Stereotypical man vs. stereotypical woman

[easol.livejournal.com]

We all know that Laurita considers herself a vagina-wielding manly man -- she's always rambling about how she's the man in her relationships, how she doesn't like skirts and lurches around manfully on her injuries and crap like that. Not to mention Whorenita's putrescently misandrist position, where she has fawning houseboys telling her that she is their Prince Charming and being her "housewife."

With that in mind, do you think that LKH has any idea how stereotypically feminine her writing is? Stereotypically, women's writing tends to be focused on just a few things, including:
1) Relationships
2) Clothes
3) Issues and traumas and psychoanalysis and long talks, which many men would rather have their testicles removed with a corkscrew than listen to.

Note: I am not saying that actual women's writing contains excessive focus on any of these things, but that tends to be the cliche perception.

Obviously "relationships" are all the content the series has anymore. Clothes were detailed way too much even in the earlier books, where Whorenita seemed to feel that mentioning a holster required an explanation of what did or did not cover it, and why, and what color it was, etc. Even bathrobes get this treatment. As for the issues/traumas/long talks crap, we get that practically every book with at least one character -- usually multiple times, as with Richard.

With this in mind... does LKH realize that no amount of sex'n'guns will cover up the fact that her work is... gasp, stereotypically feminine?

Comments

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah. Not that men are incapable of writing about relationships, and also, not that Laurita didn't used to write about lengthy bloody gun battles and things, but her focus does appear to be rather on the romance and sexxors these days.

The "manly/womanly" thing always puts me in mind of Poppy Z Brite, who like Laurell is a small female. But Poppy actually identifies as a gay man, which doesn't stop him having long girly hair and wearing dresses and skirts sometimes. If Poppy can be a man who looks like a girl, often very much so, who is in a gay relationship with another man, without necessarily yelling about how manly he is all the time as if it's terribly transgressive (he does like sports and guns), then I think Laurell the somewhat tomboyish woman can do the same, right?

[plum-arden.livejournal.com]

That analogy brings to mind something a friend of mine used to tell me back when we played Vampire and went to goth clubs: If you call yourself goth, you aren't. Every time LKH starts to go on about how manly she is, it just makes me think of what my friend used to say, becaue it totally applies to LKH. If you say you're manly/darkity dark/goth/whatever, then you aren't.

I love Poppy, and I think the huge difference is that Poppy has come right out and said how she feels in her mind, but is comfortable enough in her own skin to not dwell on it. I've seen pictures of her in dresses and such, and it just goes to show that she doesn't feel this great need to proclaim it every day, she just *is*. Does that make any sense?

[lilacwire.livejournal.com]

I have a slight problem with that, just in a technical sense. If some random girl on the street called herself a "free spirit," does that mean she's not? I know that in goth circles it's considered bad form to call yourself goth, but it seems kind of like a funny rule that you can't call yourself what you want to be or are.

I'm not arguing for Laurell here or anything, what you said just kind of struck me. :)

[plum-arden.livejournal.com]

I think it may depend on what it is you're trying to identify yourself with. To me, Laurell so desperatly wants to be goth, or dark, or angry that by her saying it at pretty much any given opportunity, she's showing us that she's not. She's not angry over anything. She's not goth - because a black shirt and jeans or wearing all black does not a goth make. ;) Just like she's not manly because she's walking around on her injured ankle, she's just stupid. I think it all goes back to her wanting to be accepted by the cool crowd, and she's trying too hard. That if she wears all black, claims to be ohsopale and listens to The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, she'll be goth! Um, no. I listen to "goth" music, but I'm so not goth. She just tries way too hard, and fails at everything.

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. It took me a while to get my head around Poppy's gender identity but I do understand it now. The difference is that Laurell hasn't come out with any suggestion that she actually feels that she is male, only a lot of bluster about how different she is from run of the mill women in her manlyness. Whereas Poppy just goes "I'm a man, bite me" if pressed and mostly leaves her complaints or whatever for homophobia and discrimination against gays, just like any other gay person.

