I love Gwen/Morgana. But if we love Gwen so much, why aren't we happy to see her and Arthur so happy together in S2? Don't we love Gwen enough to enjoy her stepping into her role as main character? Or do we only love her enough to shunt her off to the side to be happy with Morgana, so we can all enjoy the lovely Merlin/Arthur slash.

I want to address the main-male, main-female, secondary-male "triangle" that tends to form a pattern in fandoms.

There are any number of people who defend their love of female-with-anyone-but-male. Which is fine...except that this happens a lot. And it almost always happens that the characters involved are the primary female and the main male. TPTB get them together, or show them attracted to each other, and all hell breaks loose in fandom.

So here's my question: Why is it that the primary female character(s) in any canon are never good enough for the main male character?

The female character is permitted, allowed, acceptable, so long as she doesn't fall for the main male character (whom fans have generally shipped with the secondary - read, geeky - male character).

Teyla is a lovely character and people love her...unless she's paired with John Sheppard. Then it's just bad writing, uninteresting, the dynamic just doesn't work.

Sam is a great, kickass career woman...as long as she's not 'chasing after' Jack O'Neill. The instant she shows any care about him, the character is a betrayal of everything she stands for.

Gwen is a sweetheart, a compass of the heart for Merlin and Arthur both, and an anchor for Morgana. But when she falls for Arthur (and more importantly, Arthur falls for her), she's a slag, a slut, a whore, a stupid bitch who doesn't know her place (or her mind).

Uhura? Is fantastic, an intelligent woman of colour in a world without race or gender biases (allegedly). But the instant she kisses Spock, she becomes reviled, abhorrent, discomforting.

Maybe you really don't like the dynamics between John/Teyla, Sam/Jack, Arthur/Gwen, Uhura/Spock and prefer John/Rodney, Jack/Daniel, Arthur/Merlin, and Kirk/Spock. But if preferring two main, white, male characters in a homosexual pairing always comes at the expense of the canonical male/female het pairing, then isn't that an issue? Doesn't that become a kind of erasure of female characters from the relevance of the story - all the story, both the personal and character-driven arcs of relationships, friendships, and romance, as well as the customary functional elimination of a female character in these shows?

This is a pattern for us (fandom 'us') - go to any fandom and take a look at the fanfic.

Perhaps we should start asking ourselves why - without the excuses and the "but I do like Teyla/Sam/Gwen/Uhura, just not with..."

It's not the individual examples that discomfort me - well, they do, but that's because I love these pairings and I want others to love them, too - it's the fact that these are patterns that get repeated in fandom after fandom, show after show. It's the fact that fandom doesn't do this once, they do it again, and again, and again, and again. And each time, the same excuses get recycled:

"She's just not strong enough to be paired with the male lead."

"She's just not interesting enough for me to care about her."

"She's just doesn't have chemistry with the male lead."

Maybe the individual character of this show isn't your type. Maybe the dynamic just isn't your thing. Maybe it's innocuous, innocent, and entirely unintended. Hooray! No need for this feminist guilt claptrap, break out the beer and lets go sit on the pier with our best buds and be manly men in a subtextual way (except for the part where 99% of us are women)!

Still. There's a pattern in fan behaviour that says a woman is good enough to be paired with anyone 'secondary', but only a male will do for the main male character.

And isn't that sexist?

eta: This post was initially focused on looking at fannish reactions to canonical male/female pairings, and then how that translates into fannish behaviour and attitudes. Also, if your OTP or preferred pairing isn't one of these, it's not a criticism of your pairing preferences, it's a look at why fandoms react in such a viciously negative manner to these specific types of m/f pairings.

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

Amen!

[tielan]

Thanks for the link, BTW. I appreciate it.

[revdorothyl]

Excellent insights. Thank you!

[tielan]

It's not intended to be a wholesale 'one size fits all' matter - there are certainly fandoms that buck the trend. But it is a rather disturbing pattern that one sees in fandoms.

