Bittercon: Are We Not Men - Human Women and Beast-Men in Paranormal Romance

[attackfish]

Paranormal romance is a world in which human women and girls are entranced and overcome by the charms of supernatural, inhuman men. Vampires, werewolves, faeries, demons, and others populate the romantic field for the women of these novels, and seldom does it flow the other way with a human man and a supernatural woman.

The story of a supernatural woman romancing mortal men, as told by male writers portraying women as the other is a venerable and often retold one. But the idea that a woman is othered by men, that she is some sort of strange and unknowable creature tells women that men must be so very different from them, and therefore as hard for them to understand. Therefore, since the beginning of women's writings, women have portrayed men as the strange unknowable.

But is this the only reason the female protagonist of a paranormal romance rarely begins as a supernatural creature? Romance writers presumably expect women and girl readers to identify with the female protagonist, so it must be her male love interest (m/m and f/f romance having different dynamics all together) who is inhuman and serves to introduce her into the magical world he inhabits, a world the reader gets to visit until the story is over, so it's very useful to have an othered male.

One of the largest subsets of paranormal romance is Young Adult or Teen paranormal romance, where entering a supernatural world serves as an obvious metaphor for the first steps into the dating world. Dating is so confusing, so overwhelming, that most of us on some level wish we had a guide. Along with introducing her to the supernatural world, the supernatural boyfriend in a paranormal romance serves as that guide, taking away insecurity, potential pain, and the fear of making a mistake. The fact that if he is a vampire, faerie, demon, angel, etc. he is likely to be much much much older than the heroine (though still appealingly young and sexy) makes for a fairly dubious cultural narrative of an older man who guides and protects a young girl.

It has been discussed elsewhere that fathers and father figures in paranormal romances and urban fantasies tend to be very very good fathers, and mothers are in some way either neglectful or monstrous. The only woman a heroine can rely on is herself. How does this play into the idea of the othered male? Is the genre also othering women from it's female readers, proclaiming them each exceptional women, far above other women, and therefore worthy of their own magical boyfriend?

Written for bittercon the online convention for those of us who can't make it to any other kind, on a topic stolen from a panel at the 2011 Readercon.

Comments

[avocado-love.livejournal.com]

This is some tasty meta!

I agree with you on most parts, but wanted to add to this:

Romance writers presumably expect women and girl readers to identify with the female protagonist, so it must be her male love interest (m/m and f/f romance having different dynamics all together) who is inhuman and serves to introduce her into the magical world he inhabits, a world the reader gets to visit until the story is over, so it's very useful to have an othered male.

While I feel this is true, and as you said in the next paragraph, serves as a metaphor for entering the dating world, I feel that starting with the female protagonist as human and he male as supernatural is a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

One of the easiest ways to introduce a reader to a new world is through the eyes of a character who is being introduced to it themselves. Either they're young and growing up and learning the different society's rules, or they're being thrown from the normal (mundane) world into the supernatural, where the changes are immediate.

From what I've seen, urban fantasy usually trends to the second scenario. The boyfriend/love interest also shares a role as teacher/mentor figure, as they are the one introducing our main character to the world. This usually sets up the plot for many moral dilemmas, including whether or not it's right for them to be showing the MC the world at all.

Is this all inherently problematic? Eh, I think it could be, expectantly if put into hands that aren't deft in writing moral dilemmas. There's also the unspoken metaphor of a young girl being led down a path into womanhood by her ~~man, which is... not good. But! I think done in the right hands, it the inherent moral dilemmas could be delt with in an interesting, sexy, (and educational?) way.

There's no getting around the fact that it's an overused plot device because it works in introducing a character to the new world, AND the secondary character/love interest/mentor figure at the same time. It's damn economical.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, gleaned from reading waaaaay too much urban fantasy. :P

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The reason it tends to be problematic, like a lot of other problematic narratives is that it's overused. If one person wrote a woman getting in trouble and getting rescued, no big deal, but because it's such a common narrative, and the reverse is rare, it becomes a cultural statement about women. It's the same here. If almost all of them didn't have the same narrative, and if we didn't already have the narratives we do about older men and younger women, and also predatory male sexuality (that's another thing, the genre tends to eroticize predatory masculinity, and also, conversely, male self control) it wouldn't be an issue.

