Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

Believe me, as someone within the field, there isn’t. This science has some of the most worldly, liberal people behind it who actually wanted to doubt the initial results. I posted a quote from the former president of the APA who said as much.

From Diane Halpern:

“ Yet, despite all the noise in the data, clear and consistent messages could be heard. There are real, and in some cases sizable, sex differences with respect to some cognitive abilities. Socialization practices are undoubtedly important, but there is also good evidence that biological sex differences play a role in establishing and maintaining cognitive sex differences..."

I'm familiar with the arguments myself and unconvinced.

What parts of it are you skeptical about?

If we did fashion the same over many centuries and cultures, I would maybe agree.

But... <points at the dandies of the C18th>

Which gender is supposed to peacock and how shifts a lot. Heck, which genders and orientation any given culture allows also shifts dramatically over time. <points at Bronze Age Uruk — a time and place in which to do your present job, you'd have to present as a hermaphrodite for much of it: healers-and-oracles/ counsellors/ therapists were considered talented when...>

Edited by Euodiachloris on Oct 14th 2019 at 5:52:30 PM

There's certainly elements to be said about biology related to aggression and other behaviors re: masculinity but how those relate to larger behavior patterns I think is something we would need a far greater spread of analysis to determine but will almost certainly be shaped by environment to a far extreme more.

Well the meta-analyses regarding interest have participants numbering greater than 500,000, and from 26 different ethnic groups/cultures world-wide.

So, on a different topic that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately...

How do people feel about “Beauty & The Beast” style stories?

The two recent adaptations that I find myself comparing a lot lately are the Disney live action remake and the book Beast, by Brie Spangler.

The Disney remake is one where, in trying to update and be more modern, they actually lose a lot of the original’s charm. Belle is now trying to teach girls to read (even though women’s magazines were popular at the time), she and Beast have no chemistry, Beast quite literally negs her at points, and Belle’s dress looks just fucking terrible.

Meanwhile, Beast, which I think works quite well, twists the concept by having Beauty be a trans woman, which Beast isn’t aware of for about 2-3 quarters of the story.

I find it interesting that the one where they go out of their way to make it “modern” winds up facing a lot of critique for how it botches gender, while the one that simply IS modern manages to say something new about gender and what makes someone “beauty” or “beast”.

Those types of stories are classics, and are actually a fundamental narrative for a lot of feminine fiction (including and especially erotica). Basically, the dangerous, attractive man is "tamed" by the virtuous woman. Beauty and the Beast, 50 Shades of Grey, basically any Harlequin romance.

I will say that I found the live action remake to be unnecessary and hamfisted, and missing a lot of the charm the original had. I think Belle was already a strong enough character as she was.

I'd be interested in seeing a story where the genders are reversed, i.e the "Beast" is female. It's not a particularly common dynamic since there's a much greater pressure on women to be attractive.

I wonder what scenario would work for such a reversal.

In some ways, the remake manages to be less progressive concerning gender relations as well as less charming.

The original seems like it actually had something interesting to say, while the remake just made a shallow hamfisted attempt to echo the original.

Edited by M84 on Oct 15th 2019 at 1:31:39 AM

I'm always a bit sad when any telling of the story glosses over what the earliest versions were about: a rather shallow girl learning to focus less on the packaging (and the castle) and more on the prize (he was always a handsome prince with bags of land income, one who had worked though his demons to become a better person long before she pitched up and messed with things to try saving those dearer to her).

That's not a lesson that should get ditched in the name of appropriate gender depictions.

Not to mention that making Belle less of a character who needs to change for her own survival and him into the character having to do most of the changing because meeting the Beauty... means it becomes a story about how the Beast actively changes simply because... a promised dream girl-shaped trinket came along to undo a nasty witchy-fey curse-thing?

This is not about the Beauty learning to be less obnoxious and going through character growth of her own until she can see the bleeding obvious about the Cursed Castle and the Beast.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Oct 14th 2019 at 7:17:34 PM

Ms Watson's attempts to make Belle more feminist didn't do the overall movie any favors, they seemed to focus on what made a 21st century woman progressive in rather superficial ways (No Corsets! That's Oppressive! Look SHE'S the INVENTOR!) And the way the tried to soften up Beast...(Look he's EDUCATED and WORTHY of Belle now! See them bond over Dead Moms!)

The changes above might have made a larger impact and told a better story IF they were willing to actually CHANGE THE STORY, they tacked on what 20-30 additional minutes to the movie vs the original version without actually changing/impacting the story, we have a word for that, PADDING that needs to go on the cutting room floor.

You want Belle to be a progressive 18th century woman....OWN IT, she keeps the books for her father's business, she is side by side with him making things, but nobody realizes or respects her for it because "She's Just A Pretty Face"

Don't get me started on the costuming for Belle...just don't go there...