[plum-arden.livejournal.com]

I know, the whole "I'm a gay man trapped in a woman's body" thing totally threw me. At first, I thought she was just trying to be edgy, then I read one of the pages on her site, and it was seriously like someone flipped a light switch, and I totally *got it.* She's posted about it a couple of times in her LJ, and it's only cleared it up more. I just think she's a cool person all around.

LKH could really learn something from Poppy, instead of just jumping up and down yelling "hey! I'm cool too!"

[http://users.livejournal.com/_argustar/]

I honestly don't think that she does. She bought into her own hype to the degree that things she'd almost certainly mock and scorn in others -- such as the long talks about feeeelings, the obsession with lacy and leather clothing usually worn at the same time, which is a fashion disaster of epic proportions, the belief that all you need is a good fuck to solve everything -- seems like the absolute cutting edge to her.

Let's not even get into the fact that all of her male characters seem like they were ripped off from shoujo manga. Let's see, there's the emotionally vulnerable long-haired pretty boy, there's the snarky bisexual one, there's the Cool and Mysterious foreign one, there's the hardcore assassin, there's the emotionally tortured one, need I go on?

[othellia.livejournal.com]

Let's see, there's the emotionally vulnerable long-haired pretty boy, there's the snarky bisexual one, there's the Cool and Mysterious foreign one, there's the hardcore assassin, there's the emotionally tortured one, need I go on?

Ooh. Let me guess. Nathanial, Jason, Jean-Claude or Asher, Edward, and... and... Micah? Aside from the asassin, they kind of bleed into each other's fields.

[othellia.livejournal.com]

*assassin

[http://users.livejournal.com/_argustar/]

::grins:: Got it! Though, the last one could've been either Micah or Richard. Maybe Richard could be the emotionally repressed one?

They really do all blend together after a while. It's a little scary to think that this could make Anita Blake the Miaka of urban fantasy. They're both constantly making bad decisions, the guys are all crazy over her, and they both make the unfortunate readers want to smack them upside the head a few dozen times to see if that jump-starts their brains.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Miaka made my head hurt so much.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_argustar/]

Mine, too. I honestly think she had to do the least logical thing possible at all times. Which, uh, is another thing she has in common with Anita. Oh, dear.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Without that tendency, I suspect the series would have ended after maybe two or three books' worth...

[morriganscrow.livejournal.com]

Might I just say how deeply I admire your ST-Kirk!spasm icon? It is a thing of beauty.

[easol.livejournal.com]

Yargh, Miaka is the only heroine I find more annoying that Aoi -- she's so dumb, and whiny, and always doing stupid things, and all the men love her instead of wanting to throttle her. Sue much!

Though I will say this, at least she doesn't have mass supernatural screwfests.

[tooimpurenangel.livejournal.com]

does LKH realize that no amount of sex'n'guns will cover up the fact that her work is... gasp, stereotypically feminine?

Probably not, I honestly think she tried to stop caring about the real world when the money started rolling in.

[kerame.livejournal.com]

I think the sexual tension and potential relationships were what drove the books from the very first, despite Laurell's claims of hard-boiled characters, detective stories, blah, blah, blah.

Her mysteries and world-building were always lame, her writing was never good.

I started reading the series fairly late, but even before they started to go totally to hell, I noticed that I read them differently to other series. With most authors, I'll take a good deal of time between books becuase I feel satisfied at the last page, but with Laurell, I read all the books back-to-back and never got that feeling of satisfaction. They were addictive and unsatisfying for the same reason. I was looking for a resolution to the relationships which never came and never will. Like a soap-opera it goes on and on, and characters and back-stories are twisted to artificially intensify the melodrama and wish-fulfilment.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

With this in mind... does LKH realize that no amount of sex'n'guns will cover up the fact that her work is... gasp, stereotypically feminine?

Even in the first books, the sex'n'guns were written, in my opinion, from a very skewed and narrow feminine viewpoint. Why does sex=love and vice versa in the Anitaverse? I think it's because LKH has a very feminine and juvenile view of sex. Men can and do have casual sex relationships, and so do women. Love is not usually in the equation, at least, not at first. People have sex because it feels good. The idea that sex is reserved for relationships/marriage and love reflects LKH's Christian upbringing. Anita herself constantly whines about her sex life, and even when she's in everyones' face insisting that what she does with her men is perfectly fine, her indignant attitude tells us that she feels otherwise. The lady doth protest too much.

