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bookshop on "Why can't a woman be more like a man?":
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.
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.
no subject
Where it becomes problematic, I think, is when all the focus on not liking a lead-male/lead-female pairing is centered on the female. You listed some of the negative reasons people use, but I think even when people give "positive" reasons (she's too strong/smart/cool/etc. for him) it can feel a little troublesome to me when it's so frequently something about a female character that's given as a reason for a canon pairing not working.
no subject
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).
But I don't think that the examples you've chosen really fit the pattern you're describing. I can't speak to SG-1 because I'm not familiar enough with the canon, but regarding the other three pairings:
1) I wouldn't characterize either Arthur or Spock as the primary male; at best, they share top billing with Merlin and Kirk. (One could also argue that Rodney develops primary male status post-S1, but that's perhaps more debatable.)
2) Rodney/Keller evokes the same anyone-but-him arguments as the other pairings you've mentioned, even though they don't fit into your primary male/primary female category.
3) Spock is definitely the geeky male character in ST:AOS.
Instead of your hypothesized primary male - primary female - secondary male triangle, I think the real issue is one of perceived threat to a popular m/m slash pairing. Rodney/Teyla isn't acceptable because Rodney's a "secondary, geeky male"; it's acceptable because it has little to no canonical legitimacy. Just look at SGA fandom's treatment of Keller for an example of how female characters are treated when they become canonically involved with the "secondary male" half of a popular m/m pairing. Or, for that matter, look at Spock/Uhura, since I think Spock's role is more comparable to Rodney's than to John's.
I'm convinced that if the canonical pairings had been Rodney/Teyla, Sam/Daniel, Merlin/Gwen, and Kirk/Uhura--or Draco/Ginny, or Eliot/Sophie, or etc.--then slash fandom would have taken the anyone-but-him position just as strongly. (Kirk/Gaila is the canonical het exception that proves the rule. A male character celebrated for his promiscuity becoming involved with a female Orion is pretty much the antithesis of threatening, and indeed Gaila's been received very well by ST fandom.)
All of which is still problematic, I think, especially when the language used to justify the rejection of the canonical het pairing is almost always anyone-but-him and not anyone-but-her. (I have sympathy for people who don't ship canon pairings, but not when "I don't ship canon pairings" is just code for "give me my white, m/m OTP.") But it's not the same problem that you're seeing.