Comments on: Guest Post: Sarah Rees Brennan on Movies & Sex

By: Carla-Lee.com » [links] Sex, Race, and Media: Blog Recommendations

Carla-Lee.com » [links] Sex, Race, and Media: Blog Recommendations — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:40:04 +0000

[...] Sarah Rees Brennan on Movies and Sex. (Sarah Rees Brennan is the author of teen sff The Demon Lexicon trilogy. Though I haven’t yet posted my thoughts on the first book, I did give it to my sister for the winter holidays, which is a recommendation in and of itself. I read it last year, but didn’t want to post my thoughts on it because I knew my sister would find it interesting and I didn’t want her buying it for herself before we exchanged gifts.) [...]

By: Linksplosion! Pick ‘n’ mix edition « Zero at the Bone

Linksplosion! Pick ‘n’ mix edition « Zero at the Bone — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:50:14 +0000

[...] Guest Post: Sarah Rees Brennan on Movies & Sex over at Justine Larbalestier’s blog. And—well, I just think it would be great if we could have heroines, even teenage heroines—sure, some of whom have decided to wait or haven’t decided to wait but just haven’t decided not to, but some of whom didn’t wait, had a disastrous experience and came through it just fine. Some of whom didn’t wait, had a great time, parted ways, repeated same five or a hundred times, and were also just fine. [...]

By: S

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:31:11 +0000

Thank you for that. This has been an issue that has bothered me for a really long time. It’s something I’m struggling to fight in myself, and it’s even more frustrating to realize that most people don’t see the double standard as a problem. Most concerning of all, I feel like it’s something women use to tear other women they are jealous of down.

By: MissAttitude

MissAttitude — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:22:32 +0000

Hilarious on target post! I agree with all the points you make, I would love to see more books about girls who had sex as teens and survived without feeling like complete crap, because some people have a nice first time or a just ok first time but they could keep on having sex.

This happened to me the other day, I was dancing and this guy said I was “one of those girls” who (I’ve cleaned it up a bit) was always all up on guys. Nevermind the fact that this isn’t true (I just bumped into the guy but he took it to mean something else entirely) there was a guy all over two girls but no on ewas saying anything. Why is a bigger deal made if girls sleep around (or people think they do). Ugh. I hate double standards, lol that’s such a duh statement.

Come back and guest post again! Feel Better Justine =)

By: Tweets that mention Guest Post: Sarah Rees Brennan on Movies & Sex | Justine Larbalestier -- Topsy.com

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:54:11 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Aditya Bidikar, Sarah Rees Brennan, Aishwarya S, annemjw, Rebecca Hains and others. Rebecca Hains said: Guest Post: Sarah Rees Brennan on Movies & Sex http://bit.ly/anjTvb (@ GReader) [...]

By: SF Signal

SF Signal — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:33:22 +0000

SF Tidbits for 2/8/10…

Interviews/ProfilesFantasy Worlds interviews Vera Nazarian.Flipping Pages for All Ages interviews Rachel Caine.Innsmouth free Press interviews David Conyers.John Scalzi’s The Big Idea: James Knapp.Odyssey Podcasts features Jack Ketchum.Gerry Canavan h…

By: meredith

meredith — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:54:38 +0000

I have to admit, I really quite enjoyed reading the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants books – right up until the point when I realised that every single one of those girls had a Major Breakdown (i.e. lasting Months) after having sex for the first time. Never again. It’s straight out of Victorian the-wedding-night-could-well-upset-the-delicate-balance-of-her-mind-better-make-a-reservation-at-the-local-madhouse-just-in-case…thank-goodness-this-fits-in-with-my-dastardly-plan-eh?
I can’t forgive a 100% strike rate. It’s too gross!

By: Ari B

Ari B — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:05:39 +0000

^^ I am late to this party, but I wanted to say that I love your essays on feminism, and sometimes link my friends to them when we start having arguments.

Also, if you have never seen Chasing Amy, you should give it a try! I did not actually like it, particularly, but it is a movie that very directly deals with this topic.

By: Sarah Rees Brennan

Sarah Rees Brennan — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:50:20 +0000

@ Najela Sadly, there is no way to stop people calling your characters sluts! My heroine’s been called one, Justine’s Micah (from Liar) as well, I’ve seen it happen to Cassie Clare’s female characters as well. Happens all the time, because the world in general still has this weird view of women. Nothing we can do about it.

