Thread by @fozmeadows

I just rewatched Mad Max: Fury Road for the first time in about a year and now I'm all in my feels about female characters, so: a thread.

When the Great Debate about What Is A Strong Female Character inevitably rears its head, much is made of the misuse of the word "strength".

There's always some reductive soul who thinks strength is purely physical, and then we get into debates about various types of strength, etc

But what strikes me, watching MMFR, is how many common manifestations of female strength are expressly about dealing with male bullshit.

Which is a large part of why so many dudes of the reductive, oblivious kind utterly fail to understand "strong" women in sexist settings.

I've written before about the common problem in many pseudo-medieval fantasy settings that I call Sexism Without Sexists, but in brief:

It's what happens when writers want sympathetic male characters in a sexist setting plus 1 or maybe 2 Exceptional Girls (usually warriors) -

- but don't want to deal with the issue of their male characters being invested in the sexism of the system that keeps them in charge.

So you'll have these random Good Guys who are cool about these random specific Warrior Girls, but no other commentary on the world's sexism.

In these stories, the Warrior Girls are usually presented as Girls Who Aren't Like Other Girls, aka full of internalised misogyny -

- so that *they* don't provide a vehicle for social commentary either, except at the most simplistic, individual level: outliers by design.

What's always, always missing is the network of outcasts: those people whose breech of social norms is less flashy than Warrior Girl -

- but who lay the groundwork for her. Like Athena, these Warrior Girls always spring to life, full-formed, possessed of self-knowledge -

- so that even as kids, they knew they were Different From Other Girls. They always just wanted to fight, to be rough and tumble! No gowns!

There's never a catalyst event, unless it's some flavour of sexual assault or brutalisation. Never any conflict over social duties or wants.

It's always this all-or-nothing impetus which often results in very poorly-written characters, because there's no context to the wanting.

It's always, like, girl who runs off to do a Daring Thing and insists in TSTL ways that she's Capable because she Wants It, sans any context

The ways in which traditionally feminine duties are inherently devalued in these settings is, of course, another key facet of the problem.

Which brings me back to clueless dudes who don't realise sexism is what shapes a LOT of female strength, the way pressure makes diamonds.

These guys just, honestly, cannot conceive of what strength means for a woman outside of "wanting, however badly, to be like a man".

But then, in MMFR, you have these women whose strength is *defined* by a rejection of everything the men around them want.

You have Angharad using her pregnant belly to shield Furiosa from Immortan Joe, while he bellows at her that her child is his property.

You have Angharad and Capable arguing for Nux's life - "No unnecessary killing!" - because they *know* he's brainwashed into wanting death.

You have Cheedo, heartsick, trying to flee, letting the Dag and Toast pull her back, then later pretending to flee to manipulate Rictus.

You have the Dag baring her teeth, hiss-spitting at war boys after her chastity belt comes off, unafraid and absolute. "We are not things."

You have Miss Giddy staring down Immortan Joe in the heart of his Citadel - "You can't own people! Sooner or later, someone pushes back!"

Later, as Joe has Angharad's baby cut out, it's Miss Giddy alone who covers her dead eyes, who holds her hand - who sees HER, not a body.

But there are still people who'll watch that film & recognise Furiosa as the only *really* strong female character, because she hits stuff.

These people will miss the power of her opening shot, that shows us the brand on the back of her neck; the same brand that Max just dodged.

They will not understand in full why Furiosa is looking for redemption, because they'll miss what the context tells us about her status.

The kind of guy who sees no worldbuilding flaw in Sexism Without Sexists won't blink at a lone, exceptional woman working for Immortan Joe -

- because her internality on the sexism around her, the dissonance between her status and that of the wives, won't register to him.

He'll just think, "Oh, she must be So Good At Fighting that Joe let her be an Imperator," even though Joe literally thinks women are things.

Because ultimately in that logic, women who fight - who are even the most reductive form of Strong - are as fantastic as the setting itself.

After Google fired their sexist memo-writer, the guy went on Twitter comparing STEM diversity initiatives to an attempt to hire Santa Claus.

That's how implausible female strength is to these people: they literally think it's an element of fantasy worldbuilding, like dragons.

(Except, you know, that they actually LIKE dragons and care a great deal about the consistency of their portrayal in the setting.)

As a rule of thumb, the kind of guy who thinks female strength & competence are rare is oblivious to how much of both his ignorance fuels.

Women who work with sexists have to do twice as much to avoid the roadblocks those asshats throw down, both intentionally & by default.

Watching MMFR, I was reminded of all the gun-toting survivalists who keep "prepared" for the End Times. THAT'S how you get war boys, folks.

Just today I saw an image of armed white supremacists wading through floodwaters in Houston to "stop looters". Like I just. For fuck's SAKE.

There's a dark irony in how, for a scary number of people, "survivalism" means "being the most lethal". (Angharad called bullets anti-seed.)

You have this whole movement where survival doesn't mean helping others, it doesn't mean saving things or rebuilding better; just more guns.

I'm wandering away from the topic of characterisation here, I know. But how many guys who protested MMFR have since picked up tikki torches?

What really fucks me off about so much anti-antifa ranting is the idea that all this anger and willingness to punch came from nowhere.

Which. Of COURSE you think that, if you're in the habit of confusing strength with violence. You didn't see that strength was always there.

And now that fascist calls for violence are being met with vocal plans for retaliation, that's being conflated as two equal platforms, FFS.

As though the act of opposing something inherently equalises you to it, either in terms of power or moral equivalence!

Following that logic, anyone who fights ISIS is as bad as ISIS, and a gang of adults who torture a puppy are justified if it bites back.

But yeah, sure. Let's keep pretending that "enduring, subverting and getting around sexist fuckery" isn't a form of strength w/o violence.

Let's keep pretending that it's possible to write stories that aren't in any way informed by politics, whether the world's or the writer's.

Or we can acknowledge that the worlds we make are universally products of the one we inhabit. Cross-pollination is inevitable, powerful.

As Miss Giddy says, sooner or later, someone always pushes back.
We are not things.

FIN.