What I Don't Like About the Magical Femme Fatale

So, this is a fairly common archetype, right? It exists in some sci-fi (I'm looking at you, Star Gate), but mostly fantasy.

The basics are these:

• A mysterious woman,
• who's incredibly beautiful,
• and on top of that, has magical powers of glamour and seduction,
• but ONLY over the (presumably straight) men,
• so that the one or two token female cast members get to sort everything out.

I'm willing to believe in Magical Powers of Glamour and Seduction (tm), but I have a few issues with this.

1

Why is it always always always a magically beautiful woman? There is a counterpart to the succubus, you know, and it's called an incubus.

2

Why do only the men fall for her charms? Is this a sexuality thing? If so, there are bound to be SOME gay men or gay women who, respectively, won't be tricked or will be equally mesmerised. Yet I've never seen those. Is it a 'men are fundamentally different from women and that's why the magic doesn't work on women' thing? If so, I hate the world because that's just not true.

3

Isn't it funny that the token female characters get to have an active role in sorting things out, which seems pretty interesting, but no one believe them because they are being jealous of the succubus' good looks and success with the men? Thus, woman is pitted against woman again, and all the men are safe in their knowledge that women are spiteful, jealous, hating creatures who will tear eachother apart.

I realise that the succubus is supposed to be evil, and the other women is the saviour, and usually the men are apologetic afterwards, but to have everyone dismiss the 'good' woman's (valid) criticism as hysterics is just... It's something that happens a lot in real life, except without th apologies afterwards. It seems to me as a justification for men's dismissal of women; if they were right, we'll figure it out and there will be apologies and drinks for everyone! If they are wrong, well, women are just so hysteric and jealous.

4

Speaking of the succubus as evil and the saviour woman on the other side, this is not just setting women against eachother, this is also an example of the virgin/whore dichotomy.

The succubus is actively sexual, she owns her sexuality and she seduces men because she wants to, or because she likes sex, or because she uses it as a tool to get something else she wants. This something else is always something evil, like killing people or taking over the world. In fact, she's not just seducing people, she's taking away their free will, making them mindless zombies to their desire. This is Very Evil.

Our saviour is the good woman who realises that this woman is evil, with her bare midriff and flirty ways and winks and kisses and, oh, the whole mindless zombie thing.

Mind you, I'm not saying turning people into mindless zombies is a good thing, I'm saying that the way through which the succubus achieves it is ALREADY seen as evil without the results. She's already evil because she's sexual, and when she starts turning people into zombies, well, that only confirms things. Also, it's incredibly stereotypical and overdone and frankly, uneccesary.

5

That brings me to number five: men as mindless zombies to their desire.

It's a common stereotype that men, once they are tempted, cannot resist. This is nonsense, and it's doing a disservice to men, who can be so much stronger and smarter than that. Still, it's arampant belief. Look at rape apology. "He just couldn't stop himself, after all, she was wearing a miniskirt!" It's pretty disgusting, and it implies that men are brainless cave-people who always follow their dicks. Some men do that, sure, but that is all their own fault, not the fault of their gender.

Following these assumptions (which are wrong) the idea of a woman using sexual magic to turn men into zombies is easily believable. It's also wrong, and I hope you can see why.

These are some of the things I don't like about the magical femme fatale.

On Being Gender-Ambiguous on the Internet

As those of you who have read my rant on gender and sexuality might remember, I identify as genderqueer. In everyday (meatspace) life this isn't always apparent, especially to people who don't know me well, because, lets face it, I don't look very ambiguous. I have long hair and a fairly voluminous chest paired with quite a bit of oomph in the general area of my hips. It's no surprise that, after a look at my distinctly feminine physique, no one and I mean NO ONE bothers to ask how I see myself on the gender front.

Sometimes this bothers me, because I would pretty much sell everything I own for a safe, effective, and lasting (and functional!) way to make my body reflect my inner being accurately, but to my knowledge this sort of thing does not exist and even if it would, everything I own would not be enough. In any case, I can live with people assuming. Everyone assumes a lot about other people, its part of how people work, and though I'd like to change some assumptions really badly (such as 'feminine guys are always gay' and 'all women are emotionally needy') I'm not too bothered about people in real life assuming I'm a woman. Although I'm very open about my identity and I'll happily talk about it to strangers if the subject comes up, I don't feel like explaining the intricacies of gender theory to every random passer-by. It's selfish, but there it is.

