There’s No Such Thing as Feminine Fantasy
Violence, women’s suppression, and gender essentialism
‘I wish there were more fantasy stories where the hero/ines solve problems peacefully and there’s more tenderness and gentleness,’ laments one tweet in the wild. ‘To be controversial, I call this “feminine” fantasy.’
In the replies — the modern comment section, which reminds me, never read the replies — of a tweet asking for unpopular opinions on fantasy, I came across this one and while it’s not as blatantly offensive as some, it makes me itch. I’m not the goriest writer around and my fiction isn’t what you’d call especially violent — it’s no Claymore or Vinland Saga, certainly, or even body-horror-fest Houseki no Kuni — but I’ll say that every time I encounter one of these takes, my immediate reaction is to add more fucking and murdering to my writing.
A while back, I wrote a guest post on Ana Mardoll’s blog on how I ripped the Nice White Catholic Girl out of ‘The Snow Queen’ and replaced it with mortal combat against imperialism. The short version is that you can’t win back your history by squee and twee: to avenge tragedy and to wrest back basic rights require bloody necessities, and the fantasy that such things can be done via tender-hearted sweetness over tea and crumpets is one that comforts the colonizer very well. Unless the crumpets are poisoned, anyway. I’m down for that.
And, of course, there’s no such thing as ‘feminine fantasy’ just as there’s no such thing as ‘masculine fantasy’ and, I’m sorry, the year is 2019 not 1980 or whichever benighted century these people time-traveled from.
It’s understandable, in some ways, to relegate violence and conflict in media to masculine impulses: the thinking, it seems to go, is that we’re all brainwashed to love those things Due to Patriarchy!! And to really liberate yourself from Patriarchal Bad!! you have to write about tea, crumpets, and asking your imperialist oppressors for reparations nicely. I’m aware that particular twitter take doesn’t concern itself specifically with imperialism (and, most likely, the person doesn’t think about any of that because they don’t have to) or oppressive systems; it’s concerning itself with an arbitrary distinction which they’ve determined is down to gender.
(As an aside, I’m not especially inclined to write the kind of thing this person calls ‘feminine fantasy’ partly because I do think about imperialism. I’m interested in its consequences, the generational traumas it creates; these are not subjects that accommodate the desire for nice softness.
Another aside? It’s precisely this misogynistic, schoolmarmish policing — ‘this thing is for boys, not for girls! why, girls will be traumatized by this gore explosion’ — that contributes to my enjoyment of violent media. Sorry, I’ll watch what I want.)
Setting aside the moot question of whether women enjoy violence — of course we do, yes even in absence of patriarchy—it’s worth asking who benefits from the domestication and suppression of women’s violent impulses by categorizing such impulses as impure, evidence of patriarchal taint. A common criticism of violent, sexually aggressive fictional women is that they are ‘men with tits’ (itself a transphobic description): clearly men with a thin paint job, not real women at all. Because aggression is for men. Fighting is for men. To do either (and probably to enjoy fucking) is to give in to those dreaded masculine impulses and forsake womanhood.
Silencing and suppressing women’s desire for violence is of great benefit to men, of course, but white women especially benefit from positioning themselves as gatekeepers to true femininity while painting women of color as not really women: even the most well-meaning are prone to the phrase ‘women and people of color’, and the not so well-meaning descend outright into misogynoir. Just look at any of the (endless) takes that basically say Caster Semenya is not a woman or racist caricatures that paint Michelle Obama as a mannish menace next to the delicate, feminine Melania. What’s femininity? To white women, it’s meekness, submission, softness, fragility, being tiny and dainty and nice, and never opening your mouth to ask for anything — and especially not to ask for your basic rights, or to be treated as a human being. To do anything about it, let alone taking up arms, well that’s just beyond the pale: stop that, you angry woman of color you.
I like to joke that when a woman of color says ‘Hey, that’s a bit racist’, what white women hear is ‘Burn at the stake, racist witch!’ I mean, it happens in knitting communities. Knitting!
The backlash is “usually from white people who don’t understand why we’re ‘making it about race,’” says Mahon. “It’s generally people who either don’t think this is a problem or feel uncomfortable engaging with us. There are also POC who find this discussion uncomfortable, which I find harder to deal with. They just don’t want to rock the boat too much — but we already know where that gets us (nowhere).”
Hand-dyer and knitter Maria Tusken, who is white, posted a video on YouTube saying she spoke for the “silent majority” of knitters who didn’t think racism was a problem, that people were being “hostile … all in the name of this social justice issue.” She added that those who did were following a “one-sided belief” that was leading them to bully people who didn’t think racism was a problem. (Tusken did not respond to request for comment for this piece.)
Her video was held up as an example of the fragility of many white knitters — even if they’re not leaving explicitly racist comments, many are refusing to engage with the conversation, and appear to agree with Tusken that the real “bullies” are those who point out white privilege to begin with.
Or maybe it’s not so surprising, because knitting’s traditionally associated with feminine pursuits; no doubt white women feel this is it, their last bastion of white womanhood, and here’s all these mean ‘bullies’ who are here to say ‘Hey, that’s a bit racist.’
And none of the people who lament the absence of ‘femininity’ in violent fictional women, to be sure, think about this. I’m sure they don’t even necessarily only complain when the fictional woman is of color — indeed it’s usually a white one, that being what gets top billing and therefore consumer attention. But, not thinking about why many of us find satisfaction in stories of violence and fury is very much part of the problem. Not being able to imagine why there are problems that cannot be solved by teatime and crumpets is part of the problem. Not being able to accept that some of us find catharsis in violent media exactly because we’re disempowered — and therefore depictions of successful violent revolt is one of optimism rather than patriarchal mimicry — is part of the problem.
Not asking men to write more thoughtful things, and incorporating quiet and submission into masculinity rather than policing and gatekeeping ‘femininity,’ is part of the problem.
There’s no such thing as feminine fantasy and there’s no such thing as masculine fantasy. There’s just fantasy.
