On heroines and kicking ass

I've spent much of the past few years reading literary fiction, which I enjoy for the ideas it contains as well as the artistic use of language, but I didn't realize the literary world was suffering from a such paucity of ass-kicking feminist heroines until I made the leap to genre fiction. Sure, literary fiction is home to dozens of wonderfully-drawn female characters, but they are likely to end up dead, broke or mentally ill. Most of them do not kick ass. If they do kick ass, it is only momentarily, and sometimes by accident.

There are exceptions to this, of course, but the only ones I can really think of are Lizzie Bennett from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and Janie from THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD. For the most part, though, women in literary fiction who are lucky enough to be something more than a vehicle through which another (usually male) character fulfills his destiny will still usually end up dead, broke or mentally ill.

(Perhaps that is merely a function of literary fiction, which is more interested in telling us something about the Human Condition than in telling a rollicking good yarn. In that case, depressing and pathetic female characters make sense because the Human Condition is often depressing and pathetic. Although, it doesn't explain why there are plenty of heroic male characters in literature. I blame the patriarchy.)

This is why I was so happy to read the Sookie Stackhouse books. I got into them after realizing I was obsessed with True Blood. Like scarily so, to the point where I read recaps and check out online communities and Twitter feeds about the show. I am but an extra hour in the day and a tad less dignity away from writing slash fanfic with myself as a character. I am THAT OBSESSED. (Someone help me. Please.)

Anyway, I picked up the first two books and I was sucked in almost immediately. Unlike Sookie in the TV show ("Soo-kah!") Book Sookie is brave, smart and tough. She likes men and she likes sex but she's intelligent about it, not just hooking up with any guy who will have her. She's not afraid to deliver an ass-whupping when it's warranted, which it often is. She gets beat up more than I'd like, but hey, it's a book series about vampires and werewolves. People are gonna get beat up.

I took a break from the vampiric world of Bon Temps so I could pick up Stieg Larsson's THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, which I had been eyeing ever since I heard about it. (What can I say, as a tattooed girl I am always fascinated by other tattooed girls.)

The book is a compulsively-readable murder mystery, but it is begging for some feminist literary analysis. I would do it myself, but honestly, my ability to analyze fiction is limited to "I liked it" and "I didn't like it." (Okay, it's not that bad, but it's not that good, either. I'm better at analyzing news media.)

The main female character is a 25-year-old punk hacker named Lisabeth Salander. Lisabeth has a whole mess of problems: a mom in a nursing home, an educational system that has deemed her incompetent, a lecherous guardian, an inability to relate to people on an emotional level.

I felt sorry for her at times, just because she was unable to see what an incredibly gifted person she was, but whatever pity I had for her quickly evaporated when it became apparent that she could handle pretty much anything sent her way. There is one particular scene in the book in which she takes the most delicious revenge possible on a sex offender. I don't want to ruin the scene, so I'll just say two words: Tattoo. Gun. I squealed and bounced up and down on my bed with delight as I read the passage. Feminazi bonerkiller wish fulfillment FOR THE WIN.

I have so thoroughly enjoyed these books that I found myself questioning why I had been such a snob about fiction in the past. For some reason I internalized the idea that a book had to have Deep Meaning in order to be worthwhile. A book that was Merely Entertaining was little more than a handy way to murder trees. Intellectually serious people did not read solely to be entertained. They read to have access to Great Ideas while being entertained, dammit!

How juvenile of me. But the thing is, I know I'm not the only one who looks at books this way. There is definitely a group of readers who perceive books as falling somewhere along a hierarchy of worthiness, and these judgments are often applied wholesale, without regard to things like the quality of the writing or the intricacy of the plot.

But thanks to Sookie Stackhouse and Lisabeth Salander, I've come to see the error of my ways. What's more, I've realized that middle-grade and genre fiction can absolutely be a vehicle for some pretty great feminist art and culture. (Yes, I said it - genre fiction can be art.) Not everything has to be Alice Walker or Maxine Hong Kingston to be amazing and powerful. Sometimes all you have to be is a Louisiana barmaid with the ability to fight vampires in order to kick ass.

Sexist Media Watch - Hillary Edition

How tragic is it that we have this intelligent, capable woman who is out there kicking some diplomacy ass, and yet all our news media can do back in the States is find a way to cram everything she does into predetermined patriarchy-approved narratives?

Secretary Hillary Clinton has been traveling throughout Africa as part of her effort to engage various governments to search for solutions to problems like mass rape as a tool of war in the Congo, widespread corruption in Nigeria, near-anarchy in Somalia. You know, minor, inconsequential things like that. (Nothing compared to the latest update in the Saga of Jon-and-Kate, I know.)

But back here in the States, you'd think that all she was doing was yelling at hapless Congolese men and having a meltdown over her husband's diplomatic mission to North Korea. Oh, and if former New Yorker* editor Tina Brown is correct, she's flapping her batwings and rumbling her thunder thighs all over the continent while she does so. (Jezebel has the video.)

My first inkling that something was up came on Monday, when this story popped on the AP wire at work:

Clinton snaps at Congolese student who inquires about husband's views

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is happy to answer questions about her own views on world affairs, just don't ask her what her husband thinks.