[thothmes]

I am, by any standards, privileged. I am a white American, Anglo-Saxon (among other Northern and Western European genetic lines), Protestant, and all four of my grandparents (born between 1900 and 1910) went to college. Both grandparents had graduate degrees (Classics and Law) and one grandmother had an M.A. I'm straight. My husband is from a similar background, and is a physician. About the only way I could increase my privileged status would be if I had been born male. I know that this makes me prone to understand the world in an insensitive way and to make assumptions that those who have been members of minorities and faced predjudice all their lives cannot.

But I have lived (as a child) in a black neighborhood in inner-city Philadelphia, in Greece, and in Palestine, where my fair skin made me stand out, and not always in a good way. My stepfather is a Palestinian immigrant and a Moslem. My siblings, with their Arab names get pulled aside for extra security screening regularly, although they were born here, and are loyal Americans. My brother was on the board of Seeds of Peace which works to build world understanding and tolerance one teen at a time. Once when I told an acquaintance in Ann Arbor (Michigan) that my family back East was Moslem, she backed away from me, and crossed herself. I had a period in pre-school when I was underfed and malnourished, because my parents were both students and we were impoverished. So I have some glimmer of a clue.

What does this have to do with the topic under discussion? Well, this is my quandry. I have no problem with slashing gay characters. If I read Will & Grace fic, which I don't, I would have no problem with Will being paired with any male. I have no issue with those who wish to write slash, whether it be M/M or F/F, but generally I actively avoid any slash that features characters who are nominally straight. I defend to the death the rights of others who don't feel the way I do to slash anyone they want to, and enjoy any adult pairing. And yes, I understand that many nominally straight folk in rl are closeted gays, so on those grounds, occasionally we could expect the nominally straight hero to be boffing the supporting-male geek as often as he can. I understand that if one is gay, it must be difficult to never see the male (or the female) lead find love, comfort, and understanding with his/her own sex. And a gifted author can write (and some have written) slash that I have enjoyed for other redeeming factors, like a wicked funny sense of humor, or a deep nuanced understanding of psychology and personality. But face it. Most slash is written by hetero females. Can anyone explain why? What is the strong appeal? I'm not up-tight, easily shocked, or hide-bound, but I am mystified.

[havocthecat]

Most slash is written by hetero females. Can anyone explain why? What is the strong appeal? I'm not up-tight, easily shocked, or hide-bound, but I am mystified.

You know, if you want answers to your questions (and to see what the queer women who write boyslash also have to say), there are tons of awesome posts on these same subjects that were all made very, very recently! You can find them linked on metafandom and linkspam, though, if LJ is still down, you might not be able to get to all of them at the moment. :)

The posts are all very thinky and great to read. (As is this one, mind you.)

[havocthecat]

You know, I hadn't thought about it, but you do have a really good point about the message that comes across. Why aren't the main female characters (or even the secondary ones) good enough for the male leads?

[tielan]

The thing is, it's not just a case of, "oh, Sam/Jack but I prefer Jack/Daniel" it's a case of "It's not that I don't like Sam; I just don't like her with Jack - it's okay if she has Daniel, or Teal'c, or Hammond, or Janet, or Vala, or Siler, but she shouldn't have Jack!" Sorry, Cam.

Fandom seems very insistent of preserving the love of the 'alpha male' (for want of a better term - the male in question is usually physically active, athletic, and canonically billed as attractive to women) for the 'beta male' in a way that seems extremely reminiscent of a Harlequin.

And that says disturbing things to me when I've been seeing discussions on how slash is so gender- and heteronormatively- subversive around all week.

From metafandom

[sally_maria]

I honestly can't tell whether this comes over as defensive, and if it does I apologise. I am a fan of all the m/m pairings you list (though Spock/Uhura is pretty awesome as well).

I can definitely see the pattern you are describing - but I'm not sure whether it's actually about the female character "being good enough" for the lead.

