The Love of a Good Woman (or not)

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

I love this community; it’s such an outlet for frustration with yaabis and hypocrisy. We’re all aware that homosexuality is clearly an uncomfortable subject for LKH, and for Anita, her proxy. This is evidenced throughout the text of many different books. What I’m not sure has been properly explored, however, besides the unpleasant themes of sexual exploitation, rape, and other forms of sexual violence, is the hypocrisy of sexual expression in Anita’s own worldview. There is a jarring contrast between what she says she believes in, or what she’s uncomfortable with, and what she actually does.

 

 

First, let us take Anita’s discomfort with pure homosexuality. It is clear that there are no entirely gay characters, whatever LKH actually writes. For example, the British vampire stripper Byron was said to be gay when he first turned up, professing he wanted to sleep with Jean-Claude but had been turned down; and then he slept with Anita. I believe this is another incidence of casual rape in LKH’s novels. She gives no feasible explanation for Byron actually consenting to sleep with Anita – what matters is that she needs to feed off him, he’s available, and Jean-Claude does not stick up for his right not to consent. Afterwards, it is lamely suggested that he doesn’t mind terribly and that it was somehow a fantastic experience for him. In "Cerulean Sins", it is said that Belle-Morte and Musette do not believe that it is rape if the rapist has previously had consensual sex with their victim before, or if the victim has had an orgasm. This is very similar to a fundamentalist worldview in some Muslim countries that if a woman had an orgasm while she was being raped, she consented, and that it was adultery or extramarital sex. I think this seems to be LKH’s abhorrent viewpoint: Byron physically enjoyed himself, so he must have liked it.

 

Asher isn’t allowed to be just gay either. It is expressed in a contradicting manner in the text that he sought out Julianna because Jean-Claude wouldn’t love him just for himself, which would suggest he is gay and was compromising for his bisexual partner ("Danse Macabre") but in the same book, and in "Cerulean Sins", it is made to look more like bisexuality. Anita cannot simply be a compromise for Asher like Julianna was, LKH makes it so that he desires her for herself as well – in "Burnt Offerings", rather than having an actual fight with Jean-Claude or thrashing out their mutual issues and grief, Anita is injected to magically kiss it better and somehow that dissipates his anger towards Jean-Claude. In turn, Jean-Claude stays by Anita’s side the whole time. With the history between them, it would have been expected for Jean-Claude to actually leave Anita briefly to try and sort things out with Asher alone. In the rest of the books, they sleep chastely next to each other when they die for the day, but otherwise they are never alone, and Jean-Claude is clearly too afraid of Anita to just have sex with him when she’s absent. (Either that, or he cannot get it up without a woman being there. Either way, there is no gay sex happening in an Anita Blake novel without Anita being present.)

 

Anita clearly has a jealousy problem, but is intolerant of other people’s possessiveness in a monogamous society. It’s one of the issues that is never truly addressed. She admits to it, but not like it is a fault to be rectified – it is just a fact, the status quo, a law to be abided by. The same thing happened in "Cerulean Sins" after she was scared shitless by Asher rolling her and got all uppity about vampire powers. Despite being confronted by the knowledge that she was two-faced, she was a liar and a hypocrite, she was cutting Asher and Jean-Claude off from each other and from the pleasures that could only be experienced by them because of their vampire heritage – was she moved? No, she sat stubbornly where she was and went into a black and white denial of these unpleasant home-truths. It was wrong, she said, for Asher to have used vampire powers on her even though she asked him to and he should have read her mind and known that. (How, it is not explained.)

 

Anita’s homophobia doesn’t prevent her, however, from participating in a threesome with Jean-Claude and Augustine (I refuse to say Auggie, as it is not an appropriate derivative of the name and detracts from the character; if she wanted him to seem like a Master of the City rather than some cartoonish fop with a silly name, she shouldn’t have done that or used it so consistently.) She watches him and Jean-Claude kiss and even have sex, and admits that it "flat out does it" for her with her usual stilted phrase, yet this seeming change in viewpoint mysteriously never gets around to letting Asher and Jean-Claude have hot gay sex, with or without her. There was also that threesome with Jean-Claude and Richard that had definite weird homoerotic undertones, but Richard reverted to type (Anita type) immediately afterwards.

 

Anita is also freaked out by lesbianism, or sex between women, yet she has lesbian smooches with Thea in "Danse Macabre" and metaphysical sex with Belle-Morte. When Sylvie is the only wolf in the room who could help swallow her beast, she conveniently forgets that she is gay and wanders off, when before in "The Lunatic Café" I think it was, Sylvie hinted she found Anita attractive. In "Danse Macabre", I also found an intriguing passage (page 188 in my copy):

 

"In college I had a friend, a girlfriend, a girl who was a friend. She and I went shopping together. Slept over at each other’s dorm rooms. I undressed in front of her because she was a girl. Then toward the end of college she told me she was gay. We were still friends, but she went into that guy category for me. You don’t undress in front of people who see you as a sex object."

