Boys do it, but girls don't: Or, double standards in a certain popular scenario (Multifandom)

[selenak]

Something of an irritation which occured to me during my recent Alias watching, but relates to a lot of other fandoms as well, is this: the coy playing around with prostitution scenarios in the case of female characters, while always keeping a failsafe deus (or dea) ex machina et hand. And the double standard for male characters. When Jack accused Elsa Kaplan (and through her Irina) of "prostituting" herself, he meant that her activities as a spy included having sex. Now, in the "real" world, we had actually a lot of male East German spies (the so-called "Romeos") who did just that to a lot of female government employees. Even in the fictional template for the Alias world, the James Bond books and movies, you have good old James having sex quite often not just because the hormones say so, but as a method of getting something out of the girls in question. "Kiss the girl, get the key" is how this gets described in the DS9 Bond parody, Our Man Bashir. But of course if it's a male spy sleeping with a female, the word "prostitution" gets never used, and depending on just how sexist the scenario is, he even manages to convince the woman in question to switch sides by his manly charms.

Meanwhile, "good" female spies of course don't have sex as a part of their profession. The scene with Sydney in S/M get-up is funny, and I laughed at the "what was wrong with the black one?!?" as much as anyone, but it epitomizes what I'm talking about. Because Jennifer Garner is agreeable to look at, the producers will put Syd in a couple of situations per season where she's posing as picking someone up, and/or as a call girl. But she never has to deliver more than a kiss. Which is a long tradition of how these things are handled, all type of shows. Take a completely different tv series like Twin Peaks. Audrey Horne, trying to help Agent Cooper whom she has a crush on with his investigation, ends up posing as a prostitute in a brothel. Lynch goes as far as having a masked (and hence presumably unrecognisable) Audrey being presented to her own father. But of course Audrey manages to escape/ be rescued before anything happens. She never actually has to have sex with anyone to maintain her cover. Audrey might be sultry and flirty etc., but she's still essentially coded as a good girl, and good girls don't have to do this in tv land. Or take the episode from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in which Kira Nerys takes a little trip through time to find out the truth about her mother and Dukat. Kira, for a while, is also forced to pose as a prostitute. But does she have to do so much as to kiss a single man? Nah. The Cardassian she got assigned to conveniently passes out from drink.

All of this doesn't mean I would necessarily have wanted to see Sydney Bristow have sex with Stooge of the Week X, Audrey with her father, or Kira with Random Cardassian Y. But I think the producers wanted to have their cake and eat it - present the "good girls" in voyeuristically tiltalating scenarios - without ever compromising the standard for sexual virtue tv sets for said good girls. But not for good guys. In another DS9 episode, Ben Sisko takes a trip to the Mirrorverse and has to pose as his morally ambiguous alter ego. In the course of his mission, he has sex with Mirror!Dax and Mirror!Kira, and we're not supposed to feel this compromised him in any way. (Actually, the expected reaction was probably pretty much the one these scenario got - lucky Sisko, to have sex with the two gorgeous women under his command but not really because they're the evil alter egos, and the real ones will never find out.) For some reason, I can't quite imagine a Mirrorverse episode in which Kira, posing as the Intendant, has sex with, say, Mirror!Dukat, Mirror!Sisko, and Mirror!Dax to maintain her cover. Something would have intervened to spare her the necessity.

There is a fundamental dishonesty here, as well as the disturbing echo of the old "good girls don't get raped" maxim, that I find distasteful.

***
And while I'm being cranky - last night I wrote a lengthy reply for Londo's recent theatrical_muse challenge (the best 24 hours in his life) but couldn't post it as lj told me his journal was on read-only mode. This morning, it still was, until about an hour or so ago. Imagine me ranting a lot at a silent computer screen in between!

***

In a more joyful mode: Thanks to whomever nominated my Rygel story and the Obi-Wan meets Scorpius one for the Sparkies. I feel deeply honored!

Comments

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

Hmm. It seems to me that Nikita does a lot more making out as part of her job than the women you mention do, but I don't believe she ever proceeds all the way to sex. But then Nikita always aimed for a slightly more sophisticated "European" air than the average US action show.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I only saw about 10 or so episodes of LFN, so I'm not really qualified to judge.

[searose.livejournal.com]

IIRC, Nikita went so far as marriage with one of her assignments and was insinuated to have had sex with several 'gray' characters, include one woman (a terrorist played by Gina Torres, I believe). Nikita and Michael both were Section operatives who were expected to use sex as a weapon, regardless of gender. It made for an interesting series at times.

[paratti.livejournal.com]

You need to watch the new series of Spooks.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Yes, Ma'am, but I hope someone - looks at direction of kathyh - is going to give me the first series as a Christmas present so I can make a beginning.