Except for writing women who don’t have this view of other people or themselves (or possibly who do, and get it challenged) and having respect for your character yourself? Trying to see her as a whole person in your mind, and thus one decision she makes not be the be-all and end-all.

By: Ali

Ali — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:53:10 +0000

@Diana Peterfreund – I had EXACTLY the same reaction to 27 dresses!

@Megan – What she said! Including the blinded by adoration bit

I think 10 Things I Hate About You deals well with teenage sex and the having/not having thereof. I also totally agree with the person who mentioned Clueless. Also, Heathers? I mean, he was clearly NOT the right guy to have sex with (I think the phrase ‘Whoops, you are a tool, MY MISTAKE.’ also applies here!) but Veronica is never presented as ‘ruined’ because of it. She is presented as awesome and still standing (literally) at the end even though she has just been through a whole lot of CRAZY.

What does everyone think about the way sex is treated in Gossip Girl? I can’t really decide if it’s good or not. Thinking of Blair here, on the one hand she a)sleeps with a guy in what SEEMS a stereotypically you-will-regret-this-in-the-morning way, but then falls in love with that guy and is eventually really happy for it, and b) is presented as an actual desiring sexual subject towards more than one guy, rather than an object, which Dear TV: Can we have more of, please?

On the other hand, sex/withholding sex becomes kind of a weapon in the mind games going on between her and Chuck in season 2, which I can’t help but feel is not so much a healthy way to think about sex.

Also, Sarah, I like this almost as much as your essays on ladies in books, which are some of my favourite things on the whole wide internet. I miss Justine on here, but yay guest bloggers!

By: Diana Peterfreund

Diana Peterfreund — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:39:55 +0000

Thank you, Canicula!

The magic system in the book is based around a misogynistic (and, as Lauren pointed out, socially constructed) definition — but just like the social construct in the real world, it’s something the characters are forced to deal with, whether that means choosing the construct, trying to find a way to live within the construct, or telling the construct to take a hike and living their life on their own means.

Justine and I have actually had several conversations about the similarities between the magic in Rampant and the magic in MORM; namely that they’re the kind of magics you could do quite happily without.

I must admit I’ve been surprised by the number of readers who ask what “Phil is going to do now.” Phil is actually in a far better position than Astrid. Freed from the dangers and restrictions of the magic, Phil is in a position to do what she wishes with her life. Astrid, however, is in a very different boat.

By: Sabine

Sabine — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:19:44 +0000

Oooh, have you read Loretta Chase’s Your Scandalous Ways? The heroine is a lady of negotiable affections (though very, very, extremely expensive;) I was sooo happy about that:)

That “girls having sex are bad” thing kinda really struck me hard while watching Vampire Diaries. The few girls that actually had sex with someone not their true love and/ or not strictly monogamous ended up either turned and killed or enthralled and screwed over.

By: Najela

Najela — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 05:43:45 +0000

I have a question for you, SRB; How do you address a character that has sex without readers labeling her as a slut or a whore? And what about those characters that are more sexually experienced, how do you give them all an air of dignity (even if they really don’t have anything to be ashamed about)?

By: bettyboo

bettyboo — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:13:28 +0000

And in the meantime, a girl was buried alive in Turkey for talking to boys….

By: Jessie

Jessie — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 04:07:37 +0000

I don’t blog a lot, but I love reading books and reviewing books, and reading reviews, and then reviewing more books. And I particularly love your reviews. I once used one as a model for my year ten English class and they thought you were awesome.

Anyway, I’m posting to see whether you’ve read Thomas Hardy’s “A Pair of Blue Eyes”? Your thoughts (about how morality, women and sex are represented) made me think of this fabulous novel. The theme’s well worn but never really gets old.

Anyway, it’s a ripper book and I have such a love-hate relationship with Hardy I couldn’t help but recommend it.

I reviewed it for a zine and popped it up on the blog (that I rarely post to, except about my garden) http://tinyurl.com/yaqzmhb

