I'm talking about something society encourages: helpless women.
I don't remember ever encouraging that. What about you, the rest of society?
Again: I'm not talking about me, or you specifically. I'm talking about something that's engrained into our culture in the forms of novels, fairy tales, and so on.
The "damsel in distress"
is a staple of our culture, whether we like it or not. The books I read when growing up were full of women whose sole role was as the dutiful wife to whatever the hero was doing or as his housekeeper. They're full of princesses that need saving and women who act tough briefly before becoming the ever-stealable plot coupon du jour the minute a little plot comes around.
Furthermore, if you're familiar with
Man of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey is all about being called, answering the call, and going on a quest to become a man. He then comes back when he is worthy to get the girl, and gets her.
How does a woman become a heroine in these stories? Not by that journey. She has a problem. Her problem will by solved by sexual congress by a dominating male figure (usually a god), with the threat that otherwise she will become inert (infertile)--turned into a tree by a river, say, or a statue, or a pillar of salt. Once she has done that, her story is over.
This is, of course, in the traditional stories, and we occasionally get away from that--but this is a river running underneath our literary works of today, and the river is still running strong. Case in point: we still need the Bechdel test. It's a test for the "female presence level" of fictional works. The requirement is that two named female characters have a discussion about something other than a man.
Seems pretty easy, right?
Well, no. Relatively few works pass the test. Many of the older ones fail it because they have either one or zero women in the course of 300 pages. Many of the modern ones fail it because they don't have any named female characters, or because those women never talk about anything but men, or, even more frequently, because those women are so far to the side that they hardly talk at all.
When I was younger, I didn't mind because I could identify with the men much more easily than the women, so it wasn't like I ever noticed how the women were being treated. I guess I'm making up for lost time.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9450085 times)