bigfatfeminist:

danyphantomzone:

big fat feminist: Basically:

hotelsongs:

If a novel is divided between Good Women and Bad Women, it is not a feminist novel.

I don’t care whether the Good Woman is a virtuous tower maiden and the Bad Woman has vagina dentata and knows how to use them or if the Good Woman is a sexy Wiccan part-time knight and the Bad…

So… a woman cannot be evil/a villain in a work of fiction?
How are you NOT saying that?
Or… women can’t be in a state of conflict in a work of fiction?

Yes. You must explain why your theory isn’t as absurd as it sounds.

Gladly.

The problem is not whether or not women are evil or in a state of conflict in a work of fiction. The problem is whether or not they are evil based on adhering or not adhering to a standard of womanhood, as opposed to committing evil acts that are evil by nature. Judging women as “good” or “bad” based on their adherence to a construction of femininity is not feminist. There is a difference there, and it is huge.

And again, pitting a female protagonist who is “good” because she adheres to a construction of femininity against a female villain who is “bad” because she doesn’t is not feminist. 

It’s not absurd. It seems you’re having trouble envisioning even a fictionalized world where women are not judged on “good” or “evil” based almost purely on the constructions of femininity within that fictionalized world — which is fair, because those books are not often written and when they are, they confuse the shit out of people (I’m looking at you, A Song of Ice and Fire). Are men judged as such based on their adherence to constructions of masculinity? Generally, no. 

Here is a simplified example based on Disney movies I loved as a child: Robin Hood believes in providing for the poor through an equal distribution of wealth. The Sheriff of Nottingham believes in property rights and serfdom. Robin Hood is the hero because the tenets of his world are that greed and unfair taxation are bad. The Sheriff of Nottingham is the villain because he is greedy and treats his people unfairly.

Conversely, take Snow White and the evil queen Maleficent. Snow White is “good” because she is beautiful and chaste and innocent; Maleficent is “evil” because she is vain, jealous, and arguably sexually active — if nothing else, she is dangerous because she is aging and moving further away from perfect femininity, and Snow White is young. They are pitted against one another because Snow White represents perfect femininity and Maleficent does not; moreover, Maleficent is evil because she wants to destroy that perfect femininity, because she is threatened by it. She hates Snow White because Snow White represents what she is not.

These are huge differences. Yes, one might be able to argue that vanity is objectively bad (I’m not saying I think that, but I can see the discussion going this way), but vanity is also traditionally gendered as a feminine flaw. Greed is not a gendered flaw. Robin Hood and the Sheriff are not enemies because they represent “good” and “bad” masculinity. Snow White and Maleficent are enemies because they represent “good” and “bad” femininity. This happens all the damn time. Fiction novels certainly CAN engage in this kind of boring stereotyping, but when they do they are sexist, and they are not feminist. Period.

This is a good argument, but Maleficent is in Sleeping Beauty, not Snow White.