on female characters "using their sexy as power"
aka an explanation I heard a few times for problems with depiction of women in video games / comics.
In places I could find, it is usually dismissed even more than debunked by pointing out that 1) the female characters are not real people who make their own choices but fictional constructs made up by the authors; 2) this seems to be a bit too disproportionally prevalent.
This is not enough. This is not all there is to say on this.
How the fuck does sexy give a woman power?
How the fuck is anyone, ever, empowered by being sexy?
Like literally _anyone_ _ever_, this is not even about gender binary. How does having someone find you attractive give you power?
Yes, this is the power of manipulation. Even discarding all the loaded issues with this sort of manipulation in our culture (blaming women for male desires, expecting women to “reward” guys with their bodies yet also expecting them to remain “pure”, depicting guys as not capable of self-control once sexy is around), even discarding how manipulation is / is mostly portrayed as morally questionable…
Manipulation is _getting_someone_else_ to do things. A woman who makes a guy fight for her is not a woman who fights her own battles. Sexiness is the power of the weak who need help of the strong. It’s a power of desperation - I can’t do anything myself, but at least I can make someone else do things for me!
This is fucking NOT what “power” and “empowerment” mean. Yes, this power is better than NONE AT ALL, but it is desperation. It is like giving someone a small piece of stale bread to eat for dinner - sure, it’s better than eating nothing at all, but it is really, really not what dinner is supposed to be. And honestly, if you have constant access to better food, it’s probably better to skip dinner this one time at all than to eat bad food.
Yes, villifying and demonizing female sexuality and using sexy as a power when the women choose to is not good. But it doesn’t mean that making your female characters rely on sexy for power is good. Blaming and villifying someone for eating stale bread is fucking stupid, depicting people as liking to eat stale bread because it’s not evil? as if “it’s not evil” is justification enough for something not being bad in any way at all? what.
Do you remember what “personal boundaries” and “bodily autonomy” and “enthusiastic consent” mean… “sexy power” is the LAST RESORT. Being comfortable with your sexuality is not the same thing as using your sexuality to obtain your goal, unless your goal is, well, to get laid. (Or personal confidence and overcoming identity issues and so on, of course, but that’s mostly beside the point here.)
Writing female characters as resorting to this just as often as to other means they have at their disposal as if it’s the same thing is RAPE FUCKING CULTURE (“it’s not really a big deal to treat female body as a sexual object and women shouldn’t fret about it so much”), and writing female characters as having _no_other_tools_ is EXTREMELY DISEMPOWERING. Because seriously, even in the most patriarchal society most women have and have historically had other ways to achieve their goals than prostitution. Your Strong Female Character is probably also smart, strong, agile, why doesn’t she use all those to free herself? What plot contrivance gives her just enough freedom to use sexual manipulaiton but not enough for at least all other sorts of manipulation that do not involve compromising her bodily autonomy?
Explaining ridiculous female outfits as being actually somehow practical&comfortable is mind-boggingly stupid. Explaining ridiculous female outfits as letting them use the power of sexy… your female characters should fucking not have to rely on sexy as a source of power, never ever ever ever.