After all, in all of the pairings you mention, with the possible exception of Merlin/Arthur, who is the fans' favourite character? It's not the lead, but the secondary male - Daniel, McKay, Spock. To me, it seems far more like fans wanting to build on and expand their favourite characters' relationship with the lead. It's not about the woman being "good enough" it's about her forcing out your favourite.

I can't answer for all fans of the pairings, but I've seen this borne out in the way that fans are far more supportive of other pairings that involve their favourite - I know a lot of very anti-Sam/Jack J/D fans who are happy to read Sam/Daniel, and I don't think I've ever seen a negative comment about Rodney/Teyla (though that may be the circles I moved in).

Re: From metafandom

[tielan]

Sure, such fans are supporting of Sam/Daniel and Rodney/Teyla - however, it's not just supporting pairings that involve their fan favourites, it's supporting any pairing that splits the female from the main male character. Many fans seem to insist on reserving the love of the main male character exclusively for the secondary male character - or perhaps, in a pinch, another male character.

Alpha male/male is fine (usually in fanon), but alpha male/female is icky (in canon)? Every time?

It's not about specifics so much as it's about patterns. And the patterns I see among fans who prefer m/m interactions is that they're not just "well, I prefer this pairing" so much as wholly rejecting the main male character's canonical romantic relationship with the female character. "It's wrong. It needs to be undone. She needs to break his heart. He needs to get with his BFF. They have no chemistry." And so on ad infinitum.

[astridv]

"She's just not strong enough to be paired with the male lead."
"She's just not interesting enough for me to care about her."
"She's just doesn't have chemistry with the male lead."

Or my favorite: "Now she's just the girlfriend."
Because somehow being written into a relationship magically negates all her charactereristics and accomplishents. When a woman gets a romantic relationship onscreen, fandom criticizes her as just the girlfriend in some pseudo-feminist rethoric, and the hypocrisy makes me so angry I want to scream, because it's used as yet another excuse to dismiss her. Also, to keep her out of the way of the fanon OTP. Apparently romantic relationships are not within the parameters of what's acceptable for strong female characters.

Those women back in Miami Vice who fell in love with Crocket at the beginning of the episode and were dead by the end... those were just the girlfriend. Nyota Uhura is a kick ass starfleet officer who's in a relationship with Spock.

[tielan]

When a woman gets a romantic relationship onscreen, fandom criticizes her as 'just the girlfriend' in some pseudo-feminist rethoric, and the hypocrisy makes me so angry I want to scream, because it's used as yet another excuse to dismiss her.

Oh, don't get me started on this! Most of the time in these shows, the female character starts off somewhere else entirely. No romance on her mind. She's doing her job, whatever that might be, she's hanging with the guy in question and over time they start to be attracted to each other. Her goal isn't to attract a man, her goal is to keep surviving day to day, or to free her people, or to be the best she can be. And somewhere along the way - just like in life - love happens.

Apparently romantic relationships are not within the parameters of what's acceptable for strong female characters.

Apparently!

I agree that there are problems with female characters' main threads in stories often being limited to their relationships. Yet those female characters didn't start and finish with those relationships - they were people behind them, even before the male lead took an interest. And relationships are a story and a character arc, too - and not just the Harlequin kind.

Then, too, if male writers are limiting the female characters to romantic relationships, and fandom objects to this, why don't more fanficwriters do something about it and rewrite these female characters in action-oriented scenarios? Why erase or reduce the feminine presence from our narratives even further than they've been reduced in canon?

[sholio]

I wonder if part of the problem is that TPTB don't recognize fandom's affinity for geek/jock pairings, and tend to pair characters off in jock/jock and geek/geek pairs? In most of the cases I can think of where fandom's reacted virulently to a canonical pairing or preferred to pair a character off with someone uncanonical, it's been a pairing of like types -- two geeks - Rodney/Jennifer, Spock/Uhura, or two warrior types - Harry/Ginny, Tony/Ziva (NCIS), John/Teyla. Whereas the tiny handful of canon geek/jock pairings that I can think of (and there *aren't* very many!), like Jack/Ianto or Wash/Zoe, seemed to be pretty popular with fandom.