Clinton's temper flared at a town hall forum in Congo's capital Kinshasa today when a male university student asked what "Mr. Clinton" thought of World Bank concerns about a multi-billion-dollar Chinese loan offer to the Congo.

Her reply was incredulous: "You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?"

Before the moderator quickly moved on to other questions, Clinton told the young man: "If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channeling my husband."

Talk about some loaded language. I understand that the reporter was simply trying to put a bit of flair into the story, but "temper flared?" "Incredulous?" My beginning reporting professor would have docked me a bazillion points for subjective language, then humiliated me in front of my class, and rightfully so.

Besides, wasn't she right to get upset? Let's look at this in a wider context. She has traveled to a country whose women and children (and some men, too) have been subjected to horrific rape by militias, armies and even UN peacekeepers.

Then as if that isn't bad enough, those women are then shunned from their communities and their villages for the egregious sin of having been raped. Obviously we are not dealing with the most woman-friendly culture here.**

So Clinton, who is one of the most powerful women in the world, comes to this country to speak about the problem this country has with rape, and one of the audience members asks what her husband thinks.

It would be as though someone calls my job with a question, but then asks if they can speak to my husband instead. My expertise on the subject does not matter, because I cannot possibly know what I am talking about, because I own a vagina, and everyone knows that my vagina is really just a black hole where my brain should have been.

But that wasn't even the best part of the story:

The question comes a week after former President Bill Clinton stole the limelight from the start of his wife's first trip to Africa when he traveled to North Korea to secure the release of two detained American journalists.

He stole the limelight? Says who? And how do we know Secretary Clinton wasn't involved in this? Does the writer of this story really think that she had absolutely no involvement with sending President Clinton over? Or does the writer just think that he jaunted over on a private jet on a whim?***

The Hillary vs. Bill narrative, the one that constantly pits them against each other, is so old, so tiresome, so 1995. It's evidence of a cultural mindset that cannot look at a married couple and see equals. No, surely there must be a power struggle going on! Someone must be in charge! Someone has to dominate! Either Bill has to be resentful of Hillary's success, or she has to be resentful of him. And who cares if we have no evidence to back that up? We'll just grab stills from video and use it to illustrate our carefully constructed storyline!

So now we have Secretary Clinton pegged as as a volatile harpy shrew who wants to castrate her husband. But thanks to Tina Brown, we can also remember that she's FAT, too. Because, you know, it's not enough that she's working tirelessly to empower women around the globe. No, she needs to get her FAT ASS back in the gym and do some leg lifts, because everyone knows that only thin women are smart, or smart women are thin. (Or maybe it was that women can only be thin or smart, or beautiful or smart, but never both. Oh, I give up.)

At this point, I've spent my entire adult life watching the nation project its anxieties and frustrations over gender roles, sexuality and power onto the Clintons. And as they continue to maintain a high profile, it only seems to get worse. As the always-awesome Judith Warner puts it, the important work Clinton is doing is on the verge of drowning in a "tide of trivialization."

Media people of the world, I beg of you, give it a rest. We've got more important things to do than speculate over whether or not Bill stole Hillary's thunder and criticizing her for spending more time researching global issues than hitting the cardio machines.

Resources

Congo's Rape Epidemic Worsens During U.S.-Backed Military Operation [Washington Post]
Congo: Confronting rape as a weapon of war [Christian Science Monitor]
Hillary Clinton's Africa trip signals new U.S. commitment to Somalia [L.A. Times]
Clinton heads to Liberia to show women power [AFP]
Tina Brown Style 'Tide of Trivialization' Threatens to Swamp Clinton Trip [Jezebel]
Domestic Disturbances: Hillary Fights A Tide of Trivialization [NYTimes]


Endnotes

* I've been reading The New Yorker for about eight months now, and I need someone to explain to me how Tina Brown was ever the editor of that magazine. She seems to me like the Bonnie Fuller of the New York media set - she's savvy, sure, but she focuses all of that brain power on appealing to the lowest common denominator. What gives?

** I don't think the Congo is unique in this regard. Not even close. I'm just referring to it specifically because that is what the story is about.

*** Clearly I am not the only one who thought this story was a stinking pile of whale excretia. I tried to search for it but came up blank. Thank god for that. Honestly, Associated Press, you have some wonderful people doing some really fabulous reporting, but you muck it up with stories like that.

Yes, it's yet another blog

I've had a LiveJournal - you remember those, right? - for about eight years now, so I figure it's time to make the switch from pseudo-anonymous navel-gazing to actual blogging. After all, isn't this what all writers do? Find a way to squeeze in a blog entry a few times a week in between writing sessions, querying editors and agents, and, for most of us, our eight-hours-a-day at a full-time job?

Clearly we are all insane.

Allow myself to introduce...myself.

I'm Caitlin, an aspiring author, web journalist, running junkie, proud feminist, avid reader, transplanted Floridian, wife to Brian, cat-mom to a bipolar kitty from hell, and a damned good cook, too.

I spend most of my days working for a Corporate Media Outlet as a web content editor, running for miles, reading one of the hundreds of books taking up residence in my condo, engaging in endless battles with my feline demon spawn and writing.

Most of the time I am working on a super-sekrit writing project, but I also have times when I just want to share one of my copious opinions on this great, glorious world around us. That's what this here little digital cranny is for. I hope you enjoy it. And if you don't, well, please keep it to yourself. Thanks!