Connecting with female characters in geek television

October 5th, 2010 by Courtney Stoker

Now, Gwen is not perfect on this show. For that matter, neither is anyone else. Everyone on this show is flawed, most of them quite seriously. Under the stress and weirdness of working for Torchwood, Gwen is dismissive of her partner, Rhys, and then cheats on him with a fellow Torchwood employee, Owen. And, throughout the entire series, she’s in love with Jack (who the fuck isn’t), but marries Rhys anyway. So, Gwen has some personal failings. Compared with the failings of the other major characters, in particular Owen’s unfeeling libertine ways and Jack’s stringing along Ianto and sacrificing his own grandson, however, Gwen is about right in the middle of the Torchwood-employees-are-bad-people bell curve. However, unlike most of the other characters, a sizeable minority of fans violently hate her, to the extent that there is an Anti-Gwen Alliance on LJ, complete with youtube video. People call her things like “a selfish stupid slutty little gap toothed bitch who should die a very painfull death.” So what the fuck is up?

She’s ugly. If you think this, and also think that it is a legitimate reason to hate a (female) character, you’re a douche. I mean, not only are you wrong, judging female characters solely on whether you want to fuck them or whether they live up to unrealistic standards of beauty makes you a misogynist, even if you’re a lady. (More on this with River Song.)

She’s whiny. From smith:

People who claim not to like female characters often have difficulty explaining why exactly. Take a character like Buffy, who is called ‘whiny’ for having opinions and not being shy about them, for occasionally being vulnerable and frightened and sad. It couldn’t possibly be because her friends repeatedly fuck her over, she was yanked out of heaven to save her friends’ butts, she’s been burdened with huge responsibility, and she’s constantly taken for granted, right? She couldn’t possibly have any reason to be angry and to speak up about it, just like Tara has no reason to be angry either. Nope, they’re both just whiny women. Write off, move on.

THIS. People who call Gwen whiny don’t feel the need to explain why. And if they do, they hate Gwen because she acts like a woman (because, ew, who would want that?). From a Facebook thread about hating Gwen:

Yeah, I don’t really watch Dr. Who, but I got the impression that Rose was a lot like Gwen, and I can’t for the life of me understand why the writers like characters like this. I just find them so irritating. I don’t get why women have to be all sappy in shows. Why can’t there be more women like Xena or Ellen from Supernatural, strong without the sappy. I tend to like women characters better when writers don’t feel like they have to make them all soft and whiney, because I just don’t think that’s really embracing feminism. It’s keeping girls in the whiney category and keeping guys as the strong ones who don’t whine a lot.

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