Actually I think he may have gotten the idea from the "feminists" on Tumblr. Some of them are a bit.....off.
I think the physically strong characters came about because people wanted strong woman characters and the definition of "strong" changed to mean physically only. Movies came out with a kickass woman and everyone thought she was cool. So, that became the only way people could see a woman bring strong. Or it started because someone just liked the idea of a woman kicking ass (in tight clothes) and later filmmakers got lazy with the character development. (I apologize if this doesn't make any sense. I'm fighting a headache right now.)
This comment just proves you're clueless about the argument you started. You just straight up don't understand what anyone's been trying to say to you.
I'll play a bit of a devil's advocate, and say @Chrysostom probably ran into a few bad feminists, and they spoiled the whole lot for them. But bad feminists do exist and pretending they don't isn't gonna solve anything. They do exist, but we are not bad feminists, we are the good kind, and most are the good kind, and we all don't agree with what they say and do. All of us just want equal rights for all people, isn't that what feminism is supposed to be? (In short, we are not Andrea Mears and do not go around assaulting people. Unless you are, but I don't think so.)
"Feminist" is similar to "liberal", "conservative", "socialist", and "Christian" in that it means very different things to different people. It isn't a terribly informative label in and of itself.
It's also a term that has been purposefully used as a negative in order to make it one. It's all about framing. Framing the issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics
I may be stating the obvious here, but incredibly brave and strong people do exist. Granted, they are pretty rare, but I've met quite a few and compared to them, I'm a coward and a weakling. And no, not nearly all of them have been physically strong, but some have been. For example, one of the women I know is a krav maga instructor, a successful lawyer, a caring mother, a loving wife, and one of the mentally strongest and most stable people I've met, men included. Sure, if I wrote her into a story, people would probably call her unrealistic, but just because most people can't match her strength (physical and mental) doesn't mean people like her don't exist. Likewise, it doesn't mean characters like that couldn't be written well. I believe you can write pretty much any character with any traits and do it badly or well. I usually do badly, but I try my best to improve all the time, and while I don't have the guts to try to write such a perfect character yet, I have written a couple of physically very capable females, but naturally they do have other kinds of weaknesses and they do encounter lots of adversity and don't succeed in their undertakings anywhere close to always, so I'd claim that physically strong and empowered female characters aren't inherently inferior (i.e. unrealistic) to any other character type (not saying you claimed exactly that, just voicing my opinion on the matter as it veers close to the subject). I think the problem is that he's the only person in the thread who goes around claiming people claim bad feminists don't exist. Nobody else in the thread has claimed anything like that.
A bad feminist is one who doesn't want equality but supremacy of feminine over masculine. I don't call them "radical" because I don't even consider them feminists.
@Man in the Box I don't think anyone would consider that feminism but the extremely rare nutjobs that actually hold that opinion.
Badass fighters can also be the real thing. Different readers want different things. Personally I like badass fighters and action-y characters (male and female) 'cause I'm into that kind of stuff irl. I guess I, on some level, relate to that mindset, while I'm a bit too much of a bonehead to relate strongly to some brilliant scientist woman whose strength comes from inventing an FTL drive or some such. Of course they're very interesting characters just the same, but physical strength has always appealed to me so I tend to veer towards action and adventure novels. As a reader (and writer) I do demand realism, though, but people can be realistically badass, no doubt about that. But physical strength does not a strong woman make, that's a given.
Depends. She's badass if she does it to steal from evil corporations, but if she's scamming the gullible elderly, then she's just an a-hole.
I'm probably in the minority in that I like female characters to be ordinary women who aren't amazingly good at anything, just like I like the male characters who aren't ridiculously good at anything either. It's so rare you meet anyone in real life who's a genius in one particular area. Unless it's brilliantly written, I don't feel like it's ever that believable, sometimes, but rarely. Just give me ordinary people please! They're so much more interesting than talented/ special people.
