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Feminist Fantasy without Fantasy?

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Amonimus the "Retromancer" from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the "Retromancer"
#1: Sep 8th 2024 at 1:55:04 AM

Feminist Fantasy states that it's specifically "science fiction or fantasy whose main character is a woman". Is it? Do examples in historical or modern settings not apply?

Edited by Amonimus on Sep 8th 2024 at 11:20:36 AM

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StarSword Captain of USS Bajor from somewhere in deep space Since: Sep, 2011
Captain of USS Bajor
#2: Sep 8th 2024 at 1:16:03 PM

[up]That's a vast oversimplification of the genre definition, but I doubt it.

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Aquillion Since: Jan, 2001
#3: Sep 9th 2024 at 12:22:58 AM

I don't think it's limited to science fiction or fantasy, no. Something like, say, a retelling of the Three Musketeers with women as the main characters would usually qualify, at least if it had some feminist themes.

That said, the current trope does say:

> At its most basic, this just means science fiction or fantasy whose main character is a woman who is the active center of her own story, making things happen.

...that doesn't seem right? I do think that there has to be an aspect of... either feminist themes, or at least a sense of empowerment, often in terms of a female lead doing things that a female lead traditionally wouldn't.

A female version of Conan is feminist fantasy; just adding a bit of magic to The Secret Garden or A Little Princess, on the other hand, wouldn't automatically make it feminist fantasy (although of course with other changes it potentially could be), because on their own those are not challenging traditional gender-roles.

Edited by Aquillion on Sep 9th 2024 at 12:24:34 PM

MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#4: Sep 9th 2024 at 12:43:05 AM

Past TRS threads. There are also a number of concerns raised on the discussion page that it's overly broad.

DoktorvonEurotrash Lex et Veritas from Not a place of honour (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#5: Sep 9th 2024 at 5:13:55 AM

Seconding (thirding?) that "the main character is a woman" is far too broad a criterion, and almost meaningless.

Sid-Starkiller Since: Jan, 2021
Amonimus the "Retromancer" from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the "Retromancer"
#7: Sep 9th 2024 at 6:39:35 AM

I find it very ironic when the thing I'm asking is it being too specific.

The mentioned TRS thread were on the right track but somehow got closed when the conversation paused.

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themayorofsimpleton Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him from the Island of Koridai (Captain) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
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#8: Sep 9th 2024 at 6:51:40 AM

I wonder if a wick check would help here.

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Sid-Starkiller Since: Jan, 2021
#9: Sep 9th 2024 at 7:51:31 AM

I mean I can't imagine it would *hurt*...

EmeraldSource Since: Jan, 2021
#10: Sep 9th 2024 at 12:48:48 PM

If it didn't focus on hyper-realistic elements I could see the trope as redundant with You Go, Girl!. But I think too is that Feminist Fantasy leans towards a story or setting where the Mars and Venus Gender Contrast is a non-issue entirely while featuring empowered women, which I think is a slightly stronger definition.

Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.
Amonimus the "Retromancer" from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
EmeraldSource Since: Jan, 2021
#12: Sep 9th 2024 at 1:52:47 PM

That's where it started but examples basically expanded to any strength or skill based activity, so you see other things like military combat, outdoorsmanship and professional careers (lawyer, doctor). It's not technically within the written definition but keeps the men vs women angle.

Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.
Aquillion Since: Jan, 2001
#13: Sep 9th 2024 at 3:25:04 PM

> But I think too is that Feminist Fantasy leans towards a story or setting where the Mars and Venus Gender Contrast is a non-issue entirely while featuring empowered women, which I think is a slightly stronger definition.

I dunno. Feminist fantasy can also take place in a highly sexist world where the big bad goes "Defeated? By a mere SLIP OF A GIRL? This Cannot Be!" A lot of the stories that come to mind for me (eg. The Spellsong Cycle) had an empowered woman in a highly-sexist world instituting change and defying male institutions.

(The Spellsong Cycle was frequently described as feminist fantasy by reviewers - FWIW it's not a term we made up - and put one such review prominently on the back cover.)

I think that the trope could probably include both meta examples where gender-roles go unremarked but where the story is defying them in a meta sense; and more "textually" feminist stories where the MC is defying gender roles or otherwise wrestling with feminist issues in-universe. But between the two of them I lean more towards the latter as the "main" definition.

