#sexism in fantasy

[tedkaczynskiofficial]

People describing the roles women had/have and trying to justify this are greatly missing the point.

You are still describing [occupation]. If they were a man or an unmarried woman, you'd call them [occupation].

Women have also always been involved with the work y'all are describing as the men's role.

Y'all are extra fucking ridiculous for trying to justify the use of this language for modern women today.

There is no reason to play devil's advocate for demeaning sexist language that only describes women in relation to their male relatives and denies them the title their work should grant them. There are cases where this sort of language is fine to use in writing, the same way that sometimes it makes sense for a slur to be included in a piece of writing. That doesn't make this good language or offer justification for it.

[silverity]

i think it's James Baldwin's criticism of the American film industry's fixation on Westerns that i'm thinking of, that the romanticism of the "Wild West" was a white male colonial fantasy. a lawless land, where a man can rule through brute strength and violence, his whiteness makes him superior to those deemed "savage", and he can have any woman he pleases as long as he can force her to submit.

i've always felt those type of "grimdark" medieval fantasies with so much sexual violence against women function the exact same way. it's a Western for male incel nerds. and it's not surprising that the most famous example of this, game of thrones, is so pornographic as porn is another male fantasy.

[how-bout-i-tell-you-anyway]

ok, i'm just going to say it. there's a reason that some of us like reading monster/alien romance just as much as maybe even more than regular romance.

and no, it's not about the supernatural dicks (at least not for me).

in short, it's about respect. obviously, the monster/alien comes from a place somewhere other than human society on planet Earth. because of that, he is completely ignorant of the sexist bias inherent in our society. (and by inherent i mean literally trained into us since birth and embedded in every aspect of our society)

sometimes the monster's views are more misogynistic — but in those stories the heroine manages to change his views by earning his respect as they navigate their inter-special differences (aka, he learns and fixes himself).

usually, the monsters believe strongly in equality between the sexes, and they are often shocked and horrified if/when they learn of how human men treat their partners. [and yes, i know some of them are over-the-top protective to the point of being controlling, but even then it's because they view the heroines as someone to continuously be protected, cherished, and respected.]

TLDR: it's an escape into a romantic fantasy where the love interest is GUARANTEED to be a good partner because he literally could never think to harm, insult, or disrespect the heroine

[jackalpants]

Come back to me when you draw orc women with bigger tusks than orc men

Orc guys with big soft cow eyes, dainty little tusks, tall and strong and slim in the hips, and their absolute unit monstrous wife, apple of their eyes, capable of bench-pressing a city bus and deeply unpretty to human culture

Basically this

But orcs

[divorcedwife]

one thing i really liked in pillars of eternity worldbuilding is how pallegina, due to her fantasy condition, is in her society socially a woman but legally genderless, and thus allowed to join a knight order that doesn't allow women. and that point of view isnt universal, just how her society works. i vastly prefer this sort of writing to just, oh no there's no sexism in our world, it's just coincidence that 95% of knights are men and 95% of rulers are men and

[the-kingshound]

Putting the current angst aside for a second, I find it telling how the two major critiques to the game are that the characters are too nice to MC and that the ROs are too feminine (because they are nice. Because men aren't nice and don't say "dear" or "darling")

... I don't know

[alicentsaegon]

Modern fantasy writers are like

"I want to tackle themes such as misogyny or clssism or racism or homophobia in my work!🤗🤗🤗 No there's none of that present in my book, this society that mimics 1300s central Europe suffers from none of these issues because thats not progressive and if we have DRAGONS and MAGIC why do we need this ahaha am I right? 😅🙂‍↕️Except for this individual conflict in this novel the characters have to overcome but that's an isolated case. Oh look there's a Queen!"

[wetcatspellcaster]

I'm not going to tag this bc I can practically visualise the hornets nest I'm kicking, but I am starting to get annoyed by people who are complaining about inconsistencies in dragon age lore, when the inconsistences mostly seem to be happening in places where the old lore was severely problematic and written at the height of game of thrones grimdark fantasy market trends.

