Gay werewolves, lesbian vampires, commercials and other random thoughts.

So I started writing a reply for this thread:

http://emptyclosets.com/forum/chit-chat/222258-womens-sexuality-less-defined-more-fluent.html

But I started to go off topic, so I thought that I would start this thread instead.


The way female sexuality is viewed can be rather complex. Sometimes revealing some contradictions with how society views and presents things.

I find this curious. I wasn’t actually aware that female sexuality was ever viewed like this. From all the old poetry I’ve learnt about, they all present this idea of innocent women who only ever doing anything for their husbands, and if they don’t- they were rebels. This idea of women having no sexuality at all is something that keeps cropping up.

Spoiler

Certain adverts seem to be oddly suggestive sometimes. There seems to be this odd trend of making yogurt adverts and chocolate adverts with some weird subtext and just generally sexualised. What’s up with that? And why is that I keep seeing adverts of half-naked men who try and get the woman’s attention (or are oblivious the woman is into them, and the woman just secretly checks them out) and then fall over/get in an accident/fall into a pool as they walk over to the woman and the woman laughs and denies her interest in them?

It seems to me that female sexuality in adverts is usually used in a sort of jokey atmosphere (say a woman in the advert doesn’t know how to fix something, so she calls some repairmen/firemen/ general people in services and gets them to do something like check her fire alarm, to yeah get a fire alarm but also to take a peek at the behind of the service man).

A common theme in these commercials is that the guy is usually an idiot (think the Ferbreze advert where the guy is amazed and outsmarted by an air freshener dispenser) yet conventionally attractive and the woman jokes about it when the guy is in front of her, but when alone acts all ashamed and we get thrown this weird sub textual jokes.

The adverts with women creeping on men actually play into this trope:

Stalking Is Funny If It Is Female After Male - TV Tropes

Now, there’s a lot at play here. There are negative stereotypes being thrown at men and women. Women being creepy towards men (but that’s apparently funny) and men being morons and oblivious to feelings.

Spoiler

Commercials like to play with stereotypes as a way of trying to connect to their target audience (Hey women, aren’t men oblivious cave men who can’t use basic household items, am I right? And hey men, aren’t women annoying and complicated unlike our products?). Besides, there’s the famous saying “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” and I mean, their adverts worked right? I remembered these adverts because of how terrible they were, and sometimes the negative reaction from some people causes others to check it out…and potentially buy their product. Push it too far though, and getting advertising space in venues may be difficult, plus potential suing in some cases.

So why am I bringing all this up? Well if I’m honest I got a little distracted there. Point is, female sexuality is something that is played as a joke, and there’s a bit of a double standard between how clinginess and creeping on others between males VS females (which also plays into the problem that some people seem to think a man can only rape a woman, whereas in actual fact anyone can rape anyone and it still counts as rape regardless of the gender/sex scenario and it is equally damaging).

Spoiler

Now let’s talk about relationships and expectations. I think one of the more well-known and obvious double standard is “the walk of shame VS the walk of respect”, but simply this idea being that men are cool/ more of a man if they sleep with a load of women, but if a woman does the same with men she’s shameful and a slut/whore/slapper/slag/desperate/immature.

But if she isn’t into the idea of a relationship, she’s a prude and stuck up. Sure there is the term “manwhore” but in my experience such terms tend to get used a lot less often, and usually towards gay men but sometimes towards straight men. And Bi men just tend to get ignored.

And if she isn’t into men, but she is into women- she’s predatory. Think of a fictional lesbian, any lesbian. Ok, now think of a fictional lesbian that isn’t human nor an alien. What have you got? Probably a vampire.

Quite a few vampires are lesbian/bisexual/queer women. It seems to be a common trope, vampires are lesbians and gay guys are werewolves. But why? Let’s see….

It all comes down to stereotypes and perception.

Spoiler

Vampires- because lesbians are seen as predatory, territorial creatures. The amount of times I’ve seen guys on forums (not this one though) jokingly (and sometimes not so jokingly) complain about the fact that the lesbians “are stealing our women” is pretty high. I also here guys sometimes joking about how one of their mates “probably turned” their ex-girlfriend gay because of the sheer fact they dated that mate (if you’ve ever seen RENT, then think of the scene where the rest of the group makes fun of Mark because his bisexual ex-girlfriend Maureen got with a woman after she dumped Mark, and how Mark’s parents say “way to go be a lesbian, am I right?” not understanding that bisexuality is a thing).

Vampires are corrupt, the complete opposite of innocence and pretty much evil personified. I once saw an online discussion, discussing whether a certain character was gay or not and there was a particular comment that caught my attention “she’s not gay, she’s too innocent and sweet for that” implying that to be gay is to lose innocence, they went on to argue that the character was straight because of this innocence.

There’s also the trope of “psycho lesbians” and in general lesbians being shown to be mentally unstable, some going to crazy lengths because they couldn’t get the woman. Although gay men are sometimes thought to be predatory, I see lesbians being accused of this more. I’ve seen a few jokes going around how lesbians “wait until the straight girls get drunk, and then strike”.

Psycho Lesbian - TV Tropes

The film “lesbian vampire hunters” makes fun of these tropes, and even makes fun of the gay werewolf thing very briefly at the end of the film.

Werewolf- The term gay originally meant happy, and men who were often intimate with their partners were thought to be particularly happy men. However, with the stereotype of all women pretty