Honestly, it’s such a minor complaint, but my whole issue with the movie can be pinned on one brief gag.

Belle “escaping” from an elaborate rococo court dress.

Those things are works of historical art, and the movie treats them as outdated and “unfeminist” just because... they’re too fancy? And then she goes and wears an ugly prom dress, and that’s supposed to be better? Anytime people try to act as though wearing a certain type of feminine clothing isn’t progressive, I have to roll my eyes.

Real Women Don't Wear Dresses is such a bullshit trope, and it implies the only way to escape sexism is to reject anything feminine. Masculinity is as much of a prison as restrictive female gender roles.

This is why I say that in some ways it's regressive compared to the original movie.

Preach!

(Not to mention: if it takes you hours to get into with outside help... you're going to need hours to get out of it with outside help, too. Don't care if it's miles of velvet brocade or pounds of beaten steel: all that classic stuff needs valets and/or maids at both ends of dressing — which was part of the point: "I can afford a small army to help me get changed".)

Edited by Euodiachloris on Oct 14th 2019 at 7:34:10 PM

Oh thank goodness people who agree with me! Between the whole 'Real Women don't wear Dresses' and the bashing of corsets (if its causes you pain or you cannot breathe the thing doesn't fit or you are wearing wrong!), its become a weak writers crutch to show how liberated and progressive their heroine is.

For gods sake Animated Belle realized that charging into the cold woods in a silk satin ballgown was a dumb idea, she CHANGED FIRST. And didn't she have to shed some of that dress on the way to save her dad? It LACED UP THE BACK (or should have!), HOW? I mean if you lace it right you can loosen and wiggle out of it solo, more hands can help but it's possible to dress yourself, but not while riding pell mell on horseback *facepalm*

Shoutout to the youtube channel by Karolina Żebrowska that's all about historical women's fashion. https://www.youtube.com/user/czekoladaimaslo

Yeah, I've got the same issues with MK11. It's in many ways a step back from MKX, and one of those ways was tossing out the new diverse cast of protagonists in favor of shilling Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero some more.

MKX was all about passing the torch to a new generation of characters. And unlike previous attempts at doing this, that new generation was met with wide applause by the audience. Fans accepted the all-new all-diverse Kombat Kids with open arms.

MK11 was all about dialing back that passing of the torch. The Kombat Kids were done away with, replaced by the old-hat protagonists assisted by a time-crossed second version of the old-hat protagonists because why not? And then they hit a giant Cosmic Reset Button and obliterated the whole timeline so I guess we'll never see the Kombat Kids again.

MKX was an amazing step forward, while MK11 completely destroyed anything and everything that was good about it.

MK 11 feels like it is possibly setting up a new timeline without the baggage of the old original timeline being a plot point.

Plus I kind of liked how MK 11 treated the cast overall than how X treated some of the characters. At least for me it felt like a lot more characters had their moments to shine in 11 than they did in X and original characters were not left trampled on to lift up new characters.

Going to back Smokey up here from the other end, Born Female, Raised female.... Shy and tended to avoid others, But at home I would hang out around my brother who was a hardcore gamer in the 90s playing lots of western style games, and my grandfather was military and I got to overhear lots of stories about that.

Grew up loving military style games, and competed as a sharpshooter in my late high school, early university years.... still have the medals to prove it.

How you are raised and what you hang around defines you way more then biology, much to my mothers dismay who kept trying to get me to do more feminine things, and quit stealing my brothers stuff.

Edited by Imca on Oct 14th 2019 at 4:50:17 AM

I would like to add that the data I cited are all based on averages, not daily personal experiences individuals have. There's a tremendous overlap between men and women obviously, but the differences exist and are significant.

Not to mention that gender studies are often insufficiently divorced from on cultural and other selection bias issues...

A veritable plague in social and evolutionary psychology, that. Going back decades.

Or do I need to mutter darkly about Francis Galton, again, as a prize example of bias from the ground up? <sighs> Undeniably an important figure in the field of psychometrics... BUT. (We've still yet to turf out a lot of the damage he helped install — and that's just in general assumptions made in questionnaire format, let alone anything else. )

Edited by Euodiachloris on Oct 14th 2019 at 2:24:27 PM

"MK 11 was all about dialing back that passing of the torch."

M11 was to close the timeline stuft that have branch from MK 9 rather than use the timeline as tiny veild excuse to retcon like, for example, X-Men did.

And considering it rescue Liu kang for is edgy makeover(granted, I like Evil kang but that is me).

Hey dude Galton was the first to see the usefulness of the correlation coefficient in psychology. That in and of itself revolutionized the entirety of social science, even if you take away his many other achievements.