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

Re: From metafandom

[scrollgirl]

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

But how often do we actually have alpha male/alpha female? By which I mean, how often is the female lead on equal footing (narrative-wise) as the male lead? I've only seen Merlin S1, so correct me if S2 changes up the dynamics, but I wouldn't really consider Gwen to be equal to Arthur. (I don't mean this as a criticism.) Max from Dark Angel was a true alpha female. Buffy, Veronica Mars, Captain Janeway, and female leads from mainstream shows where the women get just as much screen-time as men--I consider those alpha females.

Sam is the lead female character, but I wouldn't really consider her the alpha female of the pack. That is, if there are two "alphas" on SG-1 I'd argue Jack and Daniel fill those roles. Sam is subordinate to Jack, it's in your face. This is why I love Sam and Cam together, and Sam and John, because in later season there's no question she is the alpha.

ETA: Which isn't to say you don't have a point, because Elizabeth was alpha female and yet I 'shipped John/Teyla in S1 and thought John/Elizabeth was bizarre and unrealistic.

Re: From metafandom

[sally_maria]

I suspect it may depend on what you consider to be alpha? I would have said that Teyla was alpha, and Elizabeth wasn't, regardless of the positions of their actors in the credits - and that Teyla was a much better match for John, therefore.

Sam definitely wasn't alpha during SG1, one of the biggest problems with Sam/Jack, for the fans I mixed with. Janet was, because she could interact with him as an equal, and tell him off when he was out of line.

Gwen has developed the habit of telling Arthur off, when he behaves badly. It still feels very much like Arthur humouring the pretty girl, though, rather than him actually respecting her opinion. I still wouldn't consider her to be an alpha. As much as I loved Arthur and Morgana's sibling relationship and don't actually ship them, from that point of view I think she's a much better match for him.

Re: From metafandom

[scrollgirl]

Yeah, I read Teyla as more of an equal for John, and not because she can physically kick his ass. She has a groundedness about her, like she's seen all and can handle anything. Torri played Elizabeth as naively optimistic at times, with a real sense of wonder--which I liked, don't get me wrong, but didn't work for me as an alpha female.

Janet was, because she could interact with him as an equal, and tell him off when he was out of line.

Oh, interesting! I was never on the het side of fandom (until Vala *g*) but I can see that about Janet. The great thing about the CMO is they trump even 2-star generals in a medical situation!

Re: From metafandom

[sally_maria]

I was very much a slasher as well, but most of the people I knew, who were pretty adamantly anti- Sam/Jack, were at least accepting if not enthusiastic about Jack/Janet. She was Air Force, but as you said, being a doctor took her out of the chain of command, in the same way as Daniel's civilian status did.

One of the things I found odd about the OP was the idea that slash OTP fans wanted the main character to only sleep with guys, and if not the secondary male, then any other male would do. That wasn't my experience at all, and I find it completely foreign. Part of the specialness of a slash OTP for me is that any guy won't do, it has to be that one particular guy. So, in my experience, OTP slash fans are much more accepting of het pairings for the members of their pairing, rather than other gay ones.

Maybe that's changed more recently - I've seen a lot more John/Cam and John/Lorne since McKeller. But I think a lot more SGA fans see John as actually gay, and there aren't any obvious het pairings for him anyway, I suppose, unless you bring Sam back. (That's not speaking from being anti- John/Teyla, I'm not, just that she seemed happy with Kanaan, so not immediately available.)

Re: From metafandom

[scrollgirl]

but most of the people I knew, who were pretty adamantly anti- Sam/Jack, were at least accepting if not enthusiastic about Jack/Janet.
I'd love to hear from tielan on this, because I'm not sure if pairing Jack with another female character supports or counters her argument that (parts of) fandom rejects the female lead being romantically paired with the male lead. Because yeah, I adore Jack/Sara, I've got every fic for that pairing saved on my hard drive. But I 'ship it at the expense of Jack/Sam, the main het "canon" pairing.

With SGA, it's not that I rejected John/Elizabeth (which was never canon anyway) in favour of McShep; I also rejected J/E in favour of John/Teyla. And later John/Ronon, John/Cam, John/Sam, John/Todd, John/Jeannie.¹ So it's not really as cut-and-dried as all that.

¹ I gave up on John/Rodney long before Keller came along, and yeah, I do see John as bi or gay so I'm happy pairing him with men and women. He's my little black dress. *g*

Re: From metafandom

[tielan]

The pattern that I've seen is that when a canonical het pairing is presented in such shows, the reaction by slash fans is very specifically negative towards that pairing.

