How Feminism Rots Romantic Fantasy
[The topic of feminism is incredibly complex. In this post, I’m referring to one of its basic tenets—that women are better than men—rather than tackling all the ideas, good and bad, which feminism encompasses.]
Pick up any YA novel, turn on the hottest Netflix series, check out the #writingcommunity on Twitter and you’re likely to find a heaping dose of feminism interlaced within narratives. Maybe the image of something subtle being woven into a larger body isn’t the right image. Feminism in film and literature is more like a fire hydrant with its cap knocked off—it douses everything and the landscape muddies up real fast.
I run into this kind of story everywhere: character A and character B are involved with such-and-such situation. Only, character A is a girl. So naturally she figures it all out on her own (eventually), makes sure she gets her happy ending (despite unbelievable odds stacked against her by men/society), and then as a bonus toward the end, she ropes poor character B into being her man. He’s been around since the beginning. Maybe he thought he ran things, but it was actually her that got everything done. He might have been pursuing her romantically, or not. It doesn’t matter really, because in the end, all that matters is that she makes him hers.
That’s not a man, it’s a life-sized bedroom poster.
And she’s not a character anymore, either. She’s a billboard advertising BEING A WOMAN MEANS YOU DON’T NEED ANYONE.
In fact, the book/movie/series couldn’t really be called a narrative at this point. It’s something in between a propaganda piece and a complaints department tirade.
What happened to telling a good story?
Sure, there are plenty of dated books that err in the opposite direction, glorifying men for their brawns and brains, leaving no territory for women to excel in apart from beauty. But have you ever picked up The Princess and Curdie? Till We Have Faces? Random Harvest? Any of Gene Stratton-Porter’s works?
Today writers want to offer something palatable to everyone. Social platforms prod them to please a broad audience so their followers will come clamoring for more. However, a reader’s palate is prone to be overstimulated and undernourished. He or she is like a child who becomes a picky eater because, one by one, the parent stops offering tricky vegetables, certain textures, then fruits, etc. A reader needs to consume a little of everything and only turn up their nose when something’s rotten. The best thing for a writer to do is to write what is true.
That’s an art form all on its own.
Fantasy authors are notably susceptible to preaching feminism today because of the natural escapism of the genre. It probably feels vindicating to set a female protagonist against insurmountable odds and give her the triumph through whatever means most tickles the author’s sense of justice. Writing from a place of pain can be cathartic. But authors are ordinary human beings, not sages. We delude ourselves just as much as anyone else. That’s why truth-checking our work is important. Is what we’re writing even a real story?
The best authors are the Stephen Kings and the Laura Weymouths and the Terry Pratchetts and the J.K. Rowlings. They reach inside for what they know and test its truth by looking for it in other people. Their stories resonate because they encompass the human experience, even if some of what they write is wishful thinking, sensation or sentiment. If women do some ass-kicking (and they do), it’s not all costume and theatrics. It might have really happened. And the bones of every good book follow the narrative rules of real life—people win some and lose some, people are good and evil mixed together, and people need each other in the way they need food and water and air.
I would also add that the best stories follow a redemptive arc, but that’s my personal take on it. I think the stories that lack redemption inadvertently display our human need for it—we feel its absence like a cavity. But that’s a post for another day.
