thoughts on the ladies

[meretricula]

partially prompted by sarahtales's most recent post, but I've been pondering this for a while.

has anyone else noticed a horrifying dearth of women in sports slash? I mean, this is true of slash in general, don't get me wrong. but I don't know if I've ever seen a fandom so prone to simply excising really important relationships from its fic just because one of the people in those relationships is (ew! ick! cooties!) a girl. Merlin fandom is all about the Arthur/Merlin, which is fine and dandy, but it's not like the authors habitually pretend that Morgana and Gwen don't exist. (to be fair: Supernatural fandom has always been about writing out all significant heterosexual relationships. but the heterosexual relationships are so badly written in the show that I'm sort of willing to give the fans half a pass on that one.)

this drives me crazy about fangirls. WE ARE WOMEN FOR FUCK'S SAKE. PLEASE DON'T HATE WOMEN. I've been thinking and thinking about a comment I got on a tennis fic, and I don't want to be ungrateful, because it was clearly meant as a compliment, but it basically said "the guys in this relationship are awesome! and so is female character X (the girlfriend of one of the guys) - even though she's just a girl," which makes me so fucking mad. she's just a girl? for the love of god, are you not a girl yourself?

in sports rps, most of the people we want to write about do have girlfriends. some of them are even married. and yes, some of them are dating women who are former nude models or pop singers or whatever (not that we should look down on women in any of those professions), but most of them are dating very lovely, nice women. aside from the fact that it's a little disrespectful to just pretend that they don't exist, they're very important to the men that we're writing about. how can you think you're doing a good job of characterizing someone if you completely leave out his relationship with a woman he's been dating for years? sorry to delve into specifics, but - Mirka Vavrinec has been with Roger Federer for what, nine years? she's a completely inextricable part of his life. Xisca Perello is not just Rafael Nadal's girlfriend, she's his neighbor and good friends with his little sister. Novak Djokovic is friends with women - not just his girlfriend, but also Ana Ivanovic and (so far as I can tell) Maria Sharapova. pretending the world is only peopled by men is not going to cut it, people.

I honestly think it's even worse when a writer deals with the presence of a woman who happens to be roadblocking the 'ship by turning her into a villainous bitch. these men are very rich and very good-looking: they would not be dating women they didn't like. can we all accept that their girlfriends are not evil and move on? also: gay sex is still cheating on your girlfriend. if the girlfriend doesn't know about and condone whatever is happening in the locker room showers, then yeah - your hero is being an asshole. which is fine to write! people are assholes all the time. just acknowledge that you are not writing a shining upright paragon of morality. I'd rather read about someone being sort of a dick than someone going around doing the right thing all the time, but I want the narrative to acknowledge his (or her!) dickishness.

sorry for the rant. I hope that if anyone spots me writing fake women or ignoring canon women, you'll call me on it! I know I've done it in the past, and it itches at me. fandom loves men, and loves men who love men, but - the vast majority of us are women. and women are fucking awesome.

Comments

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

This may vary from sport to sport, but in footie in general, and for me in particular, there's also a line to be drawn between ficcing public characters v/s private people. I realise that may be putting too fine a point on it (after all, this IS Real Person Fiction) - but there's a sort of squeamishness about ficcing someone who is an architect or an economist and just basically doing her own thing, staying out of the limelight (the great thing about Italy is that you can mostly do that even if your dude is A+ famous). For the ones who don't - sure. Victoria Beckham is more just as much fun to write about as David.

Having said that, what you say about misogyny in sports fandom is every bit true. And there's a tabloid-y thing about football, especially, where the general attitude in the mainstream is to say, "Oh ew, she's an ugly skank who dresses awfully, now show me more paparazzi photos of her!" that's deeply disturbing.

This is a very good post and a very god point to think about. Thanks for making it.

[aramley.livejournal.com]

I loooove you for this post <3

I think it's also telling that there's a big fandom for the ATP, but practically zero for the WTA.

Even though I agree with everything you've said here, after reading this I went back and checked my list of fics, and was actually shocked to realise how much I've marginalised or completely ignored women in my own writing. That's definitely something I have to be more aware of in the future. I hope you'll call me on that if you see me doing it!