Ambiguous Name: Feminist Fantasy

Fixed the TRS link to the page. Still don't like how anyone can edit that...

So my $.02. I also agree that "story has a female protagonist" is not a trope (but as shime said in #43, we could have an index), instead this looks most promising as a trope where feminism and gender differences are explored using the lens of speculative fiction. To quote a large (slightly condensed) block from the page:

I think if we should make those three criteria a mandatory part of the trope. That gives it solid boundaries and a good definition beyond "female protagonist in speculative fiction." If a work is used to explore feminist issues or ideas through the lens of fiction, that is a full-bodied trope.

The first two paragraphs could also be trimmed or moved to an analysis page. They could be summed up to "Most Writers Are Male" and "historically, women have not been considered full characters in fiction." These two paragraphs define what the trope is not, instead of what it is.

As for the name, even though this may be an industry term, if it inaccurately reflects the trope, we don't have to use it. Since the definition is in flux right now, I'm ok shelving the rename question until later.

I think this sounds like a reasonable assessment.

I don't think that making all three of those bullet points mandatory really works; they're not really criteria, just different ways that "uses speculative fiction as a lens to examine feminist issues or ideas" can manifest. I can't think of a single example that fits all three of those bullet points at once.

Now, I could certainly see replacing "speculative fiction with a female lead" with "speculative fiction that examines feminist issues or ideas" as the core definition and including some version of those three bullets as Internal Subtropes.

I definitely agree with cutting the first two paragraphs or moving them to analysis. The trope description as written takes way too long to get to the point.

edited 13th Feb '17 7:14:53 PM by HighCrate

I don't think the three criteria in #51 would work as "necessary conditions," so to speak. They don't exactly build toward a common trope and may be too independent from one another to be something other than, say, Internal Subtropes. They could work as "flavor" to the central trope, whatever we agree that is. That said, I think #53's definition is either good for this trope or at least a good springboard (so to speak).

I mean this part specifically: "speculative fiction that examines feminist issues or ideas"

edited 13th Feb '17 7:39:44 PM by WaterBlap

Thank you. That's what I was trying to say, but missed it somehow.

I didn't mean to say all three bullet points were mandatory, but rather a work must have some feminist flavor to be considered this trope.

I think this is flexible enough to show different flavors without resorting to Internal Subtropes. The theme is exploring feminism, the flavors just are different ways of going about it.

Maybe a quick rewrite of the three "flavors" plus a small description to be more broad:

How does something like that look?

edited 13th Feb '17 8:40:37 PM by pokedude10

Looks like a pretty good start to me.

I think the definition drift is partly due to the fact that a lot of feminist fantasy comments on feminist themes by way of metaphor or subtext, so there can be some ambiguity about whether the feminist themes someone sees in a work were actually intentional by the author.

For instance, if a story features a rough-and-tumble female action hero who has to rescue a male Damsel in Distress, that could be the author intentionally inverting traditional gender roles to show how unnecessary they are. But it could also be that the author just came up with these two characters and thought one of them rescuing the other would make for an exciting story, without really thinking about the gender politics of it all.

Genre boundaries are inherently fuzzy. That's just one of the things we all have to live with. Even genres that look as broad and straightforward as Science Fiction turn out to have all sorts of fuzzy edge-cases when you start looking at specific examples. Asking whether some works are "really" SF is a great way to start a huge flamewar on some SF forums...

I've taken a couple of stabs at writing a definition which incorporates the best of the original and Pokedude's core, but I'm not quite there yet. Hope to have something for consideration very soon, though.

Wow, I'm glad this TRS took off a little while I was out of commission and I'm glad for the contributions made, I feel like the description is almost done, so I feel like we can start disccusing which types of works belong on the page and which should be deleted:

I agree given that the feminist themes and narrative are often done this way, either because of censorship (depending on the target audience, the work may not make it to the public if it's blatantlly feminist) or for the social context.

This is the main reason why I feel like the description should have an addendum about Values Dissonance and probably a warning of caution about adding foreign works into the feminist category if the troper has little or no idea about the issues feminists communities of that particular country faces.

I feel like in this particular case (again given the social context) author intent is important to take into account, because thanks to the Death of the Author and the inherently complicated nature of feminism any work could easily be interpreted as feminist by a certain group or audience (e.g. the entirety of the Magical Girl genre in the western audiences) when the work deals with absolutely no feminist issues whatsoever.

