Some of the things that aggravate me about Alpha Male romance stuff is that much of it seems to me to reflect gender roles of male as hulking bad-tempered bad-mannered warrior of pure animus with no anima, who needs to tie into a woman for taming--it had echoes of the pre-feminist revolution world regarding gender nature/role expectations, and the concept which reigned supreme back then which held that women has no place in academia, in politics, in the sciences, in government, in engineering, in architecture, in film production, in television productio, in studio management, as other than clerical worker drone There were no female firefighters, no police, rare was the MD who wasn't male, a vanishingly small percentage of bank officers (as opposed to bank tellers), no women running Fortune 500 companies (there are still few), no women who headed up any college or university that wasn't all female... the alpha male fantasy and science fiction romances seem to toss every concern or reality check that those times existed, or could exist again--a substantial portion of the world population has values, particularly religious values, that "the husband is the lord and master and the wife is submissive" and that no woman should ever be in a role in which she is not subordinate to men; that no man should ever be the subordinate in commerce, politics, academia, the house, or anywhere else to any woman; and that powersharing of equals is unthinkable--that;s assuming that they;re not even more extreme and demand that women be locked away in purdah and hever have any economic or social self-determination and rights for self-determination.
Being a "protected" class means also never having or being allowed the wherewithall to stand on one's own and be capable/competent/considered capable of competency/allowed freedom to be self-reliant (and when the support structure collapses, how is someone who's been bound on a pedestal, supposed to be able to cope, when the former custodian and supporter is gone?!
Getting to Heinlein--Heinlein was an amazing product of his time--he didn't get past the time and culture he came out of, but he went much further in imagining changes, that just about anyone else from his generation and background, regarding women. (That said, I got halfway through I Will Fear No Evil and got stuck when I was a teenager and never since even attempted to go back and try to finish it. I was revolted by it even, and today expect I would find it even more revolting and immature--sort of "Heinlein gets to come out with his fetishes!"
And getting back to f/f -- there were several factors in its market appeal 20+ and more years ago. One of them was prurience on the part of males, another was political lesbianism on the part of women. Homoerotism on the part of males, was much less socially approvable--note that even today, hot wet mouthed liplocks of female entertainers on TV and especially awards shows is "entertainment" and doesn't get much in the way of demands for the FCC to stomp on it... but the Superbowl ad in which two men accidentally kiss, caused a major negative furor. Female/female relationships on drama series and soap operas get much more air time than male/male ones.
TV tends to trail books by decades as regards social trends, and tends to be very much these days a recidivist medium, as opposed to artistic area of endeavor questioning/challenging the status quo--the function of contemporary commercial US TV is to get the advertisers' products sold, with the entertainment as eye candy and mind candy to suck people into being conditioned with commercial messages (including Product Placement in film and TV...). The TV show content therefore has to comply with characters, situations, resolutions, mores, etc., that promote sales of commercial products and get people to listen to/watch commercials.... getting people to think critically, or get wound up in the story beyond a certain point, defeats the commercial goals.
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Some of the things that aggravate me about Alpha Male romance stuff is that much of it seems to me to reflect gender roles of male as hulking bad-tempered bad-mannered warrior of pure animus with no anima, who needs to tie into a woman for taming--it had echoes of the pre-feminist revolution world regarding gender nature/role expectations, and the concept which reigned supreme back then which held that women has no place in academia, in politics, in the sciences, in government, in engineering, in architecture, in film production, in television productio, in studio management, as other than clerical worker drone There were no female firefighters, no police, rare was the MD who wasn't male, a vanishingly small percentage of bank officers (as opposed to bank tellers), no women running Fortune 500 companies (there are still few), no women who headed up any college or university that wasn't all female... the alpha male fantasy and science fiction romances seem to toss every concern or reality check that those times existed, or could exist again--a substantial portion of the world population has values, particularly religious values, that "the husband is the lord and master and the wife is submissive" and that no woman should ever be in a role in which she is not subordinate to men; that no man should ever be the subordinate in commerce, politics, academia, the house, or anywhere else to any woman; and that powersharing of equals is unthinkable--that;s assuming that they;re not even more extreme and demand that women be locked away in purdah and hever have any economic or social self-determination and rights for self-determination.
Being a "protected" class means also never having or being allowed the wherewithall to stand on one's own and be capable/competent/considered capable of competency/allowed freedom to be self-reliant (and when the support structure collapses, how is someone who's been bound on a pedestal, supposed to be able to cope, when the former custodian and supporter is gone?!
Getting to Heinlein--Heinlein was an amazing product of his time--he didn't get past the time and culture he came out of, but he went much further in imagining changes, that just about anyone else from his generation and background, regarding women. (That said, I got halfway through I Will Fear No Evil and got stuck when I was a teenager and never since even attempted to go back and try to finish it. I was revolted by it even, and today expect I would find it even more revolting and immature--sort of "Heinlein gets to come out with his fetishes!"
And getting back to f/f -- there were several factors in its market appeal 20+ and more years ago. One of them was prurience on the part of males, another was political lesbianism on the part of women. Homoerotism on the part of males, was much less socially approvable--note that even today, hot wet mouthed liplocks of female entertainers on TV and especially awards shows is "entertainment" and doesn't get much in the way of demands for the FCC to stomp on it... but the Superbowl ad in which two men accidentally kiss, caused a major negative furor. Female/female relationships on drama series and soap operas get much more air time than male/male ones.
TV tends to trail books by decades as regards social trends, and tends to be very much these days a recidivist medium, as opposed to artistic area of endeavor questioning/challenging the status quo--the function of contemporary commercial US TV is to get the advertisers' products sold, with the entertainment as eye candy and mind candy to suck people into being conditioned with commercial messages (including Product Placement in film and TV...). The TV show content therefore has to comply with characters, situations, resolutions, mores, etc., that promote sales of commercial products and get people to listen to/watch commercials.... getting people to think critically, or get wound up in the story beyond a certain point, defeats the commercial goals.