I said that fandom tends to reserve the alpha male for the 'beta' male, and that when they don't, they'll slash him with someone else. I specified slash, which, on reflection, is incorrect. A 'secondary female' is often acceptable - as is the pairing of the main female character with a secondary male one. eg. Jack/Janet and Sam/Daniel - neither of which is as popular as Sam/Jack, but neither of which is quite as reviled, either.

The same fannish behaviour recurs with John/Teyla, Arthur/Gwen, and Spock/Uhura - you'll find more vitriol directed at these pairings within their fandoms than any other pairing.

And I picked these pairings and fandoms because they were the ones I was actually involved in, and so experienced these behaviours.

Interestingly, I can see John as bi-, where I have much more trouble with Jack. To me, Jack codes as 99% het - the exception is Teal'c. John, on the other hand, is bi- with Ronon, Radek, and Cameron Mitchell, but very specifically not with Rodney. The reason he and Rodney get on so well is because they're not at all attracted to each other. It means sex never gets in the way.

In SGA, Teyla's my little black dress, along with Ronon - they go with everyone. Oddly, in my head, they don't go with each other.

Re: From metafandom

[scrollgirl]

I said that fandom tends to reserve the alpha male for the 'beta' male, and that when they don't, they'll slash him with someone else. I specified slash, which, on reflection, is incorrect. A 'secondary female' is often acceptable - as is the pairing of the main female character with a secondary male one.

Hmm. Well, I don't deny that slashers can be the worst bashers of female lead characters because of a canon het romance, but the pairing of the alphas with the beta characters seems to be a question of narrative focus. When the male/female leads get together? The romance takes centre stage. Everything is coloured by the relationship, to the point where it sometimes feels like there's no escaping it. When you pair a lead character with a secondary character, generally you'll still be left with some safe spaces where you don't have to trip over romance to get to the plot. Compare Farscape to, say, Criminal Minds. It's one thing for J.J. on CM to hook up with a guest star male character--if she'd hooked up with Hotch, then that romance would be much more present, on screen, difficult to avoid. With Farscape, you can't hardly talk about the show without tripping over John/Aeryn (not that I have a problem with John/Aeryn--there's a het pairing done right).

Now, J/D and McShep folks get plenty of fuel from canon--Jack and Daniel, and John and Rodney have plenty of interaction on screen, and Daniel and Rodney are not secondary characters. But it's still not canon romance, and hell, bookshop's gay subtext rant nails it perfectly--we still don't have gay main characters. Subtext is not text, it's not equal, it never will be equal.

I love Jack/Sara and I love Daniel/Sha're, and I really like Teal'c/Ishta and wished we'd seen more of her. I was fine with Sam/Pete, though I think Pete should have been kept more off-screen, and while I wish we'd gotten a bit more of Teyla/Kanaan on-screen, I wouldn't have wanted the relationship taking centre stage (the way McKay/Keller/Ronon did).

The truth is, if you break down the Jack/Sam scenes in SG-1 canon, it doesn't add up to that much. I'm sure you could argue that parts of fandom overreacted to the "threat" of canon het taking over the show, when it never really did. Still, this is why I said in another thread that I prefer UST to be mutual, overt, and not protracted: just give me the canon het from the very beginning (e.g. Buffyverse, Farscape, Dark Angel) or keep everything strictly gen (e.g. Criminal Minds). It's the waffling for years that drives me nuts. Either I'll love the het pairing, or I'll hate it and stop watching the show. Playing coy means I never know if it's safe to watch. (And it hits my embarrassment squick.)

Re: From metafandom

[scrollgirl]

The pattern that I've seen is that when a canonical het pairing is presented in such shows, the reaction by slash fans is very specifically negative towards that pairing.

Also--without arguing your point, which I think is very accurate--I think this is also true of nearly "canon" slash pairings. I'm thinking specifically of John/Rodney, which is so overwhelmingly present in fandom that it "might as well be canon". (Which it's NOT, good God people, I hate it when McShep fans argue that it's canon and real and not just a subtext they're interpreting, equal to all other non-canon pairings that we as fans interpret.)

John/Rodney is so frickin' THERE that I react, and others in my small corner of fandom react, very much like the slash fans you described above, hating on canon het. I fast-forward through Rodney scenes. I scroll past Rodney-squee posts. I refuse to read McShep fanfic. Even McKay gen is extremely iffy. We write posts in which we... we don't bash Rodney, but we don't excuse his sexist behaviour, we express our frustration with Rodney-apologists, etc. Go backwards in time 10 years and these were the classic signs of SG-1 fans reacting badly to Jack/Sam and being negative about Sam.

So I guess what I'm saying is that, yes, overall female characters get more flack than male characters, but fandom reacting negatively to a major pairing is pretty much the same regardless of the gender of a character.