By: Megan

Megan — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:27:57 +0000

I’m sorry, I think I have to hijack this post and be a complete Joss Whedon fangirl for a moment. It’s not a movie (well, the bulk of it isn’t), but this is one of the reasons I love the show Firefly so much; all of the women in it (except for River – the poor dear had quite enough going on in her head without adding sex into the mix too!) were comfortable in their sexuality and didn’t have a problem expressing it. The most obvious example is Inara, of course; as a Companion her job is all about sex, but in this ‘Verse Companions are treated with the utmost respect. Inara is more than a “whore”; she adds femininity and class to the crew and is probably the most educated of its members, save for the Tams. In combat, she outwits her opponent (i.e. Saffron in “Trash”) while Jayne and Mal just run around shooting everyone. A great example of what you are talking about in this post, although it is said to a male character, is in the episode “Jaynestown”, where the town’s magistrate hires her to “make a man” out of his son. The son is embarrassed about the entire incident and Inara tells him that being a virgin is simply one state of being and losing it is another, and that neither state should reflect on you as an individual, which delighted me. Then there’s Kaylee, who’s shown many times to be boy crazy and up for a roll in the hay anytime. She even got that line in the movie – “Goin’ on a year now, I ain’t had nothin’ twist my nethers ain’t run on batteries!” – that showed she’s not scared of talking about sex. But she’s never condemned for that – she even got her job as Serenity’s mechanic because she figured out how to fix the engine while having sex with the former engineer! Zoe is less upfront about her sexuality, and usually she thinks of herself as “one of the boys”, but we see Zoe as a women as well as a warrior in her scenes with her husband Wash. She knows she’s sexy, as evidenced by the scene in “Shindig” where she announces that if she were going to wear a dress, she wants one with “slink.” But at the same time she doesn’t use her sexuality to get what she wants; she uses her head. Zoe is a great example of a character that didn’t have to be female, but her dichotomy of woman and warrior is excellent and far too rarely seen in entertainment.

(I hope all that made sense to anyone who hasn’t seen Firefly. I tend to be a little blinded by adoration when I talk about this show.)

By: Rebekah

Rebekah — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:50:14 +0000

I wish there were more heroines who were simply disinterested in relationships, making sex a general non-issue (like Egg in most of Boy Proof), or just interested in sex/relationships in general without fixating on one person (Ruby, kind of, in the Ruby Oliver books) or even with a narrow fixation, but a willingness to have sex with other people (like Jessica Darling), or even heroines who have no interest in relationships but then develop one, but without becoming slaves to the idea of marriage (which was one of the things I enjoyed most about Graceling, in that Katsa was firm in her decision not to marry, and maintained that position even after becoming both romantically and sexually involved with Po).

By: Canicula

Canicula — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:18:44 +0000

Unfortunately, I cannot name any movies I feel really showcased sexuality being removed from moral value. But with books, I liked Rampant by Diana Peterfreund for this very reason. (Spoilers if you haven’t read it, which you should) At first, I was very happy with Astrid’s attitude toward her boyfriend. She’s with him because she feels socially obligated to be, and has no interest in sleeping with him. And it’s really just about him; it’s not the sex she objects to, really. I liked that she was a virgin and cool with it, but not worried about losing it either.

As the book progressed, I admit I started to worry. The whole unicorn hunting thing being tied to a girl’s virginity bothered me to no end for a while. Up until Phil’s whole ordeal. Now, Phil is “defiled” for losing her virginity. She can’t hunt unicorns anymore. And yet she’s just as awesome as she was before. She’s still Phil. And she still manages to be useful to her fellow hunters. I love Phil. I love her for a hundred little reasons that have nothing to do with her sexuality and one or two that do. I love how it’s a non-issue with her, while still being lifechanging. Very realistic.

And I love Giovanni’s attitude toward sex with Astrid. It’s refreshing to see a guy that wants to wait. It always seems to be the girl (what’s up with that, btw?) in everything. I love how he doesn’t want Astrid to do anything she might regret, that he genuinely cares for her in a way that’s not at all related to sex, and has no problem never sleeping with her even though he wants to. Because he loves her the way she is, in a way that’s totally unrelated to her sexual activity or lack thereof.

By: Sarah Rees Brennan

Sarah Rees Brennan — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:12:20 +0000

@ Julia Rios I hold firm in my conviction that Clueless is a truly great movie. People in the comments are talking about seeing different views, and I enjoyed that Cher the heroine was waiting, her best friend Dionne has sex for the first time during the movie, and their new friend Ty has had sex plenty of times and except during one regrettable fight, that’s all fairly cool in the friend group. Ten Things I Hate About You was also mentioned, and I agree with it.

@ Ace I agree with being totally impressed by Ready Or Not – I liked that the heroine decided she would, and the heroine’s beautiful older sister decided she was waiting thank-you-very-much, and that both of them felt pretty good about their decisions.

