I was wondering: what are your thoughts on this current trend of "writing female villains is feminist"? Because sometimes I see a lot of romanticizing of abusive women and I'm not sure how to feel.
well, there are several levels to this.
there is a difference between feminist villain in an extratextual reading (in that she is a subversion of sexist tropes in the meta-narrative) and a character who is feminist (i.e. as a person) and fandom seems to conflate the two, especially when it comes to white women who have power, and that’s really where the glorifying of abusive women comes from. it’s one thing to enjoy female villains as villains, it’s another to hold up as role models.
the basic line of thinking behind the “writing female villains is feminist” is that it’s important to show that women can be cruel and petty and manipulative, because women are often put on a pedestal and that is a form of dehumanisation, because women are given too-high standards.
the inherent problem in that philosophy, though, is that it only applies to white women. east asian women are portrayed as sexually manipulative and dishonest, black women as often welfare queens, jewish women arsgreedy and money-obsessed, romani women as thieves - and so on. women of colour are already scarce, and we are already demonised to the extent that portraying them as villains is regressive, because we don’t even get that many be good characters in the first place.
as for woc, forget being a female villain, just being a female antagonist who has her own motives opposite of the white hero is enough to set the fandom against her, while white feminists sing fucking ballads about their abusive white fave. in mostly-white shows, it’s an explicit and toxic form of othering when you make the sole woc a villain because in most cases she is inherently placed in a narrative position to lose, and often it’s a way to justify the excessive violence used against her.
one last personal thing that always skeeves me out about this, as a victim of abuse by another woman, is that villainous white women are written as a power trip, because it’s often coded so that you can root for the abuser, not as a way to raise awareness about abusive women. and when fandom starts rooting for those women, it’s really shitty for victims to witness.
tl;dr is it important to show women who are amorally and manipulative and cunning? yes. but the philosophy that it’s more feminist, and therefore subverting gendered stereotypes, is one that comes with whiteness.
