look my experience with guys in fma fandom perfectly illustrated to me
Ugh… seriously. I think this is really unfair and terrible how you are humiliating us and diffamating us.:( In a hand, it’s kinda cool because the social gender roles are reverted, you are the one in power here, and we are the ones which are humiliated with accusations we try to protest against, but which are dismissed with authority argument. In another hand, well, I’m not sure this helps in the debate and being called to sexism and misogynist why it’s something one fight against in every day life, is really painful.
I never called you unapropriate names such as “kitten”, that would be lame and awfully condescending. We have never stated we were feminist, which we are not per se, only women can actually be feminists. “Men” however can be influenced by feminism and debate about it, I guess ?
As I already said, our thoughts are largely influenced by materialist feminism and that’s it. Not saying it’s better than other feminism, just saying that yeah, it does promote certain subversive values which we don’t find Winry embodies.
I think you’re the one who doesn’t give a shit about what we think,because I asked you countless times where we wrote misogynist things and you just keep on saying so without specifically referring to something we wrote.
I’m going to say one last time:
What is subversive is valuing Winry’s accomplishments as much as accomplishments like fighting and busting heads
what’s subversive is that the narrative values Winry’s accomplishments when such accomplishments are typically seen as “lesser” due to stereotypes tied to misogyny and gender categories.
What’s subversive is that Winry is allowed to be an active strong character without having to imitate the masculine ideal of strength, to be strong in the way she chooses to be
What’s subversive is that this is a narrative written by a woman in which ALL SORTS of female accomplishments are celebrated, not just one kind.
THAT is subversive. Saying women can only be a certain kind of character isn’t. A man saying Winry is a disappointing character because she didn’t fight (and you include “active” in this, but how was Winry not active just because she chooses to heal, to create, to give life rather than harm? How do you define active outside of fighting? You’ve never clarified this) isn’t.
Again, you are a man trying to value your form of feminism (or whatever you choose to call it) over mine- I’ve had this experience a lot in FMA fandom. You never called me kitten and I’m glad you know that’s wrong (though that’s a term that’s rarely used these days), yeah, I wasn’t trying to imply you did, but I’m expressing how it made me feel in broad terms.
Painful things help you learn. If you’re fighting it, you shouldn’t promote it.
So these guys
Say that the best female characters are ones who perform masculinity and are virtually indistiguishable from men
Demean a female character based on her traditionally feminine skills (never mind that these skills are presented as real and valuable in canon: the problem with female characters doing things like healing, etc. is that usually this is portrayed as the only way to be a woman and seen as less important than male skills: pitfalls FMA doesn’t fall into but these guys do)
say it’s rude to call them sexist
while i agree with all this, i do have a problem with referring to female characters as “virtually indistinguishable from men” because they’re not men—they’re women. taking on traditionally masculine roles doesn’t make them any less womanly, or any less subversive.
it’s important to emphasize different kinds of female strength, but tumblr has a habit of disparaging “masculine” women—korra and brienne of tarth, for example—in favor of “feminine” women, like asami sato and cersei lannister.
what’s important is that a female characters is developed and taken seriously by the narrative, not how she chooses to express her strength. which is exactly what this discussion is about! but while degrading femininity is obviously problematic and gross, i see a lot of feminists (who i like and respect) put traditionally feminine women on a pedestal while ignoring the unique struggles of being a masculine woman in a society that does expect women to conform to a specific brand of femininity.
(now, i’m not saying anyone’s doing that. it was just a passing remark, but goddammit i have a soapbox and i am going to use it.)
basically calling female characters “a man with boobs” or w/e is really really detrimental, because a woman who acts in a masculine manner is not the same as a man, and she is not afforded the same privileges. as important and subversive as it is to show traditionally feminine traits and powerful and heroic, it is equally important to demonstrate that women can take on masculine roles.
(this kind of dialogue is probably only possible in sj fandom circles, since rarely do you see feminine women like winry celebrated in other corners of the internet.)
(including parts of tumblr.)
(although my conservative grandmother would probably approve of winry and dislike olivier. so. you know. different issues in different demographics).