The one place I get really enthusiastic about this sort of thing is, as you might've guessed, the internet.

The internet gives me a chance to present myself as gender ambiguous in a way that real life doesn't allow me to. I can choose a picture of me, or of some object, that doesn't directly call to mind either gender, and without the visual cues, I can go out and be myself, knowing that my gender will probably not be apparent. (This provides a secondary benefit: I've noticed that (mostly male) people take me just a slight bit more seriously when they think I'm male, and they don't flirt with me so much. I don't like being flirted with just because I'm female.)

Now, I've been on the internet for a while, sometimes actively presentig as a guy, sometimes as a girl, and lately, I've been leaving the question out in the open a lot. Interestingly, this has only led to MORE attention to my percieved gender with some people. Again, to my experience they are mostly male. They somehow can not fathom that I might be neither male not female, and they badger me time after time because, you know, they just want to know.

"I'm not trying to say anything, but are you a guy or a girl?"
"I'm really sorry for asking, but I'm confused... are you female?"

I wonder why this is so incredibly important for people who I might talk to several times a week, who are not what I'd call close friends by any means, but who've come to know me a little, who know what games I play and what music I like, and what subjects I like to rant about, who might even know about my social 'issues' because I've trusted them enough to tell them. All of this might somehow change because of my gender? Is it that they want to know whether they can see my as a romantic interest? (Regardless of gender, the answer is usually yes.) Is it because they want to know whether they can see me as sexual object? (The answer here is usually no.)

I don't know, but they are very, VERY insistant about it. So insistant that I usually end up telling them that, well, I'm really neither. I'm sort of... genderqueer. This usually prompts th question:

"Well, okay, but what are you, biologically?"

Everyone who's had to do with gender identification that falls outside of the norm will understand how intensely irritating this question is. (Starting with the fact that the term 'biologically' is flawed.) Despite the friendship I've built, they want to know what's in my pants, as if it's an absolutely vital thing to know. With most of my internet friends, it simply is none of their business. What's in my pants, be it a vagina or a penis or a sparkly dildo, is my business, and that of any potential lovers. Of which I have none. So there you have it.

I answer this question with an internal sigh and an explanation that it really doesn't matter and I might very well change it if I could, but yes, I will reluctantly admit that I have ladybits. And please don't treat me any different than before you knew this, I ask them.

Unfortunately, once the pussy is out of the bag (pun completely and utterly intended), things change. Sometimes people try to hit on me, in which case the motivation for asking was probably in wanting to know whether they could see me as a sexual object. Sometimes they ort of stop talking to me much, which could have a lot of different reasons, one of them that I might have given them a bit of a lecture on gender theory. By far the most common thing to happen is that they start calling me nicknames.

Yes, nicknames. And not th sort of mutually approved things I get called all over the interwebs like Silver or Sil or even 'kitteh'. Nope, they start calling me their 'dear' and 'sweets' and 'chicka' and 'sweetheart'. I think it's obvious by the way I bring this up, but I do not appreciate people calling me names like these, especially when we are not close friends. I will allow some people to do this, but it's really the exception to the rule, especially when it comes out of nowhere like this.

I once confronted a guy who did this, and his excuse was that he 'did it to all his women friends'.

I pity his women friends.

In short, don't harrass people about their gender, it often doesn't matter all that much unless maybe you want to get involved in a romantic sense and you want to make sure you're compatible, but even in that case, don't harrass and/or badger people about it. And unless you know me exceptionally well, well enough to know the names of my cats, don't call me your dear. You are allowed to call me your Leather Daddy, though, and if that's too much for you to type, save yourself the effort and stick to Silver.

Sci-fi Cliché: Oppressive Alien Cultures

First of all, I've not been doing much book reviews because first I was stressed with the end of the academic year, then it was so hot I felt like pouring my brain out of my ears, and somewhere inbetween those two I found myself re-reading Harry Potter. So. I will continue those as soon as I finish a newish book!

But first!