[eleiyaumei]

Me b4 FFVII Rebirth: "Oh! This opens up the opportunity for a character arc for Aerith where she struggles to accept her OG fate and might even try to defy it!" Rebirth (from what I've seen): *focuses on Cloud/Sephiroth/Zack and fridges Aerith* Me: ". . . I shouldn't have expected so much from Japanese men in a cishetmen-focused game genre in the first place."

(Feel free to correct and educate me on this if you played or watched Rebirth!)

[bitstitchbitch]

I know the emily Wilde series has a strong (and amazing) romance, but it’s weird to me that my library categorizes it as romance instead of fantasy. Not that I have anything against romance - I like romance! - but I feel like the main plot line is more fantasy based than romance based. Less so in book 2, but still very fantasy. Investigating a new “species” of faeries? Looking for faerie doors? Clearly fantasy. The first book has the word “Faeries” in the title! given the prevalence of women in authors in romance compared to the much lower number of women authors in fantasy, it just rubs me wrong.

I guess my point is that it’s fantasy and it’s romance, so why does it just get labeled as romance? There are strong elements of both genres. I think it’s a symptom of a larger problem of diminishing women authors in fantasy - like how a lot of people make fun of romantasy. Fantasy that women create / like tends to get pushed into separate genres / subgenres.

YA does not have this problem (at least not on the same scale). If Emily Wilde was a YA book, it would definitely be considered fantasy, because it’s common for YA fantasy books to have strong romance plots/subplots. But YA is also diminished and considered lesser, so idk

[she-her-cuntboy]

The thing is, right, I'm not confused... but if someone "convinced" me I was confused, well, I kinda have to fuck them, don't I?

*twirling hair*

[alpaca-clouds]

The Witcher books always confuse me

And not for the reason you might think.

I can always be on the "I knew this, before it was cool" train for The Witcher. Based on the fact that I just read every fantasy book that our local libraries had. And one of the book series, that was in the library, was The Witcher, as they got translated into German in the early 2000s.

It meant a lot to me at the time because of Ciri. Ciri was the first ever non-anime character, I encountered in media, who was LGBTQ*. Because, you know, representation matters.

But, at the time, there was still so much about the books that I did not get.

Again, I read them from the library, not owning them. And also knew them under the German title "Der Hexer". So, when I was a young adult and my then boyfriend started hyping this new fantasy game, I originally did not even realize from the title that it was a game based on those books I read as a teenager. Imagine my surprise, when I played that first game back then and realized: "Oh, I know those characters!"

I read the books again in 2012 and was still fairly impressed with them. But over the years - reading the books again and again - I got confused about these books. How where these books written in the early 1990s by a white man?!

Like, these books - again - have not only openly LGBTQ* characters, with one of the main characters being openly bisexual, but they also just tackle a plenthora of feminist and anti-colonialist issues within the text. And I am just sitting there: How did this got written in the 1990s, before the age of the internet? How did it get published at the time? What kinda man is Andrzej Sapkowski, that he was actually interested in writing this?

You know... I do not hate the games. They are very fun games. While I only played that first game twice, I did put hours upon hours in Witcher 2 and 3. But also... I absolutely get Sapkowski's frustration with those games. Because the games literally just do not get the books. The point with Geralt as a protagonist is, that for the most part he is just some dude. He is not some superhero type. Heck, he acquires a disability midway through the books and struggles with a ton of stuff after that. But the games ignore this as much as they ignore Triss' scars (and her self-consciousness about them). Just as they ignore a good chunk of the colonization angle of the books.

And... Really... The books are probably my favorite high fantasy book series. And quite frankly, given that a ton of folks got into the fandom through the games, the fandom is obviously full of folks, who have not really gotten access to this full picture and are very ignorant about the themes of the book series. And while I am very on the "hey, adaptions can do their own thing" train... At times I just look at the games with their sexy times side quest and think to myself: "Hmm, they kinda didn't get it, did they?"