Romance novels recognize this ... admittedly it's not my preferred genre, but from my limited exposure to it, pairing a physically-active alpha male with a physically-inept-but-smart female seems to be quite common. And that's the dynamic that is often recreated in slash, but not one that commonly plays out onscreen, where it seems to be more common to pair off characters with those who are similar kinds of people.

I suppose I'm wondering if fandom would have preferred canon John/Keller to canon Rodney/Keller, or canon Jack/Janet to canon Jack/Sam -- or, for that matter, reversing the roles, Daniel/Sam or Rodney/Teyla. (Putting Sam in the "jock" category is awkward, because she's also "geek" and can slip into either role, but she's definitely more of an alpha female compared to Daniel.) I know people who liked Ronon/Keller (jock/geek) but hate Rodney/Keller (geek/geek).

I'm certainly not saying that gender doesn't play a role, since there is a disproportionately large amount of vitriole directed at the women in these pairings rather than the men. But I wonder if the fundamental part of the equation that TPTB are missing is that fandom as a whole -- not individual followers of individual pairings, of course -- prefer pairings between unlike types to pairings of like types.

[tielan]

In my experience, it's not just warrior/warrior or geek/geek typing, either - it's very specific to the alpha male/alpha female. eg. John/Ronon or Ronon/Teyla are mostly acceptable in fandom, but John/Teyla is a complete no-no.

Sure, warrior/geek is more popular among fans, but I don't know that such a preference can quite explain the degree of dislike reserved for the alpha male/female pairing and which tends to bleed over into the treatment of the female character.

For me, it's less about TPTB and their pairing choices as it is about the fans and their pairing choices - and the why of them.

[hydrangea]

I have to admit this is something I think about a lot - especially I know I have immediate negative reactions to a lot of main male character/primary female character canon pairings (curiously enough, I do tend to ship main female character/primary male character canon a lot though). For a lot of those instances, I can accept any (het/slash/femmeslash/other) pairing but main male character/primary female character.

Why? I don't know and that's really odd. I could blame it on that no matter what the writers do with the primary female character, it still feels like she's there to be the primary female character and slowly work towards becoming the primary female love interest but I suspect that's only rationalization.

[tielan]

musefool has an awesome post about rationalisations for not liking female characters. You might find it worth reading.

Basically, fandom has its ass covered every which way as far as the reasons we have negative reactions to female characters.

[(Anonymous)]

That wasn't true for Scully. I'm actually surprised at the number of Scully fans who now dislike other female leads.

[princessofgeeks]

is mulder/scully the exception that proves the rule?

[carolyn_claire]

Mulder was nowhere near good enough for Scully. *g*

[torachan]

It totally comes off as jealousy to me. No woman is good enough for their favorite character, because he should be with them! But if it's a guy, it feels like less competition.

[tielan]

Thing is, half the time the 'favourite character' is the secondary male - the geek, the nerd, the guy with the technological/magical agency in the show.

I have a friend who'd switch your statement around and say, "the main male lead should only be with my favourite character, and I don't want this woman in competition with me for him."

So, yes, she'd say it was jealousy, although not quite as you described it.

[cosmicdancer.livejournal.com]

I think what part of this is all about is that we don't want to see the message reinforced that all female characters must end up in relationships. If there are only one or two female characters in the main cast of a television show (which is usually the case in SF/F), it really bothers me if they inevitably end up being somebody's girlfriend (which again is usually the case). It's not that I don't think they're deserving of the male leads, it's just that sometimes I feel like they're being slotted into the role of love interest, and that they're being oversexualized to a degree that is rarely true of male characters. (And usually look like models, when the male characters just look like average people.) It reinforces the message that among the most important goals of a women's life is relationships; that there is something inherently wrong with a women not ending up with somebody; that they should exist to pair with the men in the show.