Lately, one of my favourite ways to relieve tension is to multitask two or three things: playing a game (World of Warcraft, usually), watching shows online, and reading blogs. Lovely way to keep the mind occupied. This means that in the past half year or so I've watched pretty much all the crime-scene shows I could get my hands on, a good chunk of Dexter, Legend of the Seeker, and a whole bunch of sci-fi shows.

These shows include, but are not limited to: Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Star Trek: Voyager and I've just started on Star Gate: SG1.

And I've noticed a certain cliché. I'm only on episode 3 of SG1 and it's already popped up. Now, mind you, I've not finished that episode yet so I'm not going to talk about the theme in this specific show. I also don't remember seeing it in Firefly or Battlestar Galactica, so I'm not going to talk about those either. And since I was multitasking all through all of these shows, I'm a little fuzzy on the details of the thing in Star Trek, though I'm sure I saw it in there. Somewhere.

Instead, I am going to talk about the cliché in a broader sense. The cliché is this: our intrepid heroes, including one female lead, and usually no more than that, are visiting some alien/otherworldly/old-timey place, and it turns out the people who live here have a bit of a strange or outdated sense of what women should be allowed to do. (The question of why gender matters to an alien culture is a different matter.)

In short, this culture thinks the woman in our expedition needs to get back in the kitchen, cover up properly so none of the men get tempted by her dangerously seductive feminine wiles, get herself attached to a man for protection and reproduction, and while she's at it, make them dinner.

Our heroes usually don't like this, especially the female lead, who is offended, but for some reason, they never leave the place or put down an ultimatum. Probably because that would make for a short story. Instead, the female lead might do one of two things: she might try to prove she is 'one of the guys', or she might conform to the culture's feminine ideals and try to rile up in women from within.

Fun snippet: in the bit of SG1 episode 3 I've seen, the following conversation takes place:
Mongol Leader: "If you will travel this country, you must learn our ways."
Sam Carter: "I'm thinking we should just go back while we're ahead."
Daniel Jackson: "If we learn their customs we'll be okay. It's an incredible opportunity to study an ancient culture up close."
Daniel is basically telling Sam to suck up the humiliation for anthropology's sake. Can you tell this makes me angry?

The end of this template for a storyline can be a lesson in which our heroes teach this primitive, un-emancipated culture that their women are equal to their men, and sometimes better! How heartwarming. This ending is troubling in a whole-new-can-of-worms way.

Okay, so my first problem with this cliché is the same problem I have with a lot of sci-fi: who do aliens care about gender? Why do all aliens have two sexes and genders? It makes little sense. Even on Earth we have hermaphroditic creatures. In fact, why are all the aliens humanoid? I have a vague suspicion that the answer to this one is 'special effects budget'.

My second problem is that, in all the cases I can remember seeing this cliché (I might be missing one), the female lead is encouraged to undergo the humiliation for the sake of the mission. That in itself might not have been so bad, if it weren't for the fact that the pain of this humiliation is often not mentioned at all. Okay, so you might have someone mentioning the impracticality of the clothing styles, or how off-putting it is to be surrounded by submissive women (or how awesome that is), but even if the female lead expresses discomfort at being treated like cattle, she is usually told, once again, to suck it up.

Thirdly, there is the whole 'enlightened people come to educated the primitive tribe' thing. As much as I dislike cultures in which women (or any group of people) are oppressed, you can't just point and say they're savages. It's not that simple. And a group of outsiders decided that this culture could really use some changes, and (forcefully) implementing them? Someone is feeling superior! /singsong voice There are many, much better ways to show a culture overcoming equalities, than depicting them as savage and stupid, saved only by the enlightened invading aliens.

And my last point for today: in juxtaposing one culture with another, and more often than not having that disctinction be; us, the enlightened and them, the savages, we are implying something. We are implying that the us in this story, often the human race, and not rarely the human race in the present, are enlightened. We are unlike that silly savage race, who don't know to treat their women properly. We are above that. We treat women equally. We do not have sexism anymore. This is false. We might be better off than we were a hundred years ago, but we are not there yet.

There are many more details of this cliché, little things that keep popping up in culture and pop culture, that make me cringe, but this post is long enough and I will continue some other time. Maybe. Unless I forget.