I agree with you, I think the “man with boobs” biz is fucking stupid not to mention transphobic. Some women just don’t enjoy doing traditionally feminine things! Whatevs~. These associations of traits with femininity and masculinity is socially constructed anyway. As long as the narrative itself doesn’t denigrate traditional femininity as lesser than their asskicking characters, it’s fine. And my point was that FMA explicitly doesn’t do that, so dismissing Winry because somehow her strengths aren’t ~active~ enough because they are more traditionally feminine is bullshit.
I think the reason Korra is side-eyed over Asami is because she is shown to think Asami is lesser because she’s “girly” until she finds out she can race cars and fight. I would be fine with this bc I used to be like Korra too, if Korra was shown realizing this was wrong later. But it’s never addressed in the narrative, Korra just decided to accept Asami because she can fight and that’s that. And considering the series was originally supposed to be 12 eps, the message that comes across is “girls are only worth something if they can fight”.
![turdlewexler:
anavatarmadefullmetal:
turdlewexler:
4fthechallenger:
missturdle:
Izumi Curtis is a wonderful, chronically ill, kind, friendly housewife who is also an alchemist who will fuck shit up if you hurt her family.
Courtesy of Arakawa’s: There’s no wrong way to approach femininity, womanhood, or asskicking school of thought.
Yet another of the many brilliant commonalities between Bryke’s (Avatar) and Arakawa’s (FMA) defining stories, which explains why they share so many fans in common as well and why I love the idea of crossing them over so much.
They don’t rely on just 3-4 types of characters, let alone 3-4 characters period. They showcase loads and loads of faces, with a very dynamic range of personalities. Aang; Edward; Korra; Izumi (as seen above); Ursa; Tenzin; Sozin; Winry; Sokka; Lan Fan; Greed (also seen above); Azula; Kimblee; Asami; Lust; Ozai; Scar; Toph; Hiroshi; Iroh; Father; Amon; Bumi; Alex; Hakoda; Hama; Pema; Olivier; Bradley; Zhao; Zuko; Mai; Alphonse; Bolin; Riza; Ty Lee; Jet; Ling; Lin; Roy. These names, and those are not even all of them, are those of figures who all share similarities yet differences which make them unique; just like real people.
When Michael Dante Dimartino and Bryan Konietzko created Avatar, when Hiromu Arakawa created Fullmetal Alchemist; they didn’t create stories that said you were unacceptable as a man or woman without a(n) [insert X here] personality or approach to life. Their worlds are a showcase of how any kind of person, with any way of going through each and every day or any great or terrible story behind them, can be weak and/or strong in soul.
RESPECTFULLY SPEAKING: the times Bryke does manage to do it right are the times they get out of their own ways and let their writers improve their story to become more like Arakawa.
Bryke aims for what Arakawa does. They don’t…they don’t always hit the mark. You can be any type of girl, of course, but ultimately and arguably the most important female main character of A:TLA (Katara) just ends up becoming a footnote to the male main character. The fact that the majority of the character development in Korra comes from Love triangles (Pema/Tenzin/Lin; Mako/Korra/Bolin; Asami/Mako/Korra) only really furthers my distinction between the two series, and why I ultimately enjoy FMA much more than A:TLA despite loving both series quite a lot.
Arakawa doesn’t waste time with unnecessary conflict. There are romances, yes, and they go through conflicts, and love and family are arguably the driving factors of the series. But these factors are part of the story, they don’t overwhelm the story, and they certainly don’t eclipse entire characters in favor of some romance triangles. The people who love each other love each other obviously, strongly, and display it through their actions and choices.
A:TLA/A:TLOK…is more concerned with love and lust over-writing the story rather than being a driving motivator. I think A:TLA is not as guilty of this, but certainly by Korra, even Katara’s entire journey was summed up as “she married the Avatar.” The relationships conflict with the actual conflicts and plots and let’s be entirely honest, any time Bryke has tried to characterize a villain, they’ve usually only been a villain, without any of the real nuances there. Which is a shame, Amon would have been the perfect nuanced villain to follow up the very non-nuanced Ozai, or Zhao.