In fact I think this is one of the main reasons for the Trope Decay of this page in the first place.

edited 26th Feb '17 12:43:50 PM by RoseBride

Eh, author intention shouldn't be the focus though. While author intentions may be good in an example, they should not be necessary. Death of the Author does not mean that non-examples will be added.Sure, theoretically works like in #57 might happen, but in the current culture that's still meaningful as this trope.

Most Writers Are Male. They write for a male audience, and generally uphold gender norms in their fiction. If a writer ends up subverting gender norms and creating a "feminist fantasy" unintentionally, that's still this trope. Until most world culture changes, flipping/lampshading/reinventing gender or female roles is this trope. Non-examples are shoehorning and would be removed.

I'm not sure what you mean by adding info about Values Dissonance. Can you expand on that reasoning?

Oh sure I didn't meant to say that author intent should be the entire focus, but neither should be that because a work happens to subvert or invert a certain gender dynamic at some point it means that the work is inmediatly classified as this trope, unless this dynamic is the focus or at least a primary element of the story, e.g. if that was the case a gender flipped version about... dunno a major historic figure whose original impact in the setting is downplayed in favor of fanservice would hardly count as this trope regardless of the gender-flipped mechanic

With Values Dissonance it's a bit related to the author intent, but also with not giving credit where credit isn't due, because what one group (race, ethnicity or culture) considers feminist may not be feminist at all for another different one, and that when dealing with a work in which the writers come from cultural context (and such the gender dynamics and how these are enforced) completely different from western audiences, a few examples are:

An example are almost any Magical Girl anime out there, for most of the western audiences they qualify as feminist because of the Action Girl and its related tropes, but for the japanese culture that uses their highly gendered marketing in anime and manga to enforce rather than subvert gender roles, meaning that what we may see as "progressive" because the girls are fighting the monsters or villains in turn, for japanese audiences they are using tropes like Girly Bruiser, Tomboy with a Girly Streak etc. etc to promote the message of "girliness as a strenght" so girls learn to feel comfortable with those expectations, which means that these anime are not only NOT feminists in the japanese cultural context but the exact opposite, same way as your usual shounen anime reinforces a bunch of hypermasculinity tropes, for japanese feminists the only feminist works are those in which BOTH girls and boys are allowed to be themselves outside those gender roles and expectations.

Black women being desexualized and generally not allowed to be cheery, happy romantic, girly (all of them usually thought to be gender-conforming traits) or even become Love Interests whatsoever, a black female character being allowed to be all of those things is feminist from their context

Latino women faces the opposite problem, they are so hypersexualized and always happy or your usual "party girl" that rather that the usual tendency of women being comfortable with their sexuality, is not really feminist in their context, thus a latino women who is presented as smart, shy and not sexualized is feminist.

Female muslim women who find modesty and covering themselves as empowering because it's their choice, rather than showing themselves up is also an example.

I could go on but that's the gist of it, mmm probably would include the Fair for Its Day on the description considering that Society Marches On too

(Also the laconic description keeps being the same as before)

edited 27th Feb '17 7:26:37 AM by RoseBride

Thank you for expanding on your idea. I see your point, it makes sense. I fully agree with cautioning editors to watch for Values Dissonance in the case of cultural differences.

edited 28th Feb '17 9:45:14 AM by pokedude10

Oh I'm glad, although it wouldn't be just adding a warning or clearing up the description as per the the page action poll results we should also do a clean up of all the examples not belonging to the page along with the wicks under the same situation.

For the warning I was thinking of something like (I think its better if its be highlighted too):

Given that gender dynamics are a cultural construct (meaning that they change from one group to another including they way they are enforced) and Values Dissonance is a common mistake in these cases, it is very important that before adding an example from a different cultural context than your own, to be absolutely sure that the example is indeed feminist from their context as well.

Also for th laconic page I was thinking of something along the lines of:

Fantasy and Sci-Fi works where traditional gender dynamics are subverted, averted, deconstructed or explored within the context of its setting

Unfortunately I'm not able to add it to the page or anything because right now I have an edit ban (because of grammar issues >.> ....ESL troper here) so right now I'm stuck giving pointers ^.^

edited 1st Mar '17 8:32:14 PM by RoseBride

- So, there needs to be some split, between works of different cultural contexts. i guess... Either separate pages, or separate folders...

And we'd need to pindown what the gender roles/stereotypes are, for each culture... and so, what some tropes to look out for in each cultural context, to say that it's a Feminist Fantasy?

Like how Statuesque Stunner requires a prerequistite Fanservice Trope in order for an example to be valid?