All of her fight scenes felt thrown together and secondary to what LKH really wanted us to care about: Anita and her boyfriend(s). LKH is really writing porn. She may have set the stage for something else, but the path she chose for her series may be what she had in mind all along. The trappings don't seem to matter to LKH. She has said over and over that Anita has never experienced something that she, LKH, has not. I find that horrifying and very difficult to believe. If this is true, LKH could not have enjoyed the guns and fighting because she doesn't write about it with conviction or interest. It just isn't believable. It's there for shock value and so that LKH can insist that her books aren't romance. None of the violence was necessary to the plot. It could have been, but it just wasn't. The few bits that are plot-centric are there purely to show how powerful, almost god-like, Anita is. She rides to the rescue of her men, the same men that we are told over and over again are extremely powerful in their own right. How many contrived kidnappings have we seen? Even those fight scenes have gone away for the most part. She still does her deux ex machina, but we don't actually see it. I think LKH chooses not to show us those scenes because she doesn't really enjoy writing them. No matter how many times LKH blogs about her "anger" and "guns", and "destroying", I just can't believe it because the author never crafts the appropriate scenes. That anger could be what makes her heroine's fight honest. However, since that anger is an act that LKH believes she has to do in order to seem angsty enough to write horror, it's just not real.

I've noticed that too many female authors create a Strong Woman heroine, only to have her seem unrealistic and be a stereotype cookie-cutter character. I think this happens because the author can't identify with her character, since the author herself is not a stereotypical Strong Woman. I'm certainly not saying that the authors aren't strong, awesome women. They usually are. They're just not the violent-gunslinger-sexual predator type that we've seen over and over again, especially in the urban paranormal/paranormal romance genres. Those women do not exist as such. Yes, there are tomboys out there. Yes, there are certainly strong, ass-kicking women out there, in all professions. They are multi-faceted, diverse people, though. I feel like too many authors are looking at these strong women and making judgments based on appearances and beliefs, not on fact. Kelley Armstrong had this problem with Elena, her female werewolf in the "Otherworld"/"Bitten" series. She was the stereo-typical, "Snappy Sue"ish Strong Woman. She was an abused child, she was a tomboy, she was a loner, she had low self-esteem but everyone wanted her. All these things make her angry and her anger makes her strong. Sound familiar? It's two-dimensional and over-done. Her later characters are much more believable, and I think this makes them more sympathetic. I'm tired of being told that in order to be strong, women must give up their feminine identity. Having a vagina doesn't make you weak, it's hiding the fact that you have one that seems weak to me. It makes me sad that women are writing these characters, and we are told, for women.

[morriganscrow.livejournal.com]

*applauds* Well said!

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

Thanks! ^_^

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

I did actually like the fact that Anita originally had these very Christian and old-fashioned views about sex, because it was refreshing in an otherwise "hardboiled" character. In a way I can't help feeling that the ardeur is like a punishment. Anita refuses sexuality so it is thrust upon her to the extent that she is made a slave to it. I'm not quite sure what Laurell is getting at with it but I think it's gotten quite misogynist. She makes Anita go round raping men but in a sense Anita herself is raped by the ardeur, and like some abuse victims has difficulty making sex a personal choice. Anita still doesn't choose to have sex and there's something rather wrong with that.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

I agree. I also liked the old Anita better than the post-Ardeur version. It made her unique in her surroundings, and in the genre. I'm not taking a moral stand, I'm just looking at it as character development. What I didn't like is that Anita didn't like her beliefs. Why should we, as readers, like and believe in Anita if she doesn't do those things herself? The constant whining/self-flogging over the sex called that much more attention to the negative aspects of it. I felt that the Ardeur was wrong because Anita did. If Anita had embraced her powers, or even just came to terms with them and herself, I wouldn't have a problem with the Ardeur as part of Anita's life. The rest of my problems with the Ardeur are that it's become the sole focus of the novels, and is ridiculous and horrifying in its execution, but that's beside the point.

