broken-nosed gods

Reading " 'her secret, defenseless self' – strong female characters", my own reaction to this trope:

Secretly defenseless outwardly strong ladies is not a new trope, and it is not a good one. MEMO: ladies are never secretly defenseless. their secret inner core is made of steel and adamant, not squishy stuff. There is no room to be secretly defenseless in a society that presumes you are without defenses from the beginning. When you strip away the tough outer shell, inside you find . . . more toughness. Women are made of ice and knives, women are not secretly sweet vulnerable flowers they are monsters. just like everyone.


(Example: Neon Genesis Evangelion's Asuka. Her tough facade is there to cover up a ton of problems, but when you get past it she will not cry on your shoulder, she will FUCK YOU UP because she is fucked up and she's angry you can see that. Real vulnerability is not something she accepts, and I think that goes for most people who act like that.)

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Whenever I'm reading a dudeslash fic and some awful drama goes down, I always say to myself "This wouldn't happen if you were ladies!" and I've only recently worked out that I say this not because ladies are better or because ladies don't have drama, but rather because the people who write ladyslash fic are not the kind of people who put up with stupid drama when they could be writing about cool things instead.

What I mean to say here is that you never see the "lack of communication causes AWFUL LOVE TRIANGLE MISUNDERSTANDING" plot in ladyslash fic.

I've started thinking about simply not reading any more shounen manga.

There are so many shounen manga that call to me, with plotlines I enjoy or characters I love or concepts that fascinate me. (Nurarihyon no Mago, for example, is an absolutely genius youkai manga, and Katekyo Hitman Reborn is the very height of shounen ridiculous.) But if I let myself start thinking about it at all it becomes immediately apparent just how sexist they all are. The female characters are strong fighters! (But not strong enough to win an actual fight.) They're training to become stronger! (But not as strong as the male characters.) They want to get better and make a real difference. (But the best way for them to make a difference is by using their ~feelings~ to inspire the main character. Or get kidnapped.)

It feels like a physical, material thing, a wall between me and my enjoyment of these stories. They are so many things I love, but I can't love them as long as this blatant sexism is there. I want to break it down, with anger and disappointment and my own two hands—but oh, wait. Even if it were right in front of me I couldn't, because with shounen manga girls don't get to win.


I am being perhaps a tad unfair to things like Nurarihyon no Mago and Detective Conan here. Girls do get to win fights now and then, even if the plot is pretty much dudes dudes dudes.

This rant is brought to you by Yuki Onna's kidnapping and the aftermath thereof, as the manga had previously managed to mostly stay out of these tropes.