Re: From metafandom

[sally_maria]

I think she's right that there is a pattern of slash fans rejecting canon het pairings that involve one of the halves of their OTP. I just don't think that that is by itself evidence of misogyny, particularly as there is plenty of evidence of slashers accepting or even supporting other het pairings.

It can be done in a misogynistic way, definitely, but the basic fact that fans of one pairing usually don't want another to become canon, don't want it to eat into the screen time between their favourites, don't want to have to write around it - that's got nothing to do with whether the given pairings are slash or het, in my experience.

Re: From metafandom

[carolyn_claire]

That's very true--I've seen few people as virulently anti-John/Teyla, for instance, as some John/Elizabeth shippers.

Re: From metafandom

[scrollgirl]

Yeah, I agree that rejecting one pairing in favour of another isn't limited to slash.

That said, the vitriol against female characters that get in the way of an OTP has always been worse than the hatred of a male character equivalent.

Re: From metafandom

[carolyn_claire]

Eh, maybe. It might depend on the fandom. In my largely John/Rodney portion of fandom, I'd seen very little John/Teyla hate (even knew of a few for whom it was a plausible, if not practiced, het ship) and was surprised to hear that there was any--I think it was Tielan I first saw talking about it in a post. Since then, I've definitely seen some ugly remarks coming from J/E shippers. I don't usually hang out with the crazier J/R shippers, though, the ones who want to kill Keller, etc., so maybe that's where it's happening. My feeling, through my own experience, has always been that that's a fringe group, though.

In SG-1, though, the Jack/Sam vs Jack/Daniel wars? Dear Lord. There again, not the slashers (or shippers) I hung out with, so I only know about it from afar (as far as I could get.)

Re: From metafandom

[scrollgirl]

I don't usually hang out with the crazier J/R shippers, though, the ones who want to kill Keller, etc., so maybe that's where it's happening.

Perhaps so, but my point is rather that you don't have McKeller 'shippers bashing John because he gets in the way of their pairing. Or you don't have Daniel/Vala fans bashing Jack, or McKay/Zelenka fans bashing Carson. The female characters are usually the ones that bear the brunt of fannish negativity, not the male characters. Woolsey never faced a fraction of the negativity that Sam did, coming over to SGA.

I remember the 'shipper wars, and I was a Jack/Sam basher. Not the worst offender, and I tried to give Sam the character her due, but it's not like Sam-bashing was a rare or unusual thing in that fandom. Daniel-fans (and I count myself as one) are/were extremely protective.

Also, McShep fans might not hate Teyla, but damn, for a while there I couldn't read a fic without tripping over Chaya-hate.

Re: From metafandom

[sally_maria]

I think there is where the difference between canon and non-canon ships comes in though. There's simply not the same reasons to bash a non canon pairing, even if it is the slash OTP that ate fandom. It's not there in the show, so you can just ignore it.

When you object to a canon ship though, it's easy to feel that you have to point out what is wrong with it. Attacking the rival character is an easy, though obviously problematic, way of doing that. And as I said below, the rival character is far more likely to be female, so that means that you get more bashed female characters, even if misogyny didn't exist - which I'm not suggesting for a moment.

Re: From metafandom

[carolyn_claire]

I was a Jack/Daniel shipper but not a Jack/Sam basher (I've never been a basher of any kind, actually. Critical, like I am with Mulder, but not a basher. *g*) But I did see, as a slasher, the depth of hatred spewed by some J/S shippers toward the slasher, and some of that involved Daniel. I never engaged or had a relationship with anyone who did this, but there were certain places I did. Not. Go. It was scary.

Re: From metafandom

[scrollgirl]

Actually, perhaps the only way to do a fair comparison is to look at queer texts, where the male/male and female/female romances have just as good a chance of being canon as the male/female. Unfortunately I think Torchwood still proves that women get it worse than the men. I have no idea about QaF or The L Word.

Re: From metafandom

[sally_maria]

Yes, that is very true, though again I don't think it's limited to slash fans. I think it's less to do with the orientation of the pairing and more to do with who is being "fought over". It's usually either 1 male or 1 female, or 2 females, fighting over 1 male. Since fans are much more likely to bash their favoured character's rival, statisically, it's more likely to be a woman.

What happened in fandoms where the one being fought over was a woman? From what I remember long ago, it was Angel and Spike who bore the brunt of the Buffy ship wars, not Buffy.

Re: From metafandom

[sally_maria]

Yes, in fact, I don't have any particular memories of anti -John/Teyla in the bits of McShep fandom I spent time in, though obviously that wasn't the OP's experience.