Hey all -
I had no intention of starting a flame war. However, I also
don't think that avoidance of flames requires me not to
question any statements that another poster makes, even if
they are simply honest statements of taste/preconception/what
have you.
My former post was intended to be somewhat facetious/ taking
a devil's advocate position/ etc. I honestly did not intend
to accuse Jim or anyone else of being a bigot, either in
"real life" or in regards to fiction. Unfortunately, looking
back on it, I realize that if you took it completely
seriously it would come off as a flame, which is not what I
meant.
Making my argument in a more direct manner: I continue not to
understand why some consider it appropriate to make comments
and harbor preconceptions regarding female characters that
would clearly not be appropriate about blacks, gays, etc. My
only intention in my previous post was to draw attention to
that parallel, precisely because I do not have the impression
that anyone on the list is a bigot and upon reading Jim's
entire post I certainly do not think Jim's comments were
meant in that way (although Jim did use the word 'prejudice'
and I don't think it was ridiculous of me to interpret that
word in the way that it is commonly understood). I was
attempting to play devil's advocate, which I consider to be a
legitimate rhetorical device but if this is "intellectually
dishonest"
(in that I do not actually think that Jim objects to female
doctors or lawyers) then I plead guilty.
As for what is or isn't a female fantasy world, I would just
ask you to consider that hard boiled fiction started in the
1930s or thereabouts and that various social changes (world
war II, the 60s, the women's movement) have likely made a
change in the things that women fantasize about. Yes, Marcia
Muller and Sue Grafton very consciously started out to make
an entry into a masculine world (sort of like posting to this
list, apparently), but they've both been at it for 20 years
or thereabouts. Today, I would guess there are at least as
many female readers of hardboiled fiction as there are male
readers, and an increasing number of practitioners and
protagonists as well. This suggests to me that the PI mythos
is at least as appealing to women as men, and it's simply
frustrating for female readers (and I assume writers) twenty
years later to be regarded as essentially interlopers in male
territory (this is the implication to me of the statement
that a reader has to make some type of "adjustment" to see a
female protagonist in a PI novel).
I simply don't think the romance novel parallel is a valid
one, because today romance novels continue to be an almost
exclusively female territory while this is just in no way
true of women writers/ readers and crime fiction.
Possibly this is a generational thing? I don't mean to make
any assumptions about anyone's age, but when someone says
that it is
"self-evident" that the PI is a male fantasy figure, well
that's *not* self-evident to me. It's honestly something I
had never thought of until Jim mentioned it, and in that
sense I have learned something from this exchange. I was born
in 1975 and I was brought up to play with trucks instead of
Barbies if that's what I felt like, or to read Hardy Boys or
the Three Investigators instead of Nancy Drew (which I
usually did).
For the record, I recently almost got yelled off a 20th
Century Female Authors group for saying that I don't pick
books based on the author's gender, and that disagreeing that
women writers are better at portraying emotions,
relationships, etc etc., so maybe I really am just a
contrarian at heart.
Peace?
Carrie
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