... I wonder... Pure Tomboy (As in no With a Girly Streak) is feminist in all contexts, yes or no?

Also, things which autonatically rule out a work from being feminist could be useful too? Presuming there is such thing... Some of the DoubleStandards and Gender Dynamics Indexes might be unfeminist?

How many ways can a work be feminist? Sexuality, Combat, Whatever Girliness is... Anything Else?

edited 2nd Apr '17 7:00:51 AM by Malady

No, Tomboy is only a flag that a work is feminist if it's treated positively and the girl doesn't have to change or become more girly in order to "succeed". There are very few tropes that will always either be out of place or present in a work that qualifies.

"... I wonder... Pure Tomboy (As in no With a Girly Streak) is feminist in all contexts, yes or no?"

Nooo way. Tomboy has been treated VERY negativity in the feminist community (in fact very harshly) because of the masculine personality. Instead they settled down for the girly personality as it said in the previous comment. "girliness as strength". Hence it's why magical girls genre (usually Sailor Moon) is extremely popular with the feminist audience because of the positivity of femininity.

- So, can't define Feminist Fantasy on its tropes alone? Or you can, and I'm not picking the right ones?

A straight Ladyland might encompass some subsets of FF...

In all kindness, I think how Tomboy is used in feminism is irrelevant to the trope at hand. What I think matters is how the tomboy is used within the work. If a girl in a work is a tomboy, but it isn't brought up or has no bearing on the plot, it's not really exploring feminist ideas. It's part of her character, sure. But I don't think a tomboy in a work automatically makes it a Feminist Fantasy unless there's some narrative significance.

So, a Tomboy Protagonist or something...

Just a non Bit Character?

I think the trope name and most of the examples are fine. It's just the description that needs reworking.

Thinking about this, I think this trope should be treated as analogous to say Power Fantasy. I'd propose the following definition:

A work where women is the dominant group in society, and it is treated as a positive thing.

It has the advantage of having a single clear definition that should be easily understood and evaluated. It also manages to catch lots of interesting works.

I guess that works?

It having to fit at least one of the bullet points quoted above is a good way to fix the vagueness.

However, there are some places there where "gender" needs to be replaced with "sex" so that it makes sense. There are works, such as Ancilliary Justice where there is no gender at all. There still might be inequality of the sexes. (As far as I could see, there is none of that in Ancilliary Justice, but it is hard to tell what with the lack of grammatical gender. And a novel in which there is no grammatical gender but still oppression of the female sex, would be entirely possible, heck, some languages in the real world don't have gender! )

Works like "Egalia's Daughters" have men performing what in our culture is coded as femininity. So we have masculine/genderfree people who are in charge, and people who are oppressed and perform femininity. By that description, it seems not revolutionary at all - but if you look at which sex does what, then it becomes clear that this is a very revolutionary thought experiment and pretty much one of the clearest examples of feminist fiction there are.

I know the English speaking world is squeamish about using the word "sex", but TV Tropes is otherwise not prudish about naming things correctly, so I think most users would be okay with that.

Things being feminist in some cultural contexts but not in others is a good point. In an American work of fiction, a female character never appearing in clothes that show cleavage or belly, would be feminist and a change from the norm. In a Muslim country, a female character who doesn't wear a veil would be revolutionary and feminist, one who wears a veil wholly unremarkable.

Not sure whether that's a problem for the trope page, as I wouldn't class something like the magical girl manga trope as feminist, anyway. While there may be countries where girls getting to leave the house at all might be a revolutionary idea, we really cannot use those to measure fiction against, or 99% of all fiction would be considered feminist.

I am sure we all agree that in addition to formal rules (about those three bullet points, for example) there needs to be some common sense applied. If some work of fiction describes normal life in the US, while that might seem revolutionary and wildly different from the point of view of a woman from a very different part of the world, it still doesn't count as feminist.

Edit: The page also needs a new page quote. Joss Whedon is not really suitable for this.

https://www.themarysue.com/reconsidering-the-feminism-of-joss-whedon/

edited 22nd Aug '17 5:56:57 AM by Gowan

Bottom line, we shouldn't be inventing our own definitions for a term that's fairly commonly used outside of TVT. (That's a standard rule.)

The Other Wiki calls it Feminist Science Fiction, but it's basically the same thing—Speculative Fiction.

It's a domain of academic study, and there's at least one major award for the category: the James Tiptree Jr. Award. (James Tiptree Jr. was the pen name of Alice Mary Sheldon, who had the science fiction community confused about her gender for years.)