 

This is a strikingly masculine belief – guys are always mocking each other about being gay, and pick on men that are, because they are afraid of being sex objects to other men. Every gay man must want to have sex with them; every gay man in the changing room is a predator who is surreptitiously sizing up their equipment and their asses. It might explain a little of Anita’s conflict. On the one hand, she has a flash of the same red-blooded women who read yaoi because two sexy guys getting it on is really exciting for them. Anita is attracted to homoerotic undertones between pretty men, but on the other hand she is repulsed by it as she does think kind of like a man – that it’s wrong and dirty, and in the same way that some straight men believe lesbians can be cured by experiencing their penis, Anita believes that no man would ever be gay if they had been with the right woman (or her).

 

Anita would be an incredible poster-child for the ex-gay movement. "Sign up and bonk Anita, and those pesky feelings will just go right away!" (warning: the church takes no responsibility for death or injury caused by proximity to the doom-crotch).

 

But if being seen as a sex object freaks her out so much (and clearly it does, she threw a fit when Graham wanted to get into her pants and when guards started wearing red shirts despite her agreement with the policy) why does she continue to have public sex with multiple partners? Why did she participate with Augustine in a threesome in the middle of the room where the Masters had been meeting? Why did she have sex in the car with Graham in it – and getting a taste of her addictive sex mojo – if his presence bothered her, or if public sex bothered her?

 

Another hypocrisy – how does Anita choose her sex partners? Clearly she didn’t have sex with Graham as she didn’t find him attractive, but she didn’t want to bed Requiem even though she did find him hot?

Comments

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

I love this post b/c it is so very achingly true. Homosexual characters get the shaft (or don't depending on what they really want). And is it just me or ar there only two lesbians ever mentioned? If so, it's understandable that they're dating each other. After all, if they're out looking for Ms Right they might 'contaminate' the rest of the dating pool. (Not that the female members of the dating pool ever seem to hit the double digits.)

And men get raped left, right, and center but no one bats an eyelash. (I skipped most of whatever-book-London-is-in but I did catch that scene. I felt an overwhelming urge to follow London into the bathroom to tell him all those things you're supposed to tell a rape victim - it's not your fault, let's call the police, you didn't bring it on yourself even with the addiction, etc. Then build an ark for the poor abused but occasionally excellent characters and sail away with them. We'd leave Anita on the mainland to try to hold the world-ending flood back with the force of her 'personality.')

Even more than Anita's inability to see/hear/experience a "NO!" I find JC's inability to defend either himself or anyone else even more troubling. B/c with his background of catamite and party favor and whipping boy, combined with the pressing NEED of the ardeur, he'd have to be all kinds of deliciously screwed up. (The incubus thing could have rocked if it weren't a magical STD. I'd love that concept in a more competent writer's hands.) And if he were even remotely healthy mentally/spiritually/emotionally the sanctity of "NO!" would be of paramount importance to him. But he can't say 'no' to Anita - not in their unequal relationship and not on behalf of her victims. Hell, he can't even say no to visitors. (And I'll leave untouched what I REALLY want to say about that and character development and character continuity. Seriously.) (I'll also shut up about what he should have been looking for in a Human Servant. Sheer power isn't everything.)

I love Asher (and his rage!) but the JC/Asher/Julianna relationship concerns me. To summarize my wild theories Asher did one of four things - picked Julianna as a game piece ONLY to keep JC since Asher was gay and JC was bi w/ strong leanings towards women, took Julianna b/c JC loved her and she was his strongest rival for JC thus securing an eternal link with JC, picked Julianna since they would all be mature enough for Asher/Julianna to be friends while Asher/JC and Julianna/JC were lovers, or Asher and JC are bi but with their strongest leanings in opposite directions so he went out to find a woman that they would both love and be attracted to who would be strong and mature enough to fulfill both of their needs as well as to communicate what she in turn needed from each of them(this last would be the hardest). Honestly, only options three and four could possibly end happily - or in centuries long mourning and misery. (Although JC with performance problems w/o a girl has interesting shades of angst and humor in it. I'd love it if it was done correctly - especially if he really did love Asher.)

(And JC must be all flavors of fantastic in bed, his looks completely aside. I mean, everyone has had his cookies several times and they all want to possess the bakery. And centuries don't seem to dull the urge to keep the baker.)

I can't comment on Richard since I have many, many delightfully screwed up theories on Richard/Anita. To summarize I'm thinking he's a Phillip replacement and she's very carefully blind.

That thing with the college lesbian was just hurtful and unnecessary. I've been on the straight side of that equation and there's no need to get all weird and paranoid. (And I'm all about hugs and sharing beds in hotel rooms and whatever.) She should just be gracefully flattered if some poor lesbian shows an interest in her. (After all, in that universe lesbians are like unicorns!)

