Do you mind if I back track a bit? I realized after I had hit 'post' and walked away from my computer how I really wanted to respond.
First, what makes a story feminist or not? (I'm asking partially because this is an issue that's been bubbling under a lot of other discussions that I've been having and I'd like to unpack it a bit more and partially because I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing).
To answer the question I just asked, what makes a story feminist to me is when all of the characters are treated like human beings, gender isn't being used to define what a character can and can't do or how the narrative treats the character, and female characters are given agency.
We're talking about 'Behind A Mask' by Louisa May Alcott, in my Gothic Literature class, and there's this subtextual belief by some of the other students that to be a feminist story or to have Jean Muir (who as an 1800s women ends up lying and manipulating people to secure herself a marriage that will give herself financial security) which I find deeply problematic. I don't think that an unflattering or amoral or complicated portrayal of a women is by default anti-feminist.
To get specific to this story (and yes, I wrote it, so I'm stomping on my 'OMG I'M A FEMINIST AND I WROTE IT SO THAT MAKES IT TOTALLY OKAY AND FEMINIST BY DEFAULT' knee-jerk reaction) what I see as problematic are not so much gender dynamics as much as interpersonal dynamics.
To my eyes (ymmv) the main things that are problematic are:
-Ino blaming Sakura for her (Ino's) emotions
-Ino having sex with Sakura while Sakura thinks she's having sex with her boyfriend.
If you switched around the genders, each and every combination, those problems would still be there.
To answer your question about why I wrote it this way - a friend requested Ino and Sakura, and this was what came out. I didn't want to write just pwp - sex with nothing else attached, and one of the reasons I enjoy Ino is that (in my head) she's a bitch and egocentric and lost and has fucked-up ethical boundaries about what is okay to do to/with people, that directly relates to her ninjutsu. So I just threw those two ideas together and played around with them.
To conclude, yes, I would like to have a longer conversation about this.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
First, what makes a story feminist or not? (I'm asking partially because this is an issue that's been bubbling under a lot of other discussions that I've been having and I'd like to unpack it a bit more and partially because I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing).
To answer the question I just asked, what makes a story feminist to me is when all of the characters are treated like human beings, gender isn't being used to define what a character can and can't do or how the narrative treats the character, and female characters are given agency.
We're talking about 'Behind A Mask' by Louisa May Alcott, in my Gothic Literature class, and there's this subtextual belief by some of the other students that to be a feminist story or to have Jean Muir (who as an 1800s women ends up lying and manipulating people to secure herself a marriage that will give herself financial security) which I find deeply problematic. I don't think that an unflattering or amoral or complicated portrayal of a women is by default anti-feminist.
To get specific to this story (and yes, I wrote it, so I'm stomping on my 'OMG I'M A FEMINIST AND I WROTE IT SO THAT MAKES IT TOTALLY OKAY AND FEMINIST BY DEFAULT' knee-jerk reaction) what I see as problematic are not so much gender dynamics as much as interpersonal dynamics.
To my eyes (ymmv) the main things that are problematic are:
-Ino blaming Sakura for her (Ino's) emotions
-Ino having sex with Sakura while Sakura thinks she's having sex with her boyfriend.
If you switched around the genders, each and every combination, those problems would still be there.
To answer your question about why I wrote it this way - a friend requested Ino and Sakura, and this was what came out. I didn't want to write just pwp - sex with nothing else attached, and one of the reasons I enjoy Ino is that (in my head) she's a bitch and egocentric and lost and has fucked-up ethical boundaries about what is okay to do to/with people, that directly relates to her ninjutsu. So I just threw those two ideas together and played around with them.
To conclude, yes, I would like to have a longer conversation about this.