So you mentioned John and Teyla in SGA. I've only seen the first few episodes so I don't know about later developments, but in the pilot those two had evident sexual tension (and did they kiss at one point, maybe? I can't remember). It bothered me a lot that as soon as a beautiful, strong woman was introduced to the cast, she wanted to fall into the arms of the male lead.

I don't think it excuses the attitude that women are getting in the way of supposedly superior m/m pairings. I don't think it excuses the attitude that female characters are uninteresting. But I do think it explains why some women with intelligent attitudes toward gender don't like to see that inevitably, female characters = love interests for men.

[carolyn_claire]

Yes, this. I want to read stories about women that aren't about who they're in love with, how their romantic relationship is going, how that defines them, etc. There's already so much of that, TOO much of that, in media, to the point that we start looking to apply the Bechdel test to judge the quality of the product. I want stories about women that are about who they are and what they do, not who they fuck. Not that that het can't be hot; it can, in the right hands. My jaded RL palate is picky about how that's handled, though; I want to see her done justice to, I want non-hetero-normative, I want her to be powerful, I want what, for me, is better than the average (fictional or RL) romance. Different. I want to be wowed.

So, no, I don't think people who enjoy and read and write female characters, just not as love interests for the male lead, are being sexist. I think if they like slashing the male leads, it may very well be because that's what turns them on, that's where they like their sex play. They may not be playing sexually with the female characters for any number of reasons that aren't sexist; if they really do enjoy those female characters as much as they say, then those reasons probably aren't.

[readingz]

I was quite worried about this myself, about myself, really, and what it said about me that in real life women were way more interesting than in fiction (where they are, you know, *designed* to attract the reader/viewer's attention). But then there came Parker from Leverage, and she is the coolest girl ever and my favourite character and I so want her to get it on with the boys or the girls or anybody she doesn't have a pseudo-familial relationship with, really. Also, Elizabeth from PoTC was also really cool and I thought Will was too boring for her, and Max from Dark Angel (Logan was too boring for her, too, but couldn't find a more useful boyfriend, have to give her that). And Veronica Mars, and her Mac, and other unconventional girls who aren't "the designated female character" or "the random useful character that ended up female".

Teyla, Gwen and Sam are all calm, in control, to a point maternal figures with whom I can't identify *at all*, it's no wonder I don't like them! Gwen has her passionate moments where she seems more human, and often related to Lancelot or Morgana, who I do like (her flirty-jealous relationship with Arthur in episode one went out the window to become pure sibling rivalry in the second ep and it seems to me she would it Merlin alive) even as helpless as she's portrayed in the s2 she's still someone i can understand. (I only know Sam from SGA, btw)

Friendshipper has an excellent point with the jock/geek thing! Ronon/Keller absolutely worked in a way Teyla/Ronon never did (to name to pairings i'm not very invested in) and it's obviously a component in the Rodney/John. SGA is a fandom where i more or less have an OTP and nobody's managed to convince me any other pairing works for Sheppard (Rodney/Radek i have come to accept as a good second best). Although the 4-way relationship between SGA-1 works if taken as a subset of 3 individual relationships and not as a group thing (where it's not so equal)

I don't think those are excuses, at least not always, i think they are reasons. When you say that the fact that a character sucks or isn't good enough in canon doesn't justify fans not making more of her in fic... well, where are we supposed to get the inspiration? Is her femaleness supposed to be enough? Should we write her out of pity?

What I mean is that I agree with you, there are patterns in fannish activity but they do come from somewhere, those same patterns exist in canon and in society. And we are, after all, using the master's tools and playing in the master's house (and, most importantly, we're doing so because we like it, this characters (male and more rarely, for me, female) are attracting us to them and their worlds, they and their situations aren't ideal (mostly, or there wouldn't be so much fic changing both) but there is something *right* about them and possibly that's what we're trying to replicate, unable as we are to do something about what is not there (if we go in that direction it's an OC and we might as well go and create an original character that rocks in their own world, either way, it's not a *fan*work).

