13 October 2008On [Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]:
In most SF novels, I've always noticed that the female is ALWAYS the object of lust, not the male. Even when the narrator is female, they don't objectify the male, but the female. Lust and the promise of it has always been a recurring theme in SF novels, even good ones, so I don't blame Philip K. Dick or Orson Scott Card for that. It's just that the male protagonist always sleeps with the hot female, and the hot female is always the forbidden fruit or the irresistible bait.
Why can't males be hot instead? In today's society, it is entirely not justifiable for only females to be objectified and used as an object of temptation. This only propagates the idea that females are only to be utilised as tools for pleasure, and they are not worthy of being anything else. It is only recently that females have been sufficiently empowered of proper characterisation -- Un Lun Dun by China Mieville and Philip Pullman have great examples of female protagonists.
This is coming from a humanist to boot.
No comments:
Post a Comment