The rampant misogyny in sci-fi / fantasy

Objectification, sexual violence, and why we need to stop using "history" as an excuse

Hello all, and welcome back to rumblewrites. It’s a bank holiday here in the UK, so of course I spent my day writing about sexism. Good news, though: I also planned out the topics I want to cover on this blog until the end of the year. There will be roughly 3 posts a month for everyone, plus a bonus 1-2 for my subscribers. Sign up if you want access:

Now, today’s topic is a bit of a heavy one (and the post ended up being a lot longer than I expected), so I thought I’d start with a picture of my dog, Hazel, lying in the sun:

Positive vibes, you know. Also, for your safety, some content warnings:

• mentions of sexism, including objectification of the female body

• mentions of sexual violence, including rape

With that being said, read on good people and join me in the fight against sexism if you dare..

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Why are Western women still banging on about sexism?

I was inspired to write this post after a conversation with my dad. I recommended him a book by a self-published author I’d found on Twitter/X, which described itself as a dark, epic fantasy. He loves this kind of stuff and was excited to support a lesser-known name, but after reading just one chapter, he had some things to say. Now, my dad is someone who hasn’t always understood the extent of sexism in the Western world. I’m not saying this is his fault - indeed, a combination of upbringing, locality, socialisation and lived experience means that many men don’t consider these things until women point them out. That’s just how normalised gendered biogotry is. So, you can imagine that I was both pleased and disheartened when he told me about the rather unsavoury presentation of female characters in this book.

The author describes his “strong” women as leaders of armies and winners of battles, with men to talk for them, and ample breasts to assert their authority.. yuck. The author in question will remain nameless, as this isn’t about him. This is about the misogyny inherent in so much of our fantasy and sci-fi.

Now I know what you’re thinking: why can’t we just enjoy things?

Well, because it isn’t fair. I can’t enjoy the vast majority of fantasy, and I’m honestly worried by how many of you can. You argue that you can look past misogyny because the plot is just that good. You say that these women are strong, because the author tells us so. But unfortunately for you, that just isn’t good enough. Chucking in an adjective to describe an otherwise poorly developed female character isn’t fooling anyone. And any narrative that perpetuates the myth that women are objects with no agency isn’t good writing. It’s wrong, it’s lazy, and in a world where women are still openly writing this drivel about other women’s bodies, it’s normalised.

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The issue

When I talk to men about this topic, I’m often met with the same response: that sexism in fantasy exists to ground the story in a period of time, usually the Middle Ages. There seems to be this pervasive idea that misogyny is inevitable. In any society, real or not, women must suffer to make it believable.

My question is: when fantasy stories ignore so much of the real Middle Ages, why does it fall to bigotry and gendered violence to convince us of their reality?

“abiding by the historical fact of sexism in a fictional universe that is otherwise not bound by historical fact […] accomplishes nothing as much as reinforcing the idea that it’s the default order of things” - Dan Wohl, ‘Is “Historical Accuracy” a Good Defense of Patriarchal Societies in Fantasy Fiction?’ (2012)

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Comic books

Comic books open up a whole different can of worms about the presentation of both female and male characters (namely, that they re-enforce negative stereotypes for both), but there is something to be said for their treatment of women in particular.

Let’s start with the comics themselves. In the 1930s, the function of women in popular superhero stories was primarily as the “damsel in distress”, while superheroes themselves were a role reserved for men. Superman and Captain Marvel were particularly dominant at this time. It wasn’t until the social roles of women started to change during World War II that we saw any kind of shift in this dynamic.

Enter Wonder Woman. A strong, physically capable superhero who inspired patriotism in a time of war.

But there’s something else: her depiction as a sex object. Big bust, slim figure, bare legs, half-nude. “Strong”, but weak enough to be sexy. And with her success came even more powerful, objectified female leads:

Some statistics

No, I’m not just cherry-picking bad examples. This was, and is, everywhere:

• In her examination of graphic novels, master’s student Jessica Zellers found that:

  • 38% of female characters were partially / scantily clad, compared to only 6% of males

  • 24% of female characters were depicted in the nude, compared to only 2% of males

• In a breakdown of screentime by character in the MCU, IMDb, we can see that the first Avengers film is split as follows:

  • Male characters: 2hrs 44mins 15secs

  • Female characters: 34mins 45secs

Parodies

The normalisation of female objectification means that we often forget just how preposterous it is. Like I said, we don’t do this to men. Shreya Arora draws attention to this issue in her series of drawings where she reimagines the female characters on comic book covers in a male form:

Jim Hines undertook a similar project where he recreates sci-fi and fantasy covers himself:

The “male gaze”

This all comes down to the “male gaze”. In 2014, a look into the demographics of 24 million self-declared comic book fans in the US found that 46.67% were female. I’d venture to say that it’s only grown more equitable since. Why, then, are we still catering to male sexual fantasies? Because let’s be real, that’s what this is.