My question is why we never have a human couple both being thrown into the magical world together, where you could have introductory characters, or a woman being drawn into the magical world through a different way from a man, and then meeting a man later, or a magical man needing to be rescued, or...

There are Paranormal Romances that I just love love love, but I have to hunt for them.

[marycatelli]

Then you get the other problem -- namely, that since one would be no problem how can you criticize any given instance? Many critics manage to come across as "Thou shalt not ever use this."

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This is how the woman in refrigerators trope functions. Especially when complainers are told "You just don't want to see anything bad happen to women characters ever!" Um, no.

[marycatelli]

Except that I've never heard anyone complaining of that trope that didn't come across exactly as that.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I have. I've also complained about it. A refrigerated woman is a woman killed to further the development or plot of a man. A woman killed as part of her own plot arc isn't refrigerated. Male characters are almost never killed to further the plots of female ones, only the other way around (unless it's a child. A boy can be killed off to motivate either parent). It means that her death isn't important in and of itself, only as a catalyst for the more important male character. How many male characters can you think of who have a dead wife (often plus children) in his backstory? Killed by the villain? How about the reverse? How many stories are about a man taking revenge for a dead or injured (or raped) wife/sister/daughter? Usually a woman getting revenge is for something that happened to her, not to people close to her.

[marycatelli]

Everything in a man's story is put there to further his story. That's basic writing.

And the reason why women are killed rather than men is that people don't care about men. You can see it any day in discussions about violence against women in movies: a movie where 95% of the dead are men will not produce a peep about violence against men, or even in general, just about violence against women.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Women in ensemble casts, or women who have previously had plots of their own in comic books, like the infamous Babs, are killed, raped, or maimed to facilitate the story of a man. We're not just talking about the main character man vs. side character woman. It also seems like writers are more reluctant to kill off a long running male character than a long running female one.

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

Yes, the closest thing I can think of to a human couple being thrown into the world of otherness together is the last two or three seasons of "Dr. Who." And even there Amy Pond spent the entire first Matt Smith season leaving her regular old human boyfriend behind, like the (in this respect) somewhat analogous Rose before her, and traveling with the newly-regenerated Eleventh Doctor on her own--after first meeting him as an eight- or nine-year-old child and remaining fixated on him until he belatedly returned at least twelve or thirteen years later. In fact, the producers seemed to be deliberately creating considerable doubt about whether Amy would ever voluntarily return to her own time to marry Rory the next morning. But ultimately she did, and, after a few more hiccups (like Rory's getting killed, then resurrected as some sort of cyborg centurion and faithfully standing guard for several millennia in order to be reunited with her), the two of them have both wound up traveling with the Doctor fulltime pretty much ever since.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

*pets Doctor Who* it's always one of those shows when after mentioning any element of it, you have to say "It's that kind of show"... If that makes any sense.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I think the pairing of a girl with a strong man *is* inherently problematic. It wouldn't be if girls regularly were paired with strong women, boys with strong women, and boys with strong men (that at least is a common narrative, but not in this particular genre). We also don't see girls and boys figuring out life together, which happens a lot in real life and is a healthy alternative.

There's an unhealthy meme that hasn't left real life, which is that no woman has ever succeeded without a male mentor - however far she gets, she only gets there by the grace of a man (and with the unspoken threat that if she gets too uppity, he can take her powers away again.)

The mentors in these stories always seem to want to bind the young women to them - teaching her to find her wings and her own path in life doesn't appear to be an option.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

This. If we didn't live in a society where a May/December romance with a young woman and an older man weren't seen as perfectly normal, and the reverse as freakish, and a significant number adult men didn't use this to prey on young girls, this wouldn't be a problem. But it is, and it reinforces some pretty twisted ideologies.

This I think is also the reason that fathers and father figures in these stories are portrayed so favorably compared to mothers. A mother who guides a child partway and refuses to allow them independence is manipulative and repulsive. A father who does the same thing is in the right. We also have this cultural emphasis more generally on a woman character's father. Ziva's father in NCIS trained her from birth to be an assassan, and when she escapes his grasp, she does it by leaping into the arms of the show's daddy, Gibbs, Tiana from Disney's The Princess and the Frog is following her dead father's dream of owning a restaurant, my beloved Babs is Commissioner Gordan's daughter... It's ridiculously common across multiple mediums. And it's toxic.