Sorry i rambled, i hope i made some sense, if not, sorry, it's late and I'm in a fannish frenzy tonight :p

[tielan]

I don't know that looking at Parker in Leverage is quite the same. In Leverage, as I understand it, the comparison would be the popularity of Nate/Sophy to, say, Nate/Eliot.

musefool has an excellent post on the rationalisations fandom uses to avoid writing female characters. Basically, fans have their asses covered from every direction when it comes to defending why they don't write female characters.

well, where are we supposed to get the inspiration? Is her femaleness supposed to be enough? Should we write her out of pity?

*laughs* I don't write characters out of pity. I write them because I like them. One is not obligated to write about characters you don't like, male, or female. I think that one should respect them, treat them as people and involve them in the narrative, even if their view is not yours, they don't connect with you. They're characters, they're female, and I, personally, wouldn't want to be responsible for the kind of female-bashing that I abhor - whether I like the character or not.

Underneath my post is the point that if one doesn't like or write any female characters, then maybe one needs to start asking why femaleness is always the dealbreaker.

[miera_c]

There's a pattern in fan behaviour that says a woman is good enough to be paired with anyone 'secondary', but only a male will do for the main male character.

This is very well put.

*uses icon ironically*

[(Anonymous)]

I had a huge knee-jerk reaction to some of your examples See, part of the reason I bailed out early on Stargate, and refused to see new!Trek, was because of the (het) pairings you mentioned -- not because I thought the women weren't good enough, but because I thought they were too good.

Sam was freaking awesome as an independent woman, and Jack was frankly a jerk to her, and there were creepy undertones about sexual harassment and consent going on. And Uhura was one of the first examples I had seen of a woman who didn't need romance, or indeed a man in any context, to make her a full person -- she was an awesome role model, being happy and single and in control of her own sexuality. Hell, her being awesome and allowed to stay single was a good part of why I went from unsure to feminist -- it made me realize how rare that kind of woman is in our cultural narratives, and that upset single-dykeling teenaged-me. I love Spock, and ficwise I wouldn't half mind most Uhura 'ships, but she deserved better treatment than that in the canon.

(I do like K/S and S/M. But I like Uhura/her own awesomeness even more. )

I understand your main point, and I agree -- I've seen this played out in many fandoms in ugly ways. But I object to the idea that to like female characters, I have to like the relationships they're put in, especially since those are so often badly-written.

-spacelogic on IJ

[tielan]

I don't think you have to like the relationships they're put in - and I'm pretty sure I never said that; I did find it odd that this rejection of these female characters' canon relationships repeats through fandoms.

Via Metafandom

[ten]

I'm not a writer and read only little fanfic these days anymore (I'm into fanart nowadays, and I RP), so I am genuinely confused here. My confusion is:

Isn't the point of not writing the canon pairing that it's, well, canon (as opposed to it being a het pairing)? That 'we don't have to write it' because the show already does it for us?

Or do you see the same pattern also when the primary male and the primary female are not a pairing in canon?

Re: Via Metafandom

[tielan]

There are plenty of things that are "in canon" that people write about - in fact, one could argue that fanfic is about writing what's in canon out of canon: is there any reason the canon pairing should be exempt?

Shows never show all the things that fans want to see - all the little details, whether gen, het, or slashy. Writing fanfic is about filling in gaps or elaborating on things that are there but aren't detailed, or aren't there but could be, or aren't there and could never be but are cool and hey, why don't we put them on a ship at sea and see how the characters interact there!

From metafandom

[ariadne83]

See, for me it's the other way around. While I like the main male characters there's a general trend of writing men as juvenile. So I don't think they're good enough for the women I admire - at least, that was my experience in SG-1/Atlantis fandom with the canon 'ships/hints at ships. I want more for these women than to essentially be caretakers.