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“History” is not the answer

Damsels in distress, women as agentless sex objects.. well, it’s only history.

That’s what George R. R. Martin claims anyway. In 2015, he defended his portrayal of women in his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire with the argument that it would be “dishonest” to omit sexism and gendered violence from his narrative:

“people who will say to that, ‘Well, he’s not writing history, he’s writing fantasy – he put in dragons, he should have made it an egalitarian society.’ Just because you put in dragons doesn’t mean you can put in anything you want ... I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and show what medieval society was like”

Huh? Historians across the globe cringe.

The TV adaptation Game of Thrones was a smash hit, but it attracted a lot of criticism for its misogynistic portrayal of women. From near-constant female nudity in the background of earlier seasons, to the sexual violence against the main female cast (Daenerys’s rape by Khal Drogo, Cersei Lannister’s rape by Jaime, Sansa Stark’s rape by Ramsay Bolton.. you get my point), there was a lot to take issue with.

You could argue that characters like Daenerys and Cersei are good representations because they are strong enough to continue past this gendered discrimination and violence and to find success on their own. While this isn’t an entirely moot point, it’s one we see time and time again, and I can’t help but think it’s just an excuse for not bothering to write strong female characters to begin with. This becomes more obvious once you consider the function of secondary or background characters: as eye-candy, victims, sex-workers, or witch-like mischief makers. All gendered, all one-dimensional, all-bleh.

But now we get to the biggest excuse: “I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and show what medieval society was like”. Really, George? Because it seems like you’ve done little-to-no research on the real Middle Ages, and based your characterisations on the outdated assumptions made in every other fantasy book. Doh.

The real Middle Ages

First off, let’s consider the aspects of medieval society that don’t make the cut. Here’s a list by Gabrille Bruney at Esquire: dysentery, spilled chamber pots, fleas, and plague-bearing rodents. Not fun, but important aspects of world-building for any author who wants to take their history seriously. Then there’s the sexual violence itself. As Bruney helpfully points out, have you ever noticed that all the victims in Game of Thrones are women? And attractive ones at that. This is what audiences want to see, because they expect it, because this is the lie perpetuated by almost every fantasy story. In reality, the rape of men was a common weapon of war, and as we know from the real world, rape is not confined to those young women whom society deems conventionally attractive.

Backlash to “revisionist histories”

Writers and producers like to throw around the term “history” without actually ever doing their research, or talking to historians, because if they did, they’d know that all their sexist narratives are doing is fitting into a literary trope, not a historical reality. There are so many stories and voices of strong women which are ignored or, if they are included, are subjected to outraged cries of “historical revisionism”.

There’s always backlash when you try to include women or other minorities in things that society has decided are for men: video games (don’t even get me started on Gamergate), fantasy stories, and even history itself. There’s an idea that these sacred things will be ruined by the inclusion of things (read: women) that don’t belong. Except for the fact that they do. For all these men who argue that historical accuracy is a necessary part of fantasy, you seem to get pretty upset when an historian points out that women have always been involved in war - yes, even in the Middle Ages. That they have ruled countries, led religious movements, practiced medicine, written books, changed lives. That they are people too.

Dismissing the history of marginalised peoples is a refusal to acknowledge their real life experiences. And a refusal to acknowledge that are just as capable, complex and worthy as being written like men.

So, let’s be strongly grounded in history, shall we?

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Making a change

The idea that history is written by men, or focuses on men, is a lie. This is just how the Middle Ages have been portrayed in our culture. The shift to focusing on anything besides the successful, upper-class, white male perspective has been slow, and while there is now more effort in academic history to investigate these narratives, the world of books and TV hasn’t caught up. It’s also lagging dangerously far behind in its continue dehumanisation of women through sexual objectification.

What can we do about this?

• Give women control over their own narratives. The majority of fantasy and sci-fi writers are men, so we need to inspire and encourage more women to write this genre. They consume it, they are fans of it, so let them in the room.

• Get educated, and stop excusing sexism on your assumptions about history. Just because the genre is riddled with sexism and big writers like George R. R. Martin claim it’s because of “history” doesn’t mean this is true. Sure, “millions of women readers” do love his books, but why does this make it ok? Women are just as much victims of patriarchal values and misinformation as men. It’s time to (collectively) do better.

• Write good fantasy. If you want to ground your fantasy in real historical events, ideas or places, then great! But if not, don’t forget that you are allowed to just make things up.. this is your world, so build one that’s worth living in. If you do want to include bigotry and violence, ask yourself who the victims are, and why. Unravel your own biases.

• Write strong women. It might sound silly, but women are people. If you wouldn’t describe a man’s soft skin or tight arse.. don’t do this for women either. Start writing female characters who are actually strong, don’t just claim that they are.

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