Rant Rant Rant
Jul. 27th, 2008 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
botiasWhat about the whole 'women in refrigerators' thing?
If women can have rape fantasies and Cinderella fantasies by the bestseller load, surely men can be allowed their fantasies in which fate has decreed that the only way they can honor their one true love is to become a (single chick-magnet) superhero with a tragic past instead of say 'going to the next step'. Look at Supernatural. I don't like the show. It's not my fantasy. But, when the blond guy's girlfriend/fiance gets offed, it rescues him. He was teetering on the brink of the domestic, the mundane, the meaningless, the tedious, the conventional.
Should we have men vetting romance novels? Should we make the heroes less hung, less wealthy, less charismatic, less tall, less confident and skilled in bed, less thoroughly whipped by the heroine by the end of the book, so that men can be more comfortable with what we read? Cuz the number of penis enlargement emails in my inbox tells me this does matter to guys. I have never yet, in all my days, in even the most enlightened and modern of romances, read one in which the hero has a receding hair line or is a mall security guard. I did read ONE where he had a spare tire, but only because she was his personal trainer and she fixed him. O.O
Violence arouses people, women no less than men. Are shows like CSI a symptom of a sick society, or is media the way that healthy people express that part of themselves? Historically people have expressed this by behaving brutally towards other people and this is still the case in most parts of the world; I honestly think we might be looking at a positive change.
While I'm at it, I don't buy the 'women can express/feel hatred for men, but the reverse is not OK' thing. The wheel turns; the person who is powerless today holds the whip tomorrow. Hatred is never OK. Is a woman who hates men likely to rear children who end or at least temper the war between the sexes? Will she foster goodwill towards her sex in her relationships?
If women can have rape fantasies and Cinderella fantasies by the bestseller load, surely men can be allowed their fantasies in which fate has decreed that the only way they can honor their one true love is to become a (single chick-magnet) superhero with a tragic past instead of say 'going to the next step'. Look at Supernatural. I don't like the show. It's not my fantasy. But, when the blond guy's girlfriend/fiance gets offed, it rescues him. He was teetering on the brink of the domestic, the mundane, the meaningless, the tedious, the conventional.
Should we have men vetting romance novels? Should we make the heroes less hung, less wealthy, less charismatic, less tall, less confident and skilled in bed, less thoroughly whipped by the heroine by the end of the book, so that men can be more comfortable with what we read? Cuz the number of penis enlargement emails in my inbox tells me this does matter to guys. I have never yet, in all my days, in even the most enlightened and modern of romances, read one in which the hero has a receding hair line or is a mall security guard. I did read ONE where he had a spare tire, but only because she was his personal trainer and she fixed him. O.O
Violence arouses people, women no less than men. Are shows like CSI a symptom of a sick society, or is media the way that healthy people express that part of themselves? Historically people have expressed this by behaving brutally towards other people and this is still the case in most parts of the world; I honestly think we might be looking at a positive change.
While I'm at it, I don't buy the 'women can express/feel hatred for men, but the reverse is not OK' thing. The wheel turns; the person who is powerless today holds the whip tomorrow. Hatred is never OK. Is a woman who hates men likely to rear children who end or at least temper the war between the sexes? Will she foster goodwill towards her sex in her relationships?