I think part of that is my taste in dynamics; I was very taken with Sam/Martouf, and Sam/Jack doesn't resonate for me in the same way, leaving aside the fact that I'm primarily a slasher, and I don't generally ship CO/subordinate relationships, het or slash. The inequality bothers me.

I don't read John/Teyla unless it's an AU where he has quite different characterization/backstory from canon (e.g. Heternormativity).

I think basically when it comes to female characters I prefer to see them in the types of relationships I could see myself in, because it's more personal to my experience. When it comes to slash I'm more likely to read a wide range of dynamics, because I might be in the character's head but I don't feel like I'm under their skin.

[lyraeinne]

For me at least it always comes down to the fact that all of the canon male/female pairings you mention (and others like them, as well) tend to be written - in canon - to have mass appeal to the wide variety of people who watch the show. They're built to hit the generic cues that make for good romance within the most mainstream of the mainstream, which often seems to mean that the female character is sacrificed by necessity to make them work when they won’t fall into place naturally.

It’s very probable that had Sam/Daniel ever been a canon possibility, I would have found it just as anemic, unsatisfying, and ultimately misogynistic as I did Jack/Sam. But because it never was, I have an easier time imagining it transcending those tired tropes and gender roles.

I do understand what you're saying here, but I think it's possible that many of those ships are less interesting by virtue of how canon ships tend to be written rather than hatred/jealousy of the female character herself.

[tielan]

I think it's possible that many of those ships are less interesting by virtue of how canon ships tend to be written rather than hatred/jealousy of the female character herself.

Less interesting to you, at least.

So, if these pairings weren't realised in canon, you feel you could make of them whatever you wanted them to be as compared to having them be what they are as defined by canon?

[(Anonymous)]

Hm. When I rearrange canon couples, it's usually because he's no good for her, and she's the character in which I'm most interested. Main examples: John/Delenn (Babylon 5), Roslin/Adama (BSG). In both cases I felt like the canon relationship, although it made her happy, led to her character arc going in ways I didn't like, ways that revolved around the male protagonist to an extent that I felt lost some of what I loved about the character. In order to move forward her character arc in ways in which I prefer I needed to pair her off (eventually) with someone else. In both these cases, I'm really not that interested in what happens to him.

[(Anonymous)]

Is there some secret corner of fandom I'm missing, where everybody gets together to bash fic that features het pairings?

The female character is permitted, allowed, acceptable, so long as she doesn't fall for the main male character (whom fans have generally shipped with the secondary - read, geeky - male character).

I also find this somewhat alarming. All slash pairings, everywhere, are jock/geek? Really? And choosing to write about a female character and a NON main character is... bad? Lesser?

But you know what? Even when I do love the two main leads together -- and I love me some Michael/Fiona in Burn Notice -- doesn't mean I necessarily write/read fic about it. Because it's ALREADY IN THE SHOW. I don't need to turn to the internet for my wish fulfillment, because the source canon is already doing its job for me.

Then I go to a show like Farscape, where I've come to love Aeryn, but I don't like Crighton -- so by seeking out Aeryn/Crais, I'm Doing It Wrong?

(In the Holmes/Watson pairing, which one of them is the "jock"? Is it Watson, simply because he's not AS smart as Holmes? Or is it Holmes, because he knows how to box better than Watson?)

[copracat]

Actually, Watson's the jock because he's a former army surgeon, serving and wounded in Afghanistan. He's also a better shot than Holmes.

Here via metafandom!

[malisita]

I've been struggling with this very same issue, especially given my recent obsession with Criminal Minds and NCIS — both of which are very slash-heavy fandoms, where the primary pairings are Alpha Male/Geek, with the canonical females shoved off into the background. Ziva, Abby, Emily, J.J and Garcia are all basically dismissed, in favor of Tony/McGee, Gibbs/Tony (where, oddly enough, Tony goes from being the jock to being the geek), and Reid/Hotch or Reid/Morgan.

