What /is/ this?

[branchandroot]

Okay, seriously, what the fuck?

My rant on women in KHR was far from the first thing I've written castigating some anime/manga or other for presenting women as useless frills or objectified sex shows or whatever other negative stereotype was in question. I'm fairly sure it wasn't the first time such an entry has been linked on a meta comm.

So why is this particular entry drawing so much fire? I just ran across yet another (annoyingly clueless) screed against it while googling for a KHR timeline for pity's sake!

Is there really such a concentration of anti-feminist women (I shudder that such a phrase can still be written) in KHR, or did this particular entry just happen to fall into the orbit of a small knot of them and I have the bad luck to keep stumbling over their excrescence?

Comments

[akai_senshi.insanejournal.com]

I can see what you're saying in that rant, but I defend all female characters on principle. Not just the ones who can fight.

The thing is, there's two different kinds of feminism. One is the strain where women get judgmental on each other for adhering to patriarchal standards, which should work, and yet doesn't. The other one recognizes that all women are different, and no one should be punished for liking to cook, liking babies/being a mother, or being a girly-girl.

It's not really the characters' fault that they're written so bad. (Consider that Amano-sensei IS a woman, and...yeah.)

[branchandroot]

*considers* No, I don't think you do quite get when I'm getting at in that post.

I have no problem with women enjoying fashion or cooking or nurturing, any more than I have a problem with men enjoying that.

The problem is not that some of the women characters enjoy doing 'girly' things. The problem is that none of the women characters outside of a villain or two are permitted to participate successfully in the life-or-death important things. They are they deliberate creation of an author, and, in KHR, they are denigrated by the author's narrative structure, placed constantly and explicitly as second-class--unless they're raving psychos. THAT is what I have a problem with.

Don't confuse defending the personal choices of actual women with structures that perpetuate a lack of choices. KHR's brand of story is one of those structures.

[ranalore.insanejournal.com]

It's not really the characters' fault that they're written so bad. (Consider that Amano-sensei IS a woman, and...yeah.)

Which would be why the rant was written about the trend of the female characters in the source, rather than as an attack on the characters themselves. Look, I get the urge to defend female characters on principle, but that doesn't change the frameworks in which they're placed, and those frameworks are flawed.

Also, there are several branches of political feminism, and several modes of expression. To say there are "two kinds" is incorrect.