bending genders

[toujours_nigel]

 I think I feel guilty about writing Boromir as always-a-cis-woman, even though barely anyone will read the fic and even though she doesn't have a romantic story-line going, because when I came into fandom  the tendency of gender-bending in order to write your ship safely heterosexual was just coming under critical fire and I absorbed it like a sponge.
So I can say all I want that to explore the ways in which the narrative would change, or how people would react, and whether the Fellowship is different and how and why (not), and what it means to survive and to survive when you're a woman, and what it is to be a woman who cannot slide into the sweetness of marital domesticity, and how to deal with barrenness and grief and mourning family everyone else is glad to see the back of, and...
And I can say all of that, and a lot more, and mean every scrap of it, and I still feel like I'm doing this to write het. porn and letting the side down and I should be ashamed of myself. I am, ohboy, to the extent of trying to self-justify with "at least it's not a Mary Sue self-insert" when I don't really think that's something to be ashamed of, either.
I'm ashamed and it's irritating me no end.

Comments

[legionseagle]

I don't like Foz Meadows or agree much with her brand of feminism, but I think she's got a point here .

That is, you're writing in a fandom whose canon is -- by its author's choice -- almost uniquely devoid of female characters. And by "uniquely devoid" I mean that no war in history and no epic poem in the history of literature has had so few and so limited female roles.

Historic wars have camp followers and vivandieres and colonels' ladies and the Duchess of Richmond and the Countess of Derby and Artemisia of Halicarnassus and Eleanor of Aquitaine and Laskarina Bouboulina and Grace Hopper and the Night Witches and the women of SOE and Bletchley and the WRNS and VADs and women who grab pitchforks to defend their homes and wives, mothers and sisters who mourn the fallen. They have the mademoiselle from Armentieres and Judy O'Grady and Mary Seacole and James Miranda Barry and a whole mess of unclassified and unclassifiable women, some of whom are sewing shrouds for soldiers and some of whom are digging for victory and some of whom are in the process of waking up and finding they are strong. That was the history that Tolkien either studied or lived through and chose not to put into LOTR (I can't really talk about the Silmarillion because I read it once, many years ago, and didn't get into it.)

And as for epic poems - well, you've got Maedh of Connaught getting her period at quite the most inconvenient moment, and Athena, Aphrodite and Hera butting in wherever they can cause the most trouble; you've got Helen and Hekabe and Juturna and Grendel's Mother and Penthesilea and Briseis and Chriseis and Calypso and Circe and Cressida and, again, various mothers, sisters and wives (or sisters, cousins and aunts, if you prefer).

But what Tolkien does is strip all of that complexity and variety out and what we've got are pure and very limited archetypes without much wiggle room - isn't it odd the way only two of the Fellowship (nine blokes, off to war together) have any hint of a "girl back home", none of them talk about it, they don't even write home to their mothers! (Have any of them got mothers? I mean, we get Aragorn's mother prematurely offed at 50 or so, despite being from a line which regularly reaches 200, we've got Frodo's mother drowned, we've got Bilbo's mother dying before he's fifty in circumstances which lead Gandalf to refer to her as "my poor Belladonna", Boromir's mother died of pining for the fjords, Sam's mother has vanished mysteriously from the scene....)

That is, I think there are a lot of underlying biases in effect, some of them internalised, but the original erasure of women was Tolkien's choice* and putting them back is an equally legitimate choice and in some respects more naturalistic

*In the same way as it was his and Lewis's choice to stop the Oxford University literature syllabus at 1832 and so erase the Brontes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot and a whole host of others.

[toujours_nigel]

Oh, I absolutely think there need to be more women in Tolkien's works, at least in LOTR and Hobbit, and will always be disappointed that Eowyn lays down her sword, much though I detest giving countenance to the notion that being a chatelaine is in any way dwindling, and was delighted by the inclusion of Tauriel in the Hobbit films. I want there to be female Rangers and Healers (who are taken seriously) and shield-maidens and Eorlingas, and the whole mess of it.

And I still feel guilty for switching Boromir out, and in part I do think that's because of the moment and context in which I entered fandom, because certainly there's any number of Belladona Bagginses romancing Thorin all over AO3, to say nothing of gender-bending in other fandoms.

[legionseagle]

I don't think the bits of fandom I've hung about in have tended to go in much for seeing heterosexuality as the "safe" option, so I think I'm more accustomed to being guilted from the other side, as it were; people claiming that when I write slash I'm obviously doing it because of my internalised misogyny putting me off engaging with canonical female characters.

Which all goes to prove that if there's one thing fandom at large can agree on, it's that women can always use a bit more guilt.