You said it, she doesn't choose to have sex. I have a feeling that the the point LKH is trying to make is not to punish Anita with what she doesn't want, but to give her what she really wants without her having to deal with the guilt of wanting it. If Anita complains enough, we are supposed to say "Well, she doesn't really want it, but since she's stuck with it, she's allowed to enjoy it!" Many other readers have said that they feel that the Ardeur is Anita's excuse for her behavior, i.e. poly-amorous relationships. All of the fun, none of the guilt. Yes, Anita complains to no end, but she doesn't try to stop the Ardeur. She doesn't try to find a way to really cope with it that doesn't involve tons of sex with random men. It's funny to me that Jean Claude has had this power for centuries, and he can't teach Anita how to deal with it in a way that would appease her. I think this is because Anita is dealing with the Ardeur in exactly the way LKH wants her to. She wants to write all the sex, regardless of how many times we are told that "Anita" writes the books.

[ladymuttly1.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Anita is like a sexually abused child. Don't children after a while just accept what is happening to them because they feel like they have no way out? Is that they way Anita behaves?

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

Could be, but given Anita's personality, it doesn't seem likely. She is more lash-out than lay-down. Most sexually abused kids are conditioned to believe that there is no way out by their abusers. I don't think that Anita has been treated that way by JC or the other men thus far. I still think Anita accepts it because she wants to.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

The more I think about it, the only one dishing out abuse in the series is Anita herself. It's the rest of the characters who have accepted her behavior in order to gain her love and protection. The Ardeur is the ultimate date-rape drug, one that Anita never has to say sorry for. Worst of all, her victims are forced to submit. Look at what happened to the weretiger who refused to be raped by Anita.

[kerame.livejournal.com]

"The more I think about it, the only one dishing out abuse in the series is Anita herself. It's the rest of the characters who have accepted her behavior in order to gain her love and protection."

I agree. I don't even see Anita's reaction to the ardeur as OOC. In the early books, she refused to have sex because it was her way of controlling the relationship. That's why she went from zero to multiple partners. Both situations give her the upper hand.

"The Ardeur is the ultimate date-rape drug, one that Anita never has to say sorry for. Worst of all, her victims are forced to submit."

Date-rape drug and wish-fulfilment device.

"Look at what happened to the weretiger who refused to be raped by Anita. "

And look how she treated Richard when he resisted in NiC. That scene was more of a rape than any in the series, in my opinion because she could feel his fear through the mind-link and enjoyed it, the way a bully of a man would enjoy raping a woman he couldn't control.

When it started, he screamed, pushed her hands away, and tried to leave the room. Afterwards, he clearly felt violated, and Anita even blames the victim by telling him he never said no. Like that would have made a difference! It sickens me that readers blame him for leaving her after that, instead of sympathizing with him and respecting him for leaving his abuser, as they would if the genders were reversed.

In fact the only reason anyone tries to blame Anita's behavior on past abuse, or charitably refers to her as trying to "heal" these poor, weak men, is because she is a woman. If she were a man, it would be obvious that she collects weak lovers, and breaks strong ones, because they are easier to control that way, and that she loves having complete power and freedom, while allowing no such freedom for her harem, for the same reason any abusive man would.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

Exactly. If Anita were a man, these books would be reviled. Why, when the genders are reversed, it is not considered rape? Men can be, and are, raped every day. By women. The belief that this can't or doesn't happen is ridiculous and cruel to the victims. Richard was just as helpless under Anita's power as a woman would be under a man's physical strength. He never said no. "No" would have been a death sentence. As an abuse victim, I can tell you that there are times that we don't say no because the consequences are greater than if we submit. Sometimes "no" wouldn't make a difference, and once you're broken, it's hard to fight. Raina paved the way for Anita to continue the cycle of abuse.

I remember that scene, and I think it was that one in particular that made me start hating Anita. I never really liked her, but that right there, that scene, made me hate her. As far as I'm concerned, Richard is the only realistic, sympathetic character in the series and ALWAYS has been. I don't think that many of us ever liked Anita herself, even in the beginning. We liked Anita with Richard, we liked Anita in love. Richard truly thought that Anita would heal, love and cherish him, and instead, he got abused all over again. It makes me sad, looking back on it now.

