Ambiguous Name: Feminist Fantasy

@Native Jovian: I understand, then I apologize it was uncalled for. Actually what you mention had been my initial intention before, but I was told that it would probably be canned because of the inherent societal issue in it.

I personally wouldn't mind either if such general trope were to be cut, but I feared the backlash of that action as well, since too many people seemed to be fond of it, so I proposed the name changing as some sort of compormise

A reparation of the trope sounds good though, especially the checking of the bad examples (because again there's way too much Values Dissonance in there), but I'm not sure how that could be handled right now, with the thread already started is up to myself or the mods to change the focus of it?

I guess I should start by editing the crowner then.

@ Laevatein: As long as the community reaches an agreement on the repairs I guess keeping the name would be fine.

I associate the term "feminism" with 'social justice' issues in general, not female specific, so the trope name is a doozy of a pickle. Even besides that I don't think it's quite descriptive enough and might need a renaming.

I associate the term "feminism" with 'social justice' issues in general, not female specific

Then your association is wrong. It is universally acknowledged that feminism is the women's rights movement, not the LGBT rights movement and not the antiracist movement. It is right there in the name. Why on earth would feminism not be female specific? It is true that you will rarely ever find a feminist who is not in favour of social justice in general, but the focus of feminism is on women.

I was a bit puzzled when I saw how many "strong woman" stories are posted as examples on that page. We hopefully live in a world where well-rounded female characters in speculative fiction are just normal, something we can take for granted, not something specifically "feminist".

I am in favour of a description that makes the trope about speculative fiction that is in any way about either a world where women are not oppressed (the wishful thinking sort of fantasy), or a critical piece about patriarchy. Simply having a woman who is not a doormat in it can't be enough to qualify. That's not a trope, that's "people sit on chairs".

To be fair, second-wave and third-wave feminism are heavily linked to other civil rights movements due to the prevailing mindset that while sexism is arguably one of the most pervasive forms of inequality, the societal constructs that keep women at a systematic disadvantage are analogous to those keeping down ethnic and sexual minorities among others. The idea is that there is an assumed default, and that undercuts all who fall outside the default. It is thus unsurprising that many speculative works with strong feminist themes often have strong anti-racist themes, or more generally embrace the Other.

The reason why the "feminist fantasy" trope exists as a specific subset of the concept of "feminist fiction" at large (which might deserve its own article as a supertrope) is that speculative fiction, particularly fantasy, is an ideal playground for subversive ideas about gender and society because it offers infinite possibilities for exploration, whether utopian, dystopian, alien to the cultures of this world or some funhouse mirror view on our reality. There is plenty of "mainstream" fiction with feminist themes, but some of the most radical work is rooted in fantasy for those reasons. Anyone familiar with sf could provide a whole slew of examples, many of which are listed on that page.

The Laconic should be clarified, however.

@Gowan: I agree with you on most of it (althought sadly having well-rounded female characters is ...not really common, talking in rough numbers it can't even start to compare with male characters) but just for the sake of clarification are you on favor of cutting the trope for being too general as it is (fiction about strong female characters)? Or about restructuring the page description and clean up the examples?

@JHM: It's true Intersectional Feminism is relatively new, but its main goal is to include the issues faced by women not belonging to the majority (which includes LGBTQ, WOC and disabled women just to name a few) so it's not farfetched to include such examples and stories. As for the reason feminist fantasy exist I agree with tha reason believe me, I love stories that deal with those topics, the problem is that with the page description as it is, and as Gowan said the numerous examples that don't belong there because they don't explore gender dynamics or opression, try to defy or even point them out, they just happen to have a female protagonist / main charcater which is not enough to qualify as feminist fantasy, which is why we are boiling down to these options: fix the description and do a clean up, or cut it down because again as it stands this trope and the examples are too general to qualify a as a trope.

edited 28th Feb '16 11:41:47 PM by RoseBride

The trope itself is no way too general, the problem is only with the use.

Keep the trope and throw out the examples that boil down to "there are female characters"

I mean, a list with reading recommendations for strong female characters is cool, but don't we already have a "strong female character" trope?

I can get behind that. It really should be focused on stories with strong, clear feminist themes explored through speculative fiction rather than just "sf with women in it," let alone "fiction with women in it."

