[hildea]

Thanks for the link, it was interesting!

After reading it the first time, I regretted going off my medication for my grass pollen allergy - there were a lot of straw men. Rereading it, I find I halfway agree with some his points, although I also think he has some spectacular blind spots.

Originally Posted by gmw

But such traits often follow particular genres, largely because that's the sort of thing that is popular in that genre, so if you only read in those genres you might start thinking that no one else is writing anything else, when in fact there is quite a lot of diversity about.

That seems like a good explanation for Fisher's blind spots. Except: Looking at his books, it seems he writes romance, erotica, fantasy, and suspense/thrillers, and those have a lot of the character types that he claims don't exist. For instance:

Remember that character who was vulnerable and had a one-night stand? Well, guess what? You’re also a horrible, misogynistic monster because you overtly sexualized the female character in a way that propagates the idea that women are sexual objects to be used by men.

One night stands are so much of a staple that it's one of the themes you can search for in the book finder in one of my favourite book review sites. And while some one night stands only involve men, most of the books I checked on that list were about a man and a woman who had a one night stand with each other.

Remember that cop who suffered a terrible injury? Well, if that cop is a female, then you’re a horrible misogynistic monster because you subjected that woman to violence and we can’t tolerate that.

Female characters subjected to gruesome violence is so usual that a trope about it was named more than twenty years ago, and is still widely used (see fridging).

I could go on for almost every example he gives -- fish in a barrel -- but life's too short.


At the same time, I do agree with him that male characters tend to be given a wider range of types and backgrounds than female characters in culture. I just don't agree about where those problems are, and I don't agree that it's radical feminists who are the main culprits in narrowing women's roles.

Sarah Rees Brennan wrote about this issue, but a lot more thoughtful, here: Ladies, Please. Jim C. Hines tackled the difference between portrayals of men and women in fiction in his cover pose articles.


On the other hand, I read Fisher's A (Distressing) Thought Experiment On Gender Double Standards, and I think there he identifies a real issue (although with some blind spots). In fiction, women abusing men are too often shown as cool, or comic relief, and I do think that's part of a culture that harms men and contributes to making it difficult for male victims of abuse to speak out and get support.