***Potential Spoiler here***

When Richard "changed", it was Anita that changed him. She uses him for his power, and reviles him for his beliefs and dignity. It was that dignity, those beliefs, that were supposed to have brought him and Anita together in the first place. In BN, when Richard comes into the Ardeur in his own right, he uses it against Anita. Who taught him that you can get what you want by force? Who taught him to use that very thing against those he loves? Who took what they wanted from him by force, his wishes be damned? Anita did. Why is Anita different from Raina, and Chimera, and Gabriel, and Belle Morte, and everyone else who has abused these men? The answer is that she ISN'T.

Belle broke Jean-Claude and Asher, so they will accept any abuse Anita throws at them because it won't be as bad as what Belle did. Chimera did the same thing to Micah, who only wanted protection and kindness from Anita but instead got forced by her magic to be her dog. The same goes for Richard and Nathaniel, who were broken by Raina and Gabriel to believe that abuse is love and that the woman's will is all that matters in a relationship. Even Jason was abused by his father into believing that he wasn't deserving of love. Oh, I know! Anita is better because she's giving the men what they "want" now. Just because a victim of abuse will seek out a new abuser, it doesn't make it right to hurt them. What they want is to be abused because it's all they know, so she gives it to them in spades.

Instead of trying to help them heal, she's justifying all of the past abuse by continuing it herself. She will rape them and destroy any loving relationships they may have with others in order to get their undivided attention. They, however, are a just a number to her. All of these men must submit completely to Anita's will, and sleep with her and no other while Anita sleeps with multiple partners, or they will be thrown away like a used napkin. They will lose the protection that Anita has promised, and for the most part, provided. They might even be killed for rebelling. They probably live in terror of losing their abuser's "love", because they are conditioned to believe that the abuser is the best they are ever going to get. This is ABUSE!

Phew! /rant off

[roguetailkinker.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it is about gender, because look at the shower scene with Micah. That was a man raping a woman, yet what was all the troos' reaction? Denial. LKH's reaction? Denial.

And considering the popularity of James Bond and bad-old-days bodice rippers, not to mention the ongoing "controversy" about so-called "forced seduction", I doubt mere gender reversal would guarantee everyone suddenly reviling the books. They might have a different audience, but I'm sure there would still be an audience.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

I don't really think that James Bond and bodice rippers glorify rape. In those, its more a case of a man aggressively pursuing a woman, but the woman can say no. She chooses to submit. She isn't forced to. James Bond would never take a woman by force. He doesn't have to. The bodice rippers are far more light-hearted, and I don't ever remember seeing a woman being raped in one of them. I've read quite a few. Again, it's about a man going to any lengths to get a woman without resorting to rape. The man has to be wanted back. They want her love, not just her body. I'm not certain about the "forced seduction" thing, but I don't remember hearing the term until after LKH became popular. I think we have her to blame for alot of it.

In Anita Blake, it's flat-out rape. There is no yes/no. Anita takes what she wants from the men, either with threats or with the Ardeur. The Ardeur is like forcing an XCT-roofie cocktail down someone's throat and going to town on them. In the Micah shower scene, it wasn't really rape because Anita really wanted it even though she said no. That is a common theme in the AB novels, and it's disgusting to me. LKH glorifies rape to an extent that I'm surprised that her books are published at all. I do think that if the gender roles were reversed, LKH would have had a hell of a time being published. I'm sure she would find an audience somewhere. Richard Laymon did, and he's almost as bad. What I meant was that I don't think that LKH's current rabid fan-base would buy and defend the books. They don't see all of this as rape because it's happening to men, and because the author tells them it's not.

The worst thing about the books is that they have spawned more and more of their kind. "Mona Lisa Rising" uses rape as casually as a handshake. Publishers want more and more, because it sells. It sells to women with power issues and teens with no idea how sex and love should be handled. I've seen so many Myspace profiles that had three things in common: Under 21, LKH fan, wants to meet someone for S&M. It's horrifying.

[roguetailkinker.livejournal.com]

In the Micah shower scene, it wasn't really rape because Anita really wanted it even though she said no.

Now see, that's where you're getting fuzzy. She uses that same excuse for all the scenes with dubious or no consent, yet you seem to accept it for the shower scene but not for the scenes involving the guys. I'm not defending the scenes (I consider them indefensible), I just don't follow why you'll accept that excuse for one scene and not the others.