It goes deeper than simply having a "Strong Female Character." It's about how the story as a whole deals with issues of women's rights and related ideas.

Not really, right now the trope is being used as 'fantasy work with a female character in it'. It's really not a trope and in no way can be a trope.

Redefining it to be something more specific like say 'X work defies period expectations and includes women in important positions' would be the only way this could become a trope. Stuff like Xena, Dynasty Warriors (after the second one) or Oda Nobuna No Yabou

edited 1st Mar '16 2:42:03 AM by Memers

@ JMH, Gowan and Memers Thank you for your input, so I guess we can all agree about which will be the final action for the page but to make it official I edited the Crowner and the TRS title, so vote yes or no for a final action please.

"Fix the description" is a useless crowner option unless we know what "fix" means. In a situation like this, you generally need multiple options for different kinds of "fixing" (eg, keep the description but remove bad examples/wicks, make the description more specific, cut the entire thing as not tropeworthy, etc).

Sorry my mistake, I've made the new Crowner boiling down to three options:

1.- Make a better description, and remove the bad examples and wicks.

2.- Cut the page.

3.- Leave the description, and just remove bad examples.

edited 1st Mar '16 11:07:26 PM by RoseBride

Things like "better description" are also too vague. We need specific questions.

Done, i hope its descriptive enough now

edited 2nd Mar '16 7:56:56 AM by RoseBride

IMHO, this trope should be expanded to all fictional stories with strong feminist themes, not just Sci-Fi.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with the idea that this trope is not a trope. It is strong female character as protagonist in fantasy fiction, with probably other feminist stuff. Which is a shame, because I love this trope.

Anyway, I suppose what I really want here is an index of fantasy works with mostly female characters and a female protagonist, as I prefer to read those.

I want to see more discussion on this. Is there anyone who sees an actual trope here? One which can replace the current description?

Also, did the moderators forget to hook the crowner? And that title link is broken.

edited 24th Jun '16 2:05:37 PM by war877

For comparison purposes, here's the earliest version on the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20100617014641/https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FeministFantasy

This might provide some insight. It's inspired me to some thoughts, but no definite suggestions yet...

Is it weird that I think the old version is better than the new version? It gets right to the point and is much more clearly something.

That said, the original trope description was so much better than the current incarnation.

Ok, an apoloy for neglecting this is order because Real Life happens and then suddenly you find yourself with less free time to spend online, much less monitoring a TRS but apparently most people voting agree on the 1st option (Better description, clean up examples etc.)

@war877

I'm not exactly sure if you want this page to stay or not? The discussion had before decided that in order to avoid a too general trope (as you mentioned) of having an index for works not really related to feminism, or even trying to subvert, point out or parody the Standard Fantasy Setting, it should be focus on Speculative Fiction works who do exactly that.

About the crowner and broken title link, like you i have no idea, this is my first TRS ever :/

@shimaspawn: I see little difference between the old and the current page description, except the prhasing on the beggining and organization, can you elaborate how it seems better, if you dont mind?

The original complaint was about the name. This is not a name we invented! This is a widely used term for Feminist Speculative Fiction.

If the definition seems a bit vague, well, that's true of a lot—I might even say most—genres.

The real problem—the only real problem I see—is the definition drift. The earlier version on the Wayback Machine is much closer to the way the rest of the world uses the term.

Reclocking to see about a definition rewrite.

• Neither old nor new version are clear about what the difference is to just Female Protagonist.
• New version is getting a much better handle on the relation to Lifetime Movie of the Week movies.

"The earlier version on the Wayback Machine is much closer to the way the rest of the world uses the term."

Should the description more explicitly describe what this is in its ordinary use? I mean, if it's an ordinary term and there's an issue with the definition drifting, then why not explicitly define the term in the first paragraph. Right now, imo, the first paragraph is trying too hard to explain the real life explanation of this trope and could either be moved down the description or cut completely. I don't know if it helps combat against the misinterpretation of this trope as "fiction with woman protagonist," either.

Edit: Also, is it possible for someone to fix the title of this thread so the Feminist Fantasy page gets linked to this thread. We might get more people involved if they see that a trope they like is being discussed in TRS...?

edited 13th Feb '17 8:21:11 AM by WaterBlap