@ Natalie Thank you! And indeed, the lovely RJ Anderson makes, as she often does, very good points. Decision not to totally okay and often wise! I will say that my reading experience has been different from yours: I’d love to see confident, smart, assertive girls who are having sexy times more in books: I feel like I hardly ever do. Though it’d make me sad to see anyone demonised for not doing so. As you say, it’s terrible to show a character’s sexuality as defining them no matter what that sexuality is.

By: Doret

Doret — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:04:12 +0000

This is great post and oh so true.

By: Natalie

Natalie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:58:43 +0000

First off, I’m a big fan of SRB’s writing. It was fun to see her cross posting on here. Thanks for being so fab, Sarah! And I agree that a double standard certainly exists (like, why doesn’t anybody ever call James Bond a whore?). But I also wanted to say that I so appreciate RJ Anderson’s comment. While I’ve decided to wait (or at least try my darndest to wait , I absolutely do not think girls who choose differently are sluts. I think every woman deserves to be respected. Sexuality is a very personal thing and I don’t think anybody should judge anybody else for the decisions they make. However, in my reading experience, girls who are having the sexy times are sometimes the confident, smart, assertive girls while girls who aren’t (by choice or by circumstance) are characterized as self-righteous, insecure, and mean. I like it best when a character’s sexuality is part of her life but doesn’t define her (or at least doesn’t define her as dated and overused stereotypes say it should). Thanks for such a great post!

By: JJ

JJ — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:47:58 +0000

I will have to echo Jesi about Alanna being an awesome feminist character (one whom I would argue steps into the realm of genderqueer–here is a sword-wielding heroine who isn’t just “better than the guys”–she has to work hard at it!). A few of the characters call her a slut in the book but I’ve never come across a girl who has read it and thinks Alanna’s a whore.

This comment might end up being kind of long (and sort of spoilery for Bones–I don’t know how far you are! So maybe you want to skip this…)

In a recent episode, Angela thought she was pregnant. She had been sleeping with one of the interns and Hodgins offers to marry her and take care of her and the baby. I was fascinated by this until it’s revealed that the pregnancy is a false positive and Angela is not pregnant.

I discussed this with my best friend afterwards and she said, “Well duh, she can’t be pregnant with THE WRONG MAN’S BABY.” To which I said, “WHY?” Angela does say, “Wrong guy, wrong time”, but I thought it would have been great to develop this, especially with regards to how this affects her relationship with Hodgins. In fact, I think Angela being pregnant would go a long way in making me like her and not find her frou-frou and annoying. But my best friend was firm in the belief that she SHOULDN’T have another man’s baby when clearly, the “right” one was standing before her.

Excuse me while I RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE.

What is WRONG with her having another man’s baby? Angela isn’t interested in pursuing something with the intern, but she was committed to her unborn child, regardless of parentage or circumstance. Is it because when she inevitably ends up with “the right one”, she’ll be “tainted”? How come she doesn’t think Booth is similarly tainted by having a child out of wedlock?

ARGH. Just…argh.

Regardless, I do love Bones. I especially love Brennan. Now there’s a feminist icon! I love that episode where she’s dating two different men for two different reasons (one for sex, one for intellect) and it gets hilariously awkward and weird.

By: Ace

Ace — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:33:13 +0000

This is partly why I enjoyed Meg Cabot’s ‘Ready or Not’ so much – the message about sex in it was mainly, it’s okay to do it if you feel ready but, it’s also totally okay to wait! And it was such a refreshing thing to find in a YA book; the view that it’s okay for teens to have sex (also encouraging being safe about it). It’s a theme that I wish would be shown in more YA books, honestly.

By: Alexa

Alexa — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:31:36 +0000

Brilliant, brilliant post, I couldn’t agree more! I liked Rachel from GLEE from the beginning but the I loved her for the moment in the Chasity club when she says ” I’ll let you in on a secret girls think about sex too, all the time!” and stomps out.

And as for Ghosts of Girlfriends past (which I also saw on a plane) no way would the truly awesome Jennifer Garner fall for Matthew M!

By: Julia Rios

Julia Rios — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:40:10 +0000

Awesome guest post! Um, I mean, Oh, the horror! What have you done to us, Justine? I’m a sucker for romatic comedies and teen comedies, too, and it’s a really rough thing to have a weakness for that sort of movie when one is also a feminist. So many of them disappoint with messages like the ones you’ve mentioned. I’d love to hear recommendations for movies in these genres that others have found non-disappointing. I’d nominate Clueless to start. Of course, it’s building on Austen, so maybe that’s cheating. What do you think?