Or, in other words, while I think "female Conan who just happens to be female, with it never being remarked on in-universe and who just has mindless adventures" probably also fits, I think it'd be a bit silly to exclude "female Conan who goes around saving women from their patriarchal culture and punching misogynist villains in the face, in a story that is overtly about feminism" from the definition given that it's more overtly feminist. (And we'd run into problems because there's an existing outside definition that is probably closer to the latter.)

And then there's the question of what to do with stories that are more postfeminist or later-wave or whatever, like The Power or Revolutionary Girl Utena or Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, where the story is clearly discussing and analyzing gender-roles from a feminist perspective but which has a more nuanced take because it's written from an assumption that the reader already agrees with the basics of feminist theory (ie. stories that are critiquing girlboss feminism or non-intersectional feminism from a feminist perspective or are more generally part of a discourse about what feminism ought to be going forwards.)

Edited by Aquillion on Sep 9th 2024 at 3:36:51 AM

MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#14: Sep 10th 2024 at 3:03:27 AM

I wonder if part of what's going on is a problem we sometimes have with pre-existing terms where the offsite usage is fuzzier than we prefer to define tropes by, resulting in a trope that's so fuzzily defined as to be meaningless. (This was a problem with "enemies to lovers"; I want to say there's an actual trope that has suffered definition issues in the last few years, possibly to the point of going through TRS, by trying to adequately cover a fuzzily-defined pre-existing term, but I can't remember what it is and I'm not having much luck finding it.)

Edited by MorganWick on Sep 10th 2024 at 3:03:47 AM

DoktorvonEurotrash Lex et Veritas from Not a place of honour (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#15: Sep 10th 2024 at 4:15:03 AM

[up][up]I would call all the things you listed feminist in some way. They're all meaningfully feminist in a way that "this work has a female protagonist" isn't.

Amonimus the "Retromancer" from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the "Retromancer"
#16: Sep 10th 2024 at 5:10:58 AM

Have discovered Jackie Robinson Story (thanks Trope Namer Syndrome), which includes the "woman tries a man's job plot" I was looking for.

Edited by Amonimus on Sep 10th 2024 at 3:12:19 PM

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Reymma RJ Savoy from Edinburgh Since: Feb, 2015 Relationship Status: Wanna dance with somebody
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#17: Sep 13th 2024 at 9:03:43 AM

The article may have been made to be a counterpart to Reactionary Fantasy, but as noted above, it's something of an existing phrase. Still, I think it falls to the same problem for which Reactionary Fantasy was cut: fantasy can be environmentalist, anti-war, conservative or take any kind of moral and political stance, but that doesn't make it worthy of an article.

Alice in Wonderland is fantasy with a girl protagonist, but I would hardly call it feminist. And I recall a young adult novel that was clearly trying to have this girl power angle, but I would not call it feminist because halfway through it pulled off something I considered very insulting to its heroine.

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NitroIndigo ♀ | Small ripples lead to big waves from West Midlands region, England Since: Jun, 2021 Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
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#18: Sep 13th 2024 at 11:54:48 PM

Maybe it could be renamed to Female Empowerment Fantasy?

MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#19: Sep 14th 2024 at 3:37:27 AM

The problem with any rename is that it seems to be a pre-existing term.

Sid-Starkiller Since: Jan, 2021
#20: Sep 14th 2024 at 9:31:51 AM

Not to mention that if the definition really DOES amount to "fantasy starring a woman", then it's not inherently about empowerment. The name really isn't the problem here.

Amonimus the "Retromancer" from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the "Retromancer"
#21: Sep 14th 2024 at 9:43:14 AM

Is it a pre-existing term? Looking it up, there are rare references, but TV Tropes is the only site with a definition.

Edited by Amonimus on Sep 14th 2024 at 7:43:32 PM

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RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#22: Sep 14th 2024 at 4:09:09 PM

The words "feminist fantasy" were definitely used long before TV Tropes was around. Now, whether they actually qualified as a term is a bit murky, or just a noun and an adjective that were sometimes used together? That I'm less clear on.

MorganWick (Elder Troper)
#23: Sep 15th 2024 at 3:10:49 AM

Hmm. Re-reading the 2011 TRS thread I see that the sources and people referring to it as a defined genre used "feminist science fiction", which is also what "feminist fantasy" redirects to on The Other Wiki. I retract my rename concerns.

Edited by MorganWick on Sep 15th 2024 at 3:11:15 AM

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