And I don't quite understand why *none* of these women, who are all strong and kickass and sexy in their own right, are good enough to be part of the "It" pairing for their show. Why are McGee, Tony and Reid erasing and replacing them? When one takes into account nuTrek, POTC, SGA, and all the other fandoms you cited, you're right, there is absolutely a pattern.

Is there just something about the McGees, Reids and Merlins of the world that speak more intimately to fandom? It can't necessarily be just their inherent geekiness, because Abby and Garcia are total geeks and outsiders who, for whatever reason, don't evoke the same level of empathy. (Okay, so I strongly suspect "for whatever reason," is the fact that they're women.)

Re: Here via metafandom!

[tielan]

And I don't quite understand why *none* of these women, who are all strong and kickass and sexy in their own right, are good enough to be part of the "It" pairing for their show. Why are McGee, Tony and Reid erasing and replacing them? When one takes into account nuTrek, POTC, SGA, and all the other fandoms you cited, you're right, there is absolutely a pattern.

Thanks for adding NCIS to this. I've just started watching from S1, and haven't had a chance to read any fanfic yet. (avoiding for the moment.) It'll be interesting to see what comes of it - I think I'm going to like all kinds of fic in this fandom - and where the fannish leanings are.

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[rushingwind]

Word. To all of this.

This is a pattern for us (fandom 'us') - go to any fandom and take a look at the fanfic.

[ender24]

I think, this is an issue in western slash fandom.

I don't think, it applies to those Chinese TV media and RPS fandoms, and fanfics, that I have been loosely following and reading.

So, if you only speak for US media based slash fandoms, I guess, yeah, I have to agree, its probably largely true.

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[lanjelin]

I really don't think it's a question of whether we slashers think a female character deserves a male character. At least that's not a reason I've seen expressed for not shipping a certain het couple.

No, in general male and female characters don't have the dynamic we like, and so we ship characters who we think do have that dynamic. That it's rarely a man and a woman says more about the state of modern western media than us fanficcers, I think.

There's also the joy of mixing things up and doing something that just isn't ever done in published fiction. I mean, it's not as if there's any lack of het in mainstream media - we can easily get our fill there (and most of us, I think, do).

Now, I'm not in any the fandoms you mentioned (though I did watch a bit of SG1 and found myself shipping Jack/Teal'c, which isn't exactly a popular pairing...) but I don't recognise the reasoning you've put up as examples. Not shipping a het couple because the female character isn't good enough for him is something I've never seen since the early days of Gundam Wing fandom (and even then the bashing soon was deemed unacceptable by the m/m part of the fandom).

Also, I'm really not convinced that the same people ship all those pairings you mentioned. I mean surely there are different people in each fandom! Though there's bound to be some overlap, of course.

"She's just not interesting enough for me to care about her."

"She's just doesn't have chemistry with the male lead."

Yeah, but these two reasons are actually not taken from thin air, you know. There are problems with how female characters are written, and ignoring that is not helping anyone.

Take Doctor Who, for example (a fandom I'm actually in); the Doctor (the male lead) has had three main Companions (all female) during the new series, and while they all have large followings (both as characters and in a Doctor/Companion romantic relationship) only the first one was implied to have been romantically loved by the Doctor, while the last one was the only one meant to have a strictly platonic relationship with him. Why? well, it's not as if they've told us, but the first two companions were very young and conventionally pretty (one of them was even breathtakingly beautiful), while the last one was in her thirties (still younger- well, younger-looking than the Doctor, though!), very attractive but not in a conventional way, and not as thin as the other two (still got a great figure, though).

Guess what I ship? Yeah, they've got a fantastic dynamic, exactly what I like, while I'm not very fond of the relationship we're supposed to feel for. But Doctor Who has a lot of female main characters with different personalities, so we actually have some variety for once, and aren't forced to accept the only option available (which is almost always the case otherwise).

I think Doctor Who has problems with sexism in the writing, but at least there are more than one or two female characters in it.