I don't like unrealistic either; characters who become awesome without even trying, who don't pay their dues, who just have some random gift that makes them automatically amazing. I never got anything without hard work, so I don't want fictional characters to get anything either. Sadly, there are people who just excel at certain things without even trying all that hard. Like some physically adept people who seem to grasp every sport in a blink of an eye, who have such a good hand-eye coordination they manage to apply it to multiple things, and who blow away us mere mortals. They exist, but there's no obligation for the writer to write about them. There are also amazingly beautiful people out there, so one of them might as well exist in a story. It's absolutely belivable, and doesn't even require brilliant writing, imo. For me to enjoy it, it just has to be rooted firmly in real life. I also think a lot of "ordinary" people strive to be amazingly good at things they're passionate about. You probably strive to be an amazingly good writer (I know I do), yet we're both ordinary people (well, I assume you are. For all I know you actually have some awesome, mind-blowing skill). Similarly, to me it's inspiring to read about characters who have ambitions and goals, even if they weren't always all that noble.
@KaTrian I'm in no way suggesting there aren't people out there that are amazingly good at certain things, just saying that I'd rather read about someone who isn't. I think more ordinary characters who don't have crazy, bad-ass skills are more interesting, but that's just me. They can strive to be good, but I'd rather read about someone who strives and never quite makes it than someone who does. Just a personal preference. The acquisition of skills for most fictional characters tends to be conveniently quick and easy whereas that's never, or very rarely, the case in real life. And even if it is, it's nowhere near as interesting as the character who urgently need to acquire a skill and just can't wrap their head around it.
That's what I generally dislike as well since even talented greats have to work their asses off to become truly great. I do like reading about skilled badasses, but I want to either get the impression they have shed blood, sweat, and tears for that badass skill or I want to see the process of learning it and when they do reach a suitably badass level with said skill, I want to see them put to the test, i.e. thrown into the proverbial meat grinder where they'd get decimated if it wasn't for that skill and even with their badassery, they just barely scrape through and never without a suitable amount of agony, be it figurative or literal. Since I'm like @KaTrian in the sense that I appreciate action-oriented characters, I tend to love characters who are tough and badass, yes, but also have trained their asses off to make them bad and who still get seriously hurt over the course of the story. Yeah, I'm a sucker for dramatic hero stuff. But only as long as it stays within the confines of realism; the closer it veers to superhero-land, the more interest I lose. Give me a realistic story about realistic heroes any day over overly powerful wishfulfillment "badasses" who breeze through all obstacles. It's usually more prevalent in movies/TV-shows, but some books do have characters who just seem above all challenges and never even get seriously hurt, no matter what kind of odds they face (kinda like Torin Kerr, the MC of the Valor-series). That's when the story just gets boring and predictable. I don't much enjoy the other extreme end either, i.e. exceptionally useless characters who are always at the mercy of their circumstances or have to rely on others to bust their asses to save them. It's as if some authors are terrified that people will call their character a wishfulfillment fantasy, unrealistic, too perfect etc. if she shows any backbone or skill, so then they turn their MC into a weak idiot who couldn't find her ass with two hands and couldn't fight off a cold. But that, too, is just a personal preference.
Good for you, mod. If there actually ARE people claiming bad feminists don't exist, I don't think some members would have problem with my replies mentioning the "bad feminists". Learn from Duchess-Yukine-Suoh how to think from wide perspective instead of just barely defending feminist like all the bad feminists claiming there are no bad feminists. (I'm sure you gonna say I'm assuming you are defending feminist... lol. But I no longer care.)
Ah, just ignore my last post. I was very unstable today. My apologies for the confusion and offensive language. EDIT: Alright, look. As my head's getting clearer right now, I would like to apologize for the previous unnecessary argument. I've been very emotionally unstable lately and very easily offended. But you all got to know that I meant nothing offensive and therefore I would like to apologize again if any of my words is offensive. Hopefully you get my point.
@Chrysostom, no biggie. I think we all agree there are good feminsits and bad feminists (in addition to misandrists and extremists), just like is the case with every group of people, and that "feminist" in itself is a broad blanket term that's not really all that useful in describing people since so many different individuals fall under that category.