A:TLA did well because of other writers. But Bryke and TLOK didn’t pull anywhere close to FMA for me in this area. It tried, sure, but I wouldn’t say it got there. Hell, we never get an Izumi character from Bryke: Katara’s mother is dead, Gran Gran has little screen time, Pema is only a housewife and an acolyte - it’s Lin who is Not a Housewife and Chose Her Career Instead of the Man who has to save her, Ursa was also essentially fridged/put on a bus for the entire series, leaving the ONLY motherly figure to be Katara who is never shown actually parenting in any flashbacks (or in flashbacks whatsoever at all - badass or otherwise).
So actually I would say that…didn’t really happen as much as we’d like to think it did in A:TLA/TLOK. The variations on women are definitely not as strong.
I think it’s also important to address the fact that the narrative of Avatar, specifically LoK, really only treats its female characters seriously if they are physically capable/know how to fight. Meanwhile, you have characters like Winry, Trisha, Gracia, Pinako, etc. who were still treated as strong despite not even being shown fighting.
LoK also had the issue of shafting pretty much all of their female characters as far as their past and talents other than combat. The closest we got to seeing any of the female character’s other talents was Asami, and basically all we got was “she likes to drive,” which was only addressed in the first place because it was a somewhat masculine hobby. The only talent that we really saw from Korra or Lin was fighting. In contrast, Mako was shown to be somewhat good at cooking, and Bolin was shown to have a good sense of humor. Having the female characters being good at combat is not a bad thing in the least, but the narrative of the show treated it as the only skill that mattered, as well as any other remotely masculine skills.
Compare that to the women of FMA. Winry is not only extremely handy with machines, but she was able to successfully deliver a baby without professional assistance (midwifery in general is treated as an extremely valuable skill). Gracia and Trisha are exceptional cooks. Riza is extremely organized and punctual as far as paperwork and administrative duties. No talent is treated as better or more important than any other, which I think is part of the reason why the development of the main female characters in LoK was so limited. I still loved the show, but I think that FMA was way stronger in that area.
If you think about the fact that the only female characters in A:TLA who don’t fight end up dead (Yue) or missing (Ursa), then yeah, it’s a little more problematic. And while I certainly wouldn’t argue that both Princesses (and they were both Princesses) sacrificing themselves for others wasn’t heroic it’s also, uh, a slight problem.
And Asami is written off as a shallow rich girl UNTIL she proves in Korra’s eyes that she is sufficiently interested in other, non-feminine things and can fight. Yikes.
Pema is also not apparently shown doing really anything other than being a mother, which while a talent of it’s own, is again, a rather narrow and limiting view of women, especially when coupled with her bad love advice. Gracia Hughes feels different because Gracia Hughes goes through the process of mourning her husband’s death, taking in a young teenage girl like she’s family when she visits (Winry), teaching her how to cook (Also Winry), raising her daughter, and encouraging the Elrics’ to continue down their path. Yes, she’s arguably a military wife as a character but she has a personality and for that matter, a purpose.
On the flip side, Riza’s ability to jack a car and then race it through the streets of central isn’t presented as a masculine activity a woman is doing. It’s just a badass activity a badass is doing. Being a soldier isn’t proving she is sufficiently masculine to be of interest, it’s just being a soldier. (And for that matter, Riza’s femininity is never insisted upon either. We see her calmly meeting friends in heels and pearls and this is never regarded as discordant with her job or as shallow, and it’s just such a passing detail that it’s entirely unremarkable.)
It’s cool when Izumi Curtis screams she’s a housewife because we know that Izumi sees being a housewife and being a badass as completely compatible. But when would you ever see Pema getting to do that? All Pema gets is locked up on stage with her children, despite being “rescued” by the other “strong” woman.
It’s also problematic when you consider that Pema’s only real conversation is when she tells Korra how she stopped Lin from *stealing Tenzin away from her*. That’s seriously the most she gets to speak. Gracia’s role is to mentor Winry, Ed and Al as well as mother Elicia, and her most significant conversations are related to that and her strength in guiding them contributes to the plot and themes of the story. Pema’s there to prop up a love triangle and be saved while giving birth.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/38972b7ba41f4110e8625b1727b1f0bf/tumblr_mii0lwT3BV1qciqjmo1_500.png)
