The Gender Police Double Standard

 As someone who doesn’t identify (at least not strongly) with a gender*, I don’t honestly expect to see a lot of folk like myself in the media. But one would expect some representation of the diversity of expression within binary genders. Arguably, it is. But this comes with some major strings attached, and there are three basic flavours:

• Good Girls Stay in the Kitchen. This is the ‘final girl’ of slasher/horror flicks, or the ‘Vasquez dies’ rule of action movies. The women in these stories are rewarded for enacting Victorian-flavoured feminine ideals: being sexually pure, nurturing, etc. and usually sport long hair, skirts and other markers of femininity. If the woman does kick butt—think the Alien movies—the survivor has some ‘traditional’feminine trait emphasised (for example, nurturing and protecting a child) to make her ‘womanly enough’. A particularly annoying offshoot of this is the romantic comedy (or drama) where a woman realises that her career is not all there is, and what really matters in life is chasing men and making babies. To clarify, I think domestic life is awesome—what irks me is the message that no matter what her life priorities are or how successful she is, a woman cannot be happy without a guy, and that this should be her priority instead of other things which demonstrably make her happy.
• Tomboys Are Better: The opposite of the previous conceit, this shows that women who disown their femininity and pick up traditionally ‘masculine’ characteristics are a superior life form. This one actually pisses me off more than the previous one, because it flat-out states that men are better, and that the only way a woman could even compete is to strive to be one. The other reason this trope makes me boil with rage is that it has infected a good deal of ‘feminist’ literature, and, unfortunately, influenced the real life thinking of a lot of people I’ve encountered. Again, I'm not bashing ‘butch’ types—I'm bashing the idea that ‘traditional’ femininity is intrinsically linked to weakness and failure. This is why I like characters like Kaylee from Firefly and any of Patrica Wrede’s heroines. They are happy and comfortable with the fact they like their feminine gender expression, and it does not detract from their ability to kick ass.
• Real Men Kick Ass. There’s a serious lack of awesome non-gender-conforming men in Western fiction. It’s hard to find a ‘fabulous’ guy—or even just a ‘femme’ guy—who is treated seriously. It’s closely related to the trope above.

The reason that I’m taking the Captain Obvious role and pointing these things out is because they have become prevalent in fiction to the point where I think people have absorbed them subconsciously, and replicate them in their own work. 

*If push comes to shove, I am (ponytail and all) on Team Dude. See the ‘About Me’ page for pronoun tips.