To me it is really ironic, though. That this Polish book series from the fucking 90s manages to align with my progressive values a lot more than most books being released these days.

[separatist-apologist]

Calling the IC nepo-babies is the most hilarious thing I've ever heard because what do you have?

The High Lord, who is the product of a lesser fae woman and the magically chosen High Lord that doesn't get a say in if he's chosen by the gods to rule or not, who is also discriminated against by his own court (and the people outside it) for not being full High Fae

A bastard-born general who never knew his father and whose mother was murdered for being sexually assaulted, and was raised in a war camp for the first decade of his life

A shadowsinger who was likely also the product of sexual assault at the hands of his powerful father, who then punished Azriel for his OWN discretion by locking him in total darkness for 11 years and allowed his two older sons to torture the Azriel so severely he still carries the scars

An ancient god that spent 1000 years trapped in a prison

A woman whose only value to her family was her reproductive organs and when she no longer served that function, had a note nailed to her body before she was dumped over a foreign border where, lets be real, they expected her to be killed

And a badly neglected human girl who literally died at the altar of freeing a land that she'd been terrified of her entire life.

But like. Hell yeah. Go off, overthrow those nepo-baby rulers which DEFINITELY isn't it's own illiterate take of the reading.

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

I don’t know or care if it runs counter to jirt’s canon, red haired proto-Eowyn should have ended the movie as a warrior queen instead of her cousin taking the throne, he was Barely in it.

[lordgrimwing]

“And the people who are possessed with spirits, you call them ‘alpha’ and ‘omega’? And those without possession are ‘beta’?” Glorfindel checked, tilting his head to the side as he looked at his instructor.

Erestor, sitting across from him on the picnic blanket, frowned again. “You can frame it like that, I suppose. But no one is possessed by evil spirits. We’re all just people with different needs and desires. No one is dangerous just because of their sex.” 

Glorfindel continued to look unconvinced.

Erestor had spent the afternoon trying to explain the nature of secondary sexes to the strange elf who was quickly becoming his friend. He wasn’t sure how well the endeavor was going, but he’d certainly learned some uncomfortable details about the Avari tribe and the horrific way they dealt with children who presented as alphas. The vivid, puckered scars on Glorfindel’s neck and wrists took on a new meaning over the last several hours. He wished they hadn’t. 

He pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long sigh. The conversation had become mired down for the last half hour, and he suspected there was little use in trying to push the topic further. Reasoning through superstition wasn’t effective, and he should probably talk with Pengolodh before seriously trying to deconstruct an entire belief system. It would also be a good idea for them to become more familiar with each other’s native language so things were easier to explain.

“At least, don’t try to fight every alpha we meet? And don’t take all your clothes off to do it.” Though Erestor had to admit that proved an effective way of getting the alpha who tried to have a casual conversation to back away. However, it also drew a bit of a crowd. “We’ve caused enough trouble for Elrond, I think.”

Glorfindel considered the request as a line of ants marched toward the crumbs left from their lunch. “I will wait to drive them off until the spirit takes hold of them.”

“Thank you,” because that sounded like some kind of compromise. Then, “Elrond’s married to an alpha, so you’ll need to get used to having one around when she returns.”

“The one who covers himself in so much cloth and always has food? He has no evil spirit,” Glorfindel insisted, confused.

Erestor blinked. “Oh, you mean Gil-galad. No, he’s a beta, you’re right. I mean Elrond’s wife, Celebrían. You haven’t met her yet.” 

It was Glorfindel’s turn to frown and look concerned. Whatever bothered him, he didn’t share it, and Erestor didn’t push. Celebrían wouldn’t be back for a couple weeks, plenty of time for the new house guest to get used to the idea of not chasing her off on sight (hopefully).

[destructive-delight]

ah. sexism exists.