A Stripper Reviews the Saints in Hitman: Absolution

So what did you think about the trailer overall?

I think it’s an excuse to show violence against women by making them the initiators of violence. It’s as if the makers of this video game are saying, “Hey, these women asked for it. It’s okay to kill them and beat them up because they’re the ‘dregs of society.’” It’s as if [the game is saying] they are subhuman and deserve to die. But that’s not who they are, it’s what they do for a living; stripping is a job, not an identity.

Someone is doing one of those chapter-chapter dissection of an Anita Blake book. Cool. No beef with that, these things are usually entertaining to read. Except–

Three: You are a bitch [Anita Blake]. And not the good, awesome, Sigorney Weaver kind of bitch, either. You are everything that people hate about women.

We call that internalized misogyny, friend, and I’m not talking about the internalized misogyny of Anita Blake the fictional character. She also complains that Anita dresses like a hooker and praises a different series for having its female protagonist be under some alpha asshole’s paternalistic protection and how that is awesome.

And then you have Bran, aka the Marrok, the Alpha of All Alphas in the United States. You do not fuck with Bran. Bran helped raise Mercy when Mercy’s mom realized she couldn’t handle having a coyote for a daughter. Adam is scary. Stefan is scarier. Mercy isn’t all that scary at all, but you don’t fuck with her because if you’re fucking with her, you’re fucking with Bran, and as I said, you don’t fuck with Bran.

Here is what I don’t get about ex-fans of the series: out of all the things to criticize about Anita Blake, they go after “she dresses like a hooker,” “she’s a Mary Sue” and “this is a fucked-up self-insert and let’s speculate about Laurell K Hamilton’s sex life” (yes, they’re coming this close to suggesting that she might have been raped). It is possible to say the writing is shit, Hamilton is racist, or that the books are chock-full of internalized misogyny… but no, “she dresses like a hooker” is what people decide is a valid concern. Really?

Caitlin Moran is shitty, as per usual, this time with a nice bit of “this is how easy you are to rape” rhetoric. Another Angry Woman righteously took her to task.

According to Moran, high heels function as some sort of rapist cowbell, advertising that there is a lone woman wandering abroad, ripe for the picking. I’ve never lain awake listening to the sound of heels and thinking about how easily I could rape that person, and I’m pretty sure vast swathes of the population share this nocturnal activity because we don’t believe the problem is what a woman wears.

Perhaps Caitlin Moran has been listening to some of the criticism levelled at her, though, by her attempt at a dimly intersectional analysis, over which the wail of a sad trombone sounds. Rape culture, unfortunately, will not be solved by Moran’s clever manifesto of All Women Shall Have Taxis. What if the taxi driver is a rapist? It’s not unheard of: recall, for example, the Black Cab Rapist who earned his moniker after raping women who had got into his taxi.

Dear Author is doing another round of hand-wringing over “mainstream respectability” for romance.

Because it’s not just about Romance as a genre. It’s also about (primarily) women writing about the inner lives of other women. It’s about validating books that take as their subject matter the emotional journey to love, even and especially when that love comes in a form that challenges the social status quo (e.g. m/m or f/f Romance). It’s about legitimating the domestic elements of fiction and appreciating the reality that for many people in the world, love was and is still a revolutionary concept (e.g.multiracial/multicultural Romance).

This is some manipulative rot. Imagine saying “SFF should be more respected mainstream because MINORITY AUTHORS WORK IN IT” when both you and I know that SFF is still dominated by straight white people. When you attempt to characterize a genre, any genre, as defined by minorities (when in actuality that genre is 98% majority and upholding the status quo) you are a lying shit and appropriating minorities to serve a majority concern because you want to pretend your favorite toy is a legitimate adult’s serious business. “I don’t read genre fiction because I enjoy stupid shit,” you crow. “Oh no, I read it because it’s progressive and full of minorities!” Please.

Oh, and what is that last line about how love is still a revolutionary concept for many people in the world followed by ”multiracial/multicultural”? Is that an “enlightened liberal” with a savior complex freak on? Can someone be so vapid as to believe anyone anywhere–and the phrasing suggests benighted thirdworlders–needs romance novels to teach them what’s love? (The targets she has in mind would probably be Indians and Middle Easterners, due to western perception of arranged marriage and Islam. There’s a specific racist dog whistle being blown.)