[kathyh]

LOL. I read and obey. You should certainly find Spooks interesting and the second episode of the first series contains one of the most shocking scenes I've ever seen on TV. I've only seen the third series of Alias so far but I think it's fair to say that Spooks is a little grittier.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the specific Alias case, but the general case doesn't come across to me as primarily about being a "good girl". I think instead it comes from our cultural ideas about sex roles, and in particular about who counts as the active and who the passive party in any sexual act. So a male character who has sex with a person for pragmatic reasons is still read as behaving actively and in control of the situation, while a female character in the same situation is read as making herself vulnerable in a far more threatening and disturbing way. And of course in our own culture, the difference in physical strength and social prestige between men and women is such that a woman in that situation is far more vulnerable in all sorts of ways, right down to simple physical life and limb.

And this becomes far more extreme when the character who's being sexually serviced is a "villain", because in a lot of fictional universes villains default to having violent non-consensual sexual tastes (I remember your comments about B5 rape/torture fics in which Bester is portrayed as a lust-driven sexual sadist, no matter how foreign that is to his canon nature, because Bad Guys Do That). So in your DS9 case, the undercover Sisko isn't seen as being in any more danger through having sex with the female characters than he is as a result of the simple undercover situation. By contrast, if you imagine undercover Kira having sex with any of the male Mirrorverse bad guys, you have to deal with the inevitable fear that she won't get out of it without some kind of physical injury or horrible mental trauma.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Interesting, and you're probably right about the assumptions. However, if the divide is more along gender roles in general, the fact remains that ambiguous women or female villains - artaxastra pointed towards Mystique - are presented as having sex to maintain their cover, while female characters clearly designed as heroic and good, like Kira, do not.

Servalan, btw, is an interesting exception of the rule, because she's the unquestioned villain of the show but in each of the cases when she's in a situation where a male character threatens to expose her identity unless she has sex with him (twice in season 4, I think), she arranges for the death of the stupid bastard in question instead. She's presented as sexually active but never in such a situation. Arguably the only time where she offers sex for pragmatic reasons is with Avon, and in that case it's presented as being motivated by attraction as well as powerplay.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Yes, I noticed that comment by Artexastra, and I think if you compare Good Girls to Bad Girls, as opposed to women versus men, it is more of a moral judgement.

While we're mentioning B7 and DS9, I don't think I ever asked you. Don't you think that some of the "mirror" versions of the regular cast in DS9 bore a suspicious similarity to the rgulars of that other show?

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

And when we're discussing same-sex comparisons, all of the relatively few scenes I've seen in film or TV where it appears that a male character will be required to have pragmatic sex with another male character have portrayed it as a Really Big Menace that never actually happens.

[artaxastra.livejournal.com]

I was going to present the counter argument that Mystique does -- one example being that presumably Sen. Kelly's wife doesn't think he's "having a problem" for six months. But wait! Mystique is Bad. She is a Bad Girl. Which means she can. I think that just reinforced your point.

Perhaps this is one reason I prefer the Bad Girls!

And congratulations on the Sparkie nomination!

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, Bad Girls can, and by that invisible divide you can separate the borderline cases. Which annoys me, see above.

And thank you.*g*

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

I just reread Joanna Russ's "The Mystery of the Young Gentleman" yesterday. It... well, you'd like it, in this context.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

*adds to reading list*

Thanks for the tip!

[illmantrim.livejournal.com]

Very smart analyses! You make a very valuid point. It is the double standard of television and movies of course that ahs never proceeded past the levekl it was at 50 years ago, and it is hidden in our society, quietlyu lurking. The idea od sex as a tool used only by bad people but that in certain situations one can excuse it in a man. A woman is seen otherwise as you said...

[wanderlustlover]

I love this piece of writing and agree with you like a million-fold. I feel this way about characters in tv, movies, books, and fan-fic a lot of the time. There still exists the aracheic gender roles that divivde male and female, giving blind spot to the male actions and scarlet letters to the women for the same actions.

[lakrids404.livejournal.com]

Yes there are double standards in drama, perhaps because that it’s easier for a director to build on top, on people assumptions what roles women and men are in drama. Lars von Trier uses that, to sometime to the extreme with his lead role women suffering so much evil from the rest of society, while being something of a Madonna icons. To such an extreme extent that some, has called him misogynistic. That he in lasted movie Dogville, uses his own cliché and plays on the knowledge of the viewer, to create an unexpected ending was amusing (imo), pirate Sally indeed.
Joss said something like that that it’s good drama when Willow cries, and I that the viewer when feels more sympathy/empathy when it’s the protagonist is a good looking woman. In the episode “Consequences” was the scene Faith (yet another bad girl that have causal sex, and therefore is a bad girl, circular argument) where Faith is strangling Xander, in a position and way, that would have suggested sexual assault if it was man the man that was the perpetrator. And I did find it interesting to check what were the opinions about this episode, and I did find it noticeable, how toned down the reaction were from the viewers side. Ok Xander is not Buffy and Faith is not Spike, but I would have thought that the reaction would have been much stronger, if it was Willow had been the victim of sexual assault from a bad boy, that she had feelings for.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

About the Faith/Xander versus Buffy/Spike thing: I used that very argument myself, in a slightly different context, because Spike was declared unreemable for attempted rape while Faith was not.

