Fiction creates a false positive for personal experience. Tales that have been told since the dawn of civilization, that are outdated now or that have allegorical meanings long since forgotten are still being told today. And not in the contex of some important lesson about the seasons or social relationships, but to entertain and maybe teach very simple ideas about good and evil.

As children we hear stories with the wicked stepmother. We tell that story. And even if three friends of ours have stepmothers, and merely one of them is wicked, we remember the wicked stepmother. And it seems to confirm what we’ve heard in the story, and the story seems to add to the number of wicked stepmothers we know of. So we draw the conclusion that the natural state of stepmothers is not wanting their stepchildren, even though it isn’t by any means true.

We’ve had experience watching families with stepmothers, and in the case of most the stepmothers were loving. But we’ve had more experience listening to stories of evil stepmothers, and unless we’ve been very closely involved with a good-hearted stepmother (like being raised by one) the stories can crowd out the actual experience.

On a level above that, because the stories about two women that we hear most often as children are a dutiful daughter with a wicked and jealous stepmother, we can become inclined to believe that women don’t get alone with each other. It just seems natural for women to dislike each other when the stories you grow up with are of women disliking each other.

And as we grow up and hear more sophisticated stories, we add them to our personal experience along with our actual experiences.

This gets complicated, of course, by “common knowledge” and confirmation bias and other things that add or just intensify the false positive of fiction.

This happens to writers too. And when it happens to writers, they perpetuate the false positive. They tell a story of an evil stepmother because it seems natural to them. They use it as a classic setup that relates to a lot of people, but really it just adds to that illusion that there are more evil stepmothers and more women who dislike women than there are to begin with.

And it’s not because the writer is a bad person, or unskilled, or untalented, or laxy or even unimaginative. It’s because the writer has heard–like all of us–a million evil stepmother stories and has just one more to add.

And when it comes out, it might be a brilliant story. Well-crafted, emotionally resonant, and beautifully illustrated. It might indeed be a masterpiece.

Or it might just be another evil stepmother story. Which not only is boring, but just adds more shit to the pile.

This–of course–happens with more than just evil stepmother stories. Take the “rape as motivation for the heroine/villainess” stories.

For those of you playing at home, I’m talking about something Ed Brubaker wrote.

Now, since as children we hear nothing so graphic we’re under the impression that stories of rape aren’t as prevalent as they are. But take a moment to think how many children’s stories include a princess who is captured because the villain wishes to marry her, kiss her, or “make her love” him? This is the G-rated version. From when we’re kids we know that there’s a little something extra in store for a female character who fights a male character, even if we didn’t understand what until we were teenagers.

And just because as adults we’ve only been exposed to this motivation as that of a heroine who is escaping marriage to a jerk doesn’t make outright calling it rape anything more than a gimmick, really. Rape–and the threat of rape–are an overused and underthought cliche when it comes to female characters in genre fiction. Moreso than even the evil stepmother, come to think of it. Because while the danger is real, and there are real survivors who overcome tragedy, the excessive use of this trope makes it seem as though rape and fear of rape are the most powerful motivators in any woman’s existence. This just reinforces the already dangerous reasoning that the defining traits of a woman’s psyche are found between her legs rather her ears.

It’s just more of the same shit we see in a million places already. It’s all women defined by sexual terms as opposed to defined as people. It’s women defined as motivated to forget some personal tragedy rather than motivated by an innate desire to do good or bad. (And really, if it were empowering to see a character overcome rape, why don’t we see more male characters with sexual assault in their origin story? Don’t male writers like that fantasy?)

Just like the evil stepmother trope falsely tells us women tend to dislike each other, the heroine-or-villainess-motivated-by-rape just tells us that women are inescapably tied to their sexuality/reproductive ability and the protection of that sexuality/reproductive ability. And the more stories out there like this, the more people assume that this is what women are like and the more people who innocently figure that this is a realistic, relatable origin for a female character rather than just more shit to the pile.

Though in the end I think I’d prefer if Brubaker had written an evil stepmother story. He’s a talented writer, and he could have made that work. And at least the evil stepmother isn’t a trope explored too often in superheroes. But this? This rape thing is really beyond tiring at this point.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Just Past the Horizon, Marvel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.