Fishladies, burn your seashell bra!

[damselfish]

I’ve been reading some mermaid books and a lot more reviews/synopses, and I just have to ask:

Why do so many of these writers make mermaid society so soul-crushingly sexist? One of them, I kid you not, involved mermaids being nothing more than brood mares who had no choice in who they got married off to, while men got to flit around and pick out their wife like they’re on a car lot. I mean, sexist in ways human societies generally never were. While most books are merely rife with garden variety fantasy-world sexism, even that premise should raise your eyebrows. It makes no sense* unless you’re pulling off certain myths, and these books never are. If they did, they’d run the risk of being interesting and judging by the Goodreads lists, we can’t have that. Interesting may as well be a cardinal sin for how often I see anything ‘interesting’ show up.

Sexism could be interesting, but no, we’ve got boring old same-old, same-old sexism. We’re not talking about myths where mermen are ugly and beastly and force the pretty mermaids to lie with them as in some folklore, they’re societies of preternaturally pretty fishpeople who just so happen to think women don’t get any rights. Some… have less rights than others.

How on Earth do so many people go from “maneating, mind-melting songstresses” to “oppressed beyond your wildest Gorean dreams”?

Because I tell ya, when I want to read about pretty fishladies, their pretty fish tails, and their escapades under the shining sea, I am totally on board for a ride on the Patriarchy Express.

Now brb I need to balance things out and write about 50,000 YA paranormal romances in which mermaids tear men limb from limb and eat their tongues when they cry “reverse sexism!”

*Except that it does make sense. Falling back onto sexist tropes is an easy way to create tension and it's lazy, lazy, lazy, but I'll take lazy over the books that are sexist for no good reason other than habit.

Reblogged from my tumblr because dang it needed to be said.