At the end of the day, it says something unpleasant about you when you're comparing possible sexual partners with Star Trek red shirts. Really, really unpleasant.

So yeah. I mostly agree with your thoughts.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

Ah, can I friend you? You've definitely picked up on a lot of what bothered me about these books :D Relationships ought to be interesting between characters, but this screwed up, they tend to disturb.

Asher stated in "Danse Macabre" the following explanation:

"I sought a woman for my human servant when I realized that Jean-Claude would never be content with just men, with just me."

So it must be a combination of the first and the fourth explanation that you offered. The relationship apparently only lasted about twenty years or so before Julianna's death. Asher must have cared for her, as he mourned her death to the point of hating JC over it, and they both left Belle-Morte to protect Julianna from being pimped out by Belle-Morte to her favourites who would have abused her (note that one of Belle-Morte's favourites, like Anita's, was noteworthy only because of his monstrous soda-can penis.)

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

*is flattered* I'd love to be friended! As a warning though - I'm a random updater at best. As in months w/o updating then a huge rant on JKR's House of Black or books I love or random thing-that-I-saw-and-must-now-tell-everyone-about-in-gut-wrenching-detail.

By the by, thanks for the quote. I basically skimmed chunks of that book and skipped the rest of it so it's nice to get a character-based quote for why Asher did what he did with Julianna. (Now I kind of want to go back to Borders and skim a little more carefully.) It certainly cleans up some of my thoughts on Asher. (But it makes me wonder about some of the later flashbacks of Asher via JC.)

How did you figure the twenty years thing? (I stopped trying to figure out dates when I realized that JC was either four hundred or six hundred and that the author didn't really care which. To me it would make a huge difference in terms of character development and relationships, especially between JC & Asher but hey, not my story.)

Perhaps Micah is Belle's favorite's long lost grandson? Because the idea of a world filled with these men is... intimidating. Better it be a rare genetic abnormality in certain families than a large population thing.

[medicineseller9.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I read it in one of the early books - I tend to squirrel away useless bits of information like a magpie - but I'll go back and be sure. I wasn't right about Narcissus' fate because I got him mixed up with another character (they are quite interchangeable).

I'm sure an early conversation was sparked between JC and Anita by the painting of Asher, JC and Julianna over the fireplace, and he told her about when they left Belle-Morte's and how long they had together. I've no idea how old JC is either. I think four hundred: she originally said one/two hundred, but he was concealing his real age from Nikolaos and it was closer to four in actuality. She seems to have similar problems remembering how old Damian is.

[beloved828.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why so few people seem to believe that either A. men cannot be raped, or B. it's fine as long as it's a man. Some of the posters here have wondered just how popular the Anita Blake books would be if the genders were reversed. I'm surprised that RAIIN hasn't had something to say on the issue. It could be that, contrary to LKH's apparent belief that her books are the most important of the era, the series is just that far under most people's radar.

I love Asher, too. At least, I loved him until he became Anita-ized. I honestly enjoyed hearing about his past with JC and Julianna more than I did anything else in the books. I think that the last scenario you presented was most likely the case. I think that Asher (like all "gay" characters in the AB series) is extremely selectively bisexual, and worked to find a woman that both he and JC could be happy with. We've seen just how selective JC is, so as long as Asher liked her, I'm sure anyone would do. I'm sure that JC is fabulous in bed because he is a stereotypical male lead in an Urban Fantasy novel. He's a vampire, he's very metro, he's great looking, great in bed, rich, and bi. I would like him if he wasn't so two-dimensional. I'd rather read about him and Asher before the personality vacuum got to them both.

Richard, I believe, is LKH's avatar/ voodoo doll for her ex. He went from being Anita's white knight (early, pre-divorce days) to being the devil himself. I love how LKH struggles to make us all hate him when he is so often the only character that makes any damned sense. Not that Richard's not completely screwed up, but I see him more as the gardener of the daffodil farm rather than one of the flowers. I liked him more before the break-up. I liked Anita more, too.

I also agree with you about the college roommate thing. It was very unnecessary. I think LKH threw that out there in total ignorance of how it sounded, just like most things that she writes. To quote a favorite writer, she couldn't buy a clue with a hundred bucks in a dollar store.

The main issue that I have with the Anita Blake series is that I truly believe that the gay characters are there to be hip and edgy. That LKH was able to, or even bothered to, create a decent past for JC and Asher honestly surprised me. She obviously has little respect for or understanding of homosexuality. She's far too conservative to be able to understand, and therefore, write about, homosexual relationships. I doubt highly that she has any real gay or lesbian friends. Or if she did, she doesn't anymore. Not if they read her books.

*ack, I orginally posted this in the wrong section!*