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

[cosmicdancer.livejournal.com]

In a way, isn't saying that anytime a female character develops a relationship with a male character she becomes "the love interest" a kind of reductionism itself? That the only way an intelligent, modern woman can truly be intelligent and modern is to forgo relationships entirely?

I would absolutely feel this way if a woman becoming "the love interest" were the exception rather than the rule. I should add that I definitely don't like it when media allows men to have sexual thoughts and feelings and sterilizes women - it always makes me happy when female characters frankly discuss finding men (or women) attractive. But I think a lot of the time women are being placed on the screen simply to be objects of desire for men.

I've also found that whenever two characters' UST is resolved (or at least made explicit by someone confessing love), the show's plot starts to focus more on romance. I don't have so much experience with the particular shows you're talking about, but two of my previous fandoms are House and Doctor Who, and they were particularly bad about this. Every female in those two series was obsessed with love and relationships, and I think it was TPTB, not me, that was doing the reductionism.

[tielan]

The truth is: Women are often placed on the screen simply to be objects of desire for men.

However, in my mind, that doesn't mean we should just run along with the established hegemonic viewpoint like good little sheeple. My choice, as a woman and a feminist, and someone who wants to see women treated equally on TV and struggles to keep watching when she doesn't find it, is to avoid thinking the way the patriarchy does.

So a female character develops a relationship with a male character? In my books, that's cool. In my mind, she was a fine woman without a man, she's still mighty fine with one. And I'm going to write her, pimp her, promote her - in and out of that relationship - because she's still a person and therefore awesome.

I haven't watched much House or DW. In the Stargates, though, the female characters served a function, the plot was action-adventure-drama oriented (mucho explosions and gunfire), and the UST/relationships were mostly touched upon in character interactions. Both Stargates (and Merlin, and ST:XI, actually) pass the Bedchel test, though. (Two women having a conversation with each other that isn't about a man or romance.)

[cosmicdancer.livejournal.com]

I guess that's where we disagree. I'm trying to find the institutionalized sexism on TV that I think some people are willing to overlook - because women do get to have real personalities and careers and show heroism, and that's all good, but I think there are still a lot of issues in the way their relationships are portrayed. And I do think saying that because of this, women shouldn't have het relationships is the wrong response. But I think the way relationships are portrayed, and the way women are portrayed in relationships, upsets me as a feminist.

But maybe I'm just watching the wrong shows. And maybe I misjudged the first few episodes of SGA when I should have given it another chance. And I think that both of our viewpoints lead to the conclusion that fandom should focus on writing women more, because if we write the relationships the way we want to see them, we can 'be the change we wish to see in the world'.

[tielan]

And I think that both of our viewpoints lead to the conclusion that fandom should focus on writing women more, because if we write the relationships the way we want to see them, we can 'be the change we wish to see in the world'.

Exactly this.