And if you think bodice rippers didn't feature rape until after LKH, you must have had very good luck choosing them. The ones that predate the mid-80's or so were rife with them. Granted that many were exceedingly unlikely rape scenes, with extended foreplay and the heroine having five orgasms in a row, but they were rape scenes nonetheless.

As for James Bond, it's more subtle- he gets all forceful and she fights, then all of a sudden she willingly submits when no sane woman would- but the undertone is there.

I do think that if the gender roles were reversed, LKH would have had a hell of a time being published.

Tell that to Stephan R. Donaldson. His 'hero' rapes a woman in the first few chapters of his first book, yet he still went on to publish several more books with the same rapist as the main character.

They don't see all of this as rape because it's happening to men, and because the author tells them it's not.

There you are. If not for the shower scene, I would agree with you but that was the first offender I noticed, and boy it is offensive. But they use the same justification for all of them: but s/he really wanted it, and LKH says it isn't!

But, er... what exactly does BDSM have to do with LKH's dubious consent problem?

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

She uses that same excuse for all the scenes with dubious or no consent, yet you seem to accept it for the shower scene but not for the scenes involving the guys. I'm not defending the scenes (I consider them indefensible), I just don't follow why you'll accept that excuse for one scene and not the others.

No, I don't accept the shower scene at all. Nor do I think that it's perfectly fine for Micah to rape Anita because it's what she really wants. What I'm saying is that we are supposed to see it as fine, the same with all the other rape scenes in the books. It's rape all around.


And if you think bodice rippers didn't feature rape until after LKH, you must have had very good luck choosing them. The ones that predate the mid-80's or so were rife with them. Granted that many were exceedingly unlikely rape scenes, with extended foreplay and the heroine having five orgasms in a row, but they were rape scenes nonetheless.

I might have been lucky. Many featured forceful/aggressive sexual situations, but they were pretty vanilla in retrospect. The woman in was resistant at first because she was worried about her virtue (or the size of his, um, "manhood"), not because she didn't want the man himself. It's a similar situation for James Bond, I think. Most of the women don't even fight him, they jump his bones instead. Some of the women he sleeps with happen to be enemies, so I think that translates into a bit of aggressiveness in the bedroom. It's not the same as Anita begging Nathaniel to stop while he "tops" her, and him refusing. He not only refuses, he flat-out tells her that he's not stopping, and that turns her on. I almost threw up. It's not the same as Richard crying in terror while Anita unleashes the Ardeur on him.

Tell that to Stephan R. Donaldson. His 'hero' rapes a woman in the first few chapters of his first book, yet he still went on to publish several more books with the same rapist as the main character.

I'm saddened to hear that, but the book doesn't sound like it's practically based on rape the way the AB novels are. I could be wrong, I've never read it. There have been many novels that feature rapists as characters, and some as sympathetic ones. However, if all things in the AB novels were the same other than genders, I don't think the books would have found nearly as many defenders, or publishers for that matter. It's not the subject of rape, its the way it's treated as casually as a handshake that really gets to me. I don't like the subject at all, to be honest. If it fits into a storyline, I accept it because the author felt that they needed to go there. For LKH, its an everyday occurrence with no repercussions. We are told that Anita is a good person, yet she is a serial rapist and a sociopath.

But, er... what exactly does BDSM have to do with LKH's dubious consent problem?

It really doesn't have anything to do with LKH's dubious consent problems. Some kids (and adults, too) think that it does. They're confusing the BDSM/S&M community with abuse, and they really have no idea what they're asking people for. And that is thanks, in a large part, to LKH. She's shown them that you can force yourself on someone until they love you and it's all just part of BDSM. You can physically and emotionally harm people and that's ok as long as they're part of the "community" and since LKH does "research", it's got to be true. They look for people to hurt, or for people to hurt them online. Can you imagine what will happen to some of these kids if they ever get "lucky"? Almost all of the kids I've spoken to online that insist that they are part of the BDSM community say that they got the idea from LKH. They all want to act out rape or real physical harm scenes because they think that's what BDSM is all about. Now, I have problems with people who can't distinguish fantasy from reality. However, when the author herself acts like her characters are real, it blurs the line for some. I'm all for free speech, but LKH needs to stop pretending that the Anitaverse is real, and start doing some real research on BDSM if she's going to bring it up in her books. Rape is NOT BDSM.

