I love threads recommending books, especially here on the SDMB, so imagine my surprise upon opening this one and reading:
You didn’t really expect open misogyny like this to go unmentioned, did you? Male is “the default gender for characters”? Since when? Complain about badly written female characters to your heart’s content, but seems like you’re barely rationalizing something far more disturbing.
How open can it be if nobody else sees it? I certainly don’t. Neither did anyone else in that thread.
He* should have qualified that with an ‘In my experience’ or ‘In the books I read’ or something, but, then again, such qualifications should always be assumed.
I think you’re projecting, and I can probably find more support for my thesis than you can for yours.
*(Or she. Ever think of that, Smarty-Pants Sexism-Assumer? ;))
BTW, If you Pit someone I think it’s good manners to inform them in the thread that sparked it that you have done so.
FlyingRamenMonster is indeed a young lady, just for future reference. (17 and in college, I think? And she’s a damn talented artist, too.)
To say that male is the “default gender” of protagonists in novels is not sexist, but rather, is to point out that the culture which produce these novels is sexist.
Similarly, to point out and complain about the fact that writers feel like they need to justify the use of a female as a protagonist in a novel is not sexist, but is to criticize the sexism of the culture producing these novels.
-FrL-
Yeah, that. I’m not sexist, some my my best friends are women.
::d&r::
Mention in original thread duly made.
And if the post had said “I don’t tend to enjoy books where a female protagonist has to make a big show of how they’re sensitive and capable and empowered by single-handedly raising their son and caring for their ageing mother while keeping the family farm running after their divorce or something” I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. In fact, I probably would have agreed, because that’s usually a sign of poor, or at least unconvincing, writing.
I’m missing something. I don’t see a significant difference between what you’ve written here and what you’ve quoted above from FlyingRamenMonster’s post.
-FrL-
There’s a significant difference between “female protagonists generally” and “female protagonists who written in such a way that their writers feel the need to make them saints.” The latter is a slice indicative (generally) of a specific type of bad writing that is a subset of a much larger pool of female protagonists. A large subset, I’ll grant you, but not all female protagonists are written this way.
Derleth, note that my post was gender-neutral. Women can be misogynists, too. 
She was expressing a reading preference, for Og’s sake. No need to get all flustered like that.
FlyingRamenMonster, I agree with you. I tend to prefer male characters over female characters presented in films, comics, and books because they get to do the cool stuff. When I was little, I wanted to be Indiana Jones - not the dumb bitch hanging off his arm and screaming every five seconds or, even worse, Laura Croft. It seemed that if a female was kickass, then she had to be hypersexual. This started to change as I grew up, but it is still the overwhelming majority. For this reason, I prefer stories with male protagonists. My feelings arise not out of misogyny but feminism.
We can quibble about the semantic distinction between what percentage of a whole is implied by “generally,” as opposed to “a very large subset,” (which would be boring), but even if Ramen went crazy and said “I have NEVER met a female hero to my liking,” how does the different suggest anything hateful about actual women?
Exactly. FlyingRamenMonster put into words something that I have often thought myself.
Interesting article regarding Philip Roth’s characterizations of women in his articles: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/reviews/critics/chi-0605310232jun01,1,5595905.story?page=1&coll=chi-ent_critics-hed
I have no intention of setting his books down because of it, but I find it extremely revealing nonetheless.
FlyingRamenMonster does make some excellent points (I’ll confess I didn’t know FRM was female until recently!)
Certainly, in my own experiences female protaganists seem to be either Hyper Kickass Superwomen who are out to prove themselves, or stereotypical girly women who bitch about broken nails and scream whenever they see a spider…
In his books…not articles. D’oh!
There wouldn’t be male-chauvinistic guys if it wasn’t for male-chauvinistic moms. Moms are usually female.
I don’t see Monster’s comment as chauvinistic; badly phrased maybe, like the OP itself said (which I find funny).
Even if **FlyingRamenMonster’s ** remarks *were * misogynistic (which, in my opinion, they were not), they still wouldn’t be nearly the most misogynistic remarks I’ve read here on any given day.
There are several posters here who have genuine and oft-mentioned contempt for women. Save your vitriol for them.
I don’t think those remarks were misogynistic at all. But, then again, I get accused of hating women on a regular basis around here.
For me, saying that you don’t like the conventional female protagonist of stories is not misogynistic at all. It seems to me that FylyingRamenMonster shares opinions with many feminists – but in this post-feminist world, she probably doesn’t indentify as a feminist, but takes this sort of stuff for granted.
(sigh)
Chicks… Can’t live with 'em, can’t write a good story about 'em.