Mind you, the scene(s) in which Spike did threaten Willow, both as a vampire and sexually, were both played for laughs. (In Lover's Walk and The Initiative, respectively.) But the Xander and Faith scene was clearly not filmed or written as funny, so yes, if that same scene had played out with Willow and a male character in the same way, there would have been a much stronger reaction.

[luminosity]

There is a fundamental dishonesty here, as well as the disturbing echo of the old "good girls don't get raped" maxim, that I find distasteful.

I think it really goes beyond that. "Good girls don't have sex unless it's filled with morality and deep emotion." Women are never allowed to freely explore their sexuality on television--not without the roof caving in. Rhetorical question(s): Does TV ever show a woman having purely recreational sex without devastating consequences? Everything from unwanted pregnancy to being held up to ridicule to becoming a *whore!!* are the consequences. I find it distasteful, too.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

After thinking long and hard, I finally came up with a tv woman who isn't characterized as a villain and who has a lot of recreational sex (i.e. not because she's in love, just because she enjoys having sex) with various partners without devastating consequences to others or herself - Chiana, in Farscape.

There is only one occasion on which Chiana having sex has bad consequences, but that was intentional on her part. Her boyfriend at the time plans to propose, she panicks and seduces his son as a drastic measure to stop the proposal. Not surprisingly, that ends the romance for a good long while.

Other than that, though, Chiana having recreational sex a lot is not a big deal to anyone, and does not have bad consequences. However, she's really the only example I can think of, unless we're talking cancelled shows which didn't get one complete season, and who knows what might have happened...

wait wait wait...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

...can`t believe I didn't think of her before. What about Amanda? Even the relationship with Duncan isn`t presented as The One True Love (tm), and never as monagamous.

[oyceter]

Ahhh yes. That. It's in all the romance books too -- the good, pure heroines may end up in a situation in which they must sell their bodies or something to save their families, but they're always rescued by the hero in the nick of time. On the other hand, the hero is always some past rake who has slept with tons of people and who uses sex as a weapon. It even happens in Dunnett, sigh.

I do very much think it is a gender role thing, in which good girls must never have sex unless they're in love. Or if they have traumatic sex, it will end up breaking them somehow. On the other hand, guys can have sex whenever and come out the better for it, or use sex as a self-defense mechanism or as a weapon. And then, of course, there's the corollary that if a woman is having fairly kinky sex on TV or in books while not in love and enjoying it, she's usually the villain of the piece (ergo Skanky Villain Sex).

I'm really anticipating seeing your reactions to Alias S3 now.

[lakrids404.livejournal.com]

You might then find this satire, over a good and deeply stupid romantic heroin., funny then. The heroine have to sell her body!, to save her family!!.
http://www.likesbooks.com/ppp20032.html#ho

[deborah-judge.livejournal.com]

This is why I can't watch pretty much any TV show unless my intent is to fic it. This is often a case where fanon gets things right and canon gets it wrong. I think it's pretty much fanon that Kira had sex with Cardassians while in the resistance. And in fanfic, characters get to have sex with whomever they want.

I also couldn't stand that mirrorverse episode, for precisely that reason. Kira has UST with the Intendant in her episode, but Sisko sleeps with every female on the show. Beh.

All of this doesn't mean I would necessarily have wanted to see...Kira with Random Cardassian Y.

Well, I would. Not that I've seen the episode yet, but if you're going to raise the issue of women forced into prostitution in a time of war, the least you can do is show that it doesn't morally compromise your heroine.

Elsewhere in the series, Kira has UST all over the place, but yes, the Powers that Be seem to want to keep her pure and monogamous at the same time. But if there was ever a candidate for a Trek-woman with a revolving cabin door, she's one. Bajorans seem to have complex attitudes about sexuality, and might not even require monogamy. (Since they seem to have traditionally been matriarchal, I wonder if they also had traditions of polyandry?) But that's way beyond what I could expect to see on TV.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Well, I would. Not that I've seen the episode yet, but if you're going to raise the issue of women forced into prostitution in a time of war, the least you can do is show that it doesn't morally compromise your heroine.

Actually, otherwise the episode is pretty good and honest about the issue of women being forced in prostitution in a time of war. They just chicken out when it comes to what Kira has to do (or not) to maintain her cover. It's an episode I'll love to discuss with you once you've seen it, because it raises a lot of other issues as well.

Elsewhere in the series, Kira has UST all over the place, but yes, the Powers that Be seem to want to keep her pure and monogamous at the same time. But if there was ever a candidate for a Trek-woman with a revolving cabin door, she's one.

To be fair, Jadzia Dax is implied to have a lot of sex with various partners pre-Worf. No, we don't get to see it each time, but the implication is there, and it's also brought up in text in a discussion between her and Worf, and later between Ezri and Worf.

Still, recalling all that bland girls of the week we did get to see Kirk smooch, it's annoying that thirty years later, tv still can't show a character like Kira in something other than a monogamous relationship.