[traumerin.livejournal.com]

I think it's because LKH has a very feminine and juvenile view of sex. Men can and do have casual sex relationships, and so do women. Love is not usually in the equation, at least, not at first. People have sex because it feels good. The idea that sex is reserved for relationships/marriage and love reflects LKH's Christian upbringing. Anita herself constantly whines about her sex life, and even when she's in everyones' face insisting that what she does with her men is perfectly fine, her indignant attitude tells us that she feels otherwise. The lady doth protest too much.

To put it bluntly, I think an Anita who "fucks 'n' runs like a man" from the start would be even more cliche and obnoxious. Her moral reservations about sex and religiosity actually make her more interesting as a character, afaic, as well as providing a potential source of interesting plot tension--which LKH utterly wastes with the charmless deux ex machina of the ardeur. Whether or not it's from LKH's Christian upbringing, it is a part of Anita's original character. This doesn't mean you have to agree with it, but issuing blanket statements about "love and sex are usually separate" and "sex is just about pleasure" strikes me as just as much of a black and white judgment call as Anita's/LKH's views. What is so "juvenile" about linking the two?

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

I also agree that Anita's previous, moral incarnation was a better one. She was far more interesting that way, and yes, I think it really could have been an awesome plot device. It could have been the source of real, believable angst for Anita, but it was thrown to the side in favor of that, as you put it, charmless deux ex machina. Anita has become soulless and unsympathetic because of it.

I'm not saying that wanting love with sex are juvenile at all. I would hope that many of us dream of having both. It's just not always attainable, and the belief that it must be or you must force it to be is juvenile. What I'm saying is that the way that LKH presents it is juvenile. What I'm saying is that love and sex can be separate, not that they are. LKH does not seem to believe that this is true or allowed, yet she wrote the Ardeur. What I meant was that love is not usually in the equation for people who have multiple, casual sex partners, and that sex should not only be allowed for love and marriage.

There is no reason to "fuck'n'run", but it's unrealistic for Anita to have romantic attachments to every single one of the men she sleeps with. Friendship, sure, but not romance. If LKH really wanted Anita to have sex with so many men (and I'm certainly not saying that I agree with the plot turn), why can't she just do it and not try desperately (and unbelievably) to turn it into more to save what she believes is her virtue? Why can't she just enjoy herself? I think that the author was trying to get us to believe in something that she herself does not. That's juvenile to me.

[traumerin.livejournal.com]

I think I understand your argument better now, and agree with most of the points you made. It seems LKH is trying to have her cake and eat it too, while playing fast and loose with Anita's character and, oh, the whole structure of the plot.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

Yup! ^_^

[ladymuttly1.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that Anita is doing a crappy job of having her cake and eating it too. Having punishment sex with Richard that is so violent she's bleeding and cramping does not strike me as a good time.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

I didn't really see that scene as punishment sex. Anita wanted Richard to let himself go, and he did. It was too much for her. I think it was more a case of showing us that, once again, Richard is no good for Anita. The other men are better. Boo Richard. Standard fare.

[kerame.livejournal.com]

I didn't even think the bleeding and cramping were what showed he was no good for Anita. It was him wanting monogamy, and daring to tell her that maybe she should ask herself why so many of her sex-partners were once Raina's, and implying (quite correctly) that they had more in common than Anita would like to think.

It's reemphasized at the end of TH, when Richard calls her evil, while Nathaniel's blind, infantile faith is what supposedly allows her to win the day.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think the physical injuries were supposed to make us see Richard as the bad guy, either. I think it was more a case of "Micah (and others) shows restraint in bed even when Anita tells him to let himself go, because heknows what Anita really wants, but Richard doesn't." Just one more ridiculous reason why Richard should be stoned to death in the town square, I guess. I agree with you about the monogamy/Raina thing, too. Richard is the author's unintentional voice of reason, and is whipped for it every time.