Judging Amy. And Dana. And Lisa. And Kathryn. And Allison. And…

Apparently, I’m not done with deciding my favourite stories are sexist yet. (But I am done with sharing this link to the first episode Cracked.com’s new series starring Swaim and DOB, because I for some reason find it to be unadulterated hilarity. Suggestive content, sexual themes, and bad language.)

My opening sentence isn’t fair, I guess, because I’m not actually going to rant about the stories themselves. Yes, this is another one of those rambles inspired by my skimming around a fandom – in this case, the House fandom. You’ve been warned.

(Of course, it’s not just the House fandom, who are as much a mix as any other fandom and who are on average are neither more or less sexist than, say, a Trekker, or a Potter-head, or me. It just so happens that it was the last one I read. Sorry, House fans! I love you!)

So, in a nutshell, here’s my observation: female characters get judged way, way more harshly by fans than male characters.

I don’t mean that fans judge female characters more harshly as characters – often, unfortunately, female characters are given the short shrift by writers, and I think fans and critics with an interest in such things are perfectly right to pay close attention. I’m talking about how female characters get criticized much more viciously as people.

Here’s an example. It’s a running joke on House that Cuddy, the female hospital administrator and the boss of the rest of the characters on the show, dresses in an inappropriately revealing manner*. Well, okay: it’s sort of an annoying joke, because the most obvious reason she does it has nothing to do with the actual character in the world of the story; it’s the TV-land thing where all women dress relatively inappropriately for their jobs, whether by choosing rather more low-cut tops than most professionals in the real world or by wearing high heels in places high heels should never be worn***.

But from the reaction of a sizable portion of fandom, you’d think the show depicted Cuddy making those short skirts of hers out of the skins of dognapped dalmatian puppies. According to these fans, Cuddy’s wardrobe is a direct visual indication of moral, personal, and professional failure, signaling inability to distinguish between work and casual environments, a self-centred ethic that puts being attractive (to certain other characters) above practical concerns, and general incompetence as an administrator.

Again: well, okay. That’s a reasonable interpretation (although somewhat more charitable to the real-world writing side of things than I’d be****).

What gets me is that there is another character on that show who also canonically dresses inappropriately for his profession – and just in case you’d like to differentiate between “dressing inappropriately” and “dressing sexually inappropriately”, this character also is outrageously sexually inappropriate in front of staff and patients. Which character am I talking about? Hint: his name is in the title of the show.

Again, it doesn’t bug me that House behaves this way: what bugs me is that most of  fandom seems to give him a pass on the very same things that some of fandom finds despicable in Cuddy. Whereas Cuddy’s actions demonstrate her various failures as a person, House’s are “part of his character”. House is a genius, so that makes it okay. House has emotional trauma, so you can’t blame him. But when House does it, it’s cool!

Now, to be fair, there’s probably some self-selection going on here: House is the main character, and Cuddy isn’t. If you have super moral objections to Cuddy, you might still love the rest of the show, but if you have super moral objections to House, you’ve probably stopped watching and likely don’t frequent fansite message boards*****.

But even so, I can’t help noticing that most of these  judgements seem to directly involve aspects of the characters that relate directly to conventional ideas of gender roles and models of womanhood. Though there are fans on both sides of the “debate”, there’s way more to-do when a female character’s behaviour could be perceived as sexual, and it seems like she nearly always gets the louder shout-downs when there’s a fight between her and the guy who’s romantically interested in her. And if her actions have anything to do with motherhood… whoa, watch the judgements come pouring in.

Sometimes, it seems like female characters can’t win: if Scully appears in a scene without William, OMFG, where did she leave the baby??? Doesn’t she remember she’s a mother now??? If she brings the kid along with her on a case, then WTF kind of woman exposes her baby to danger??? Doesn’t she remember she’s a mother now???

Similarly, if a female character succumbs to the bad-boy charm of her romantic interest, she has no self-respect and is setting a masochistic example for women everywhere; if she rejects his advances, then she’s a frigid prude who represses her feelings. If she hooks up with another man, she’s “settling” and/or going crazy for one night; if he hooks up with another woman, he’s working out his emotional problems.

The point is, there seems to be a double standard when it comes to judging the behaviour of female characters compared to that of their male counterpart. No doubt this has something to do with the fact that female characters are often less well written than male characters and with the fact that there are fewer of them: if there’s only one main woman on a show, then of course as women who want to identify with another woman and/or who feel represented by that woman, female fans are going to be very emotionally committed to seeing her behave a certain way. But to my mind, that doesn’t excuse character-bashing.

Not just because, you know, if the characters were real people, it would be mean, but because there are real-life consequences. Slagging on Cuddy’s workplace inappropriateness while ignoring House’s unfairly supports different norms for real men and women. But most importantly, focusing on a character’s actions as a personal failure rather than a creative decision allows those who are really responsible – the writers, designers, and artists involved – to pass the buck for being sexist/racist/etc. to someone who doesn’t even exist.

Uh… Kriger out?

* It’s also a “hilarious” running joke to have at least one character point this out every episode. Ha ha ha! You know what would be even funnier? If random cameo characters also spent screen time every episode informing us that, from their point of view, House and Cuddy were attracted to one another! Instead of just writing scenes to make this clear to the viewer! Ha ha – oh, wait…**

** Sorry, personal writing peeve. I hate it when minor or background characters become voices for the author/writers/artists to either tell the audience what it’s supposed to get from the scene or to poke fun at their own shortcomings in the hopes that this will excuse them. It’s cool when it happens only once or when it’s there to underscore real development taking place in the scene, but when it props up half the scenes? Arrrrgggg…

*** Really, Scully? Really???

**** I think I prefer to blame characters’ bad traits, decisions, or actions on the writers rather than on the characters, especially when it’s obvious that said traits, decisions, or actions are fallout of some other creative decision, because after all, the writers and actors are the ones who get to make conscious choices. The  characters don’t actually have much of a say in what happens to them. For instance: in one of the last episodes of House, a character makes reference to some rather personal information about House. If you think hard about it, Cuddy was probably the one to tell him, and it could have been inappropriate of her to do so,  but whether it was or not, I can’t find it in me to blame her – the “reason” she “told” him was because the writers wanted to have that other funny line in their scene, not because “she” decided to, if you see what I mean.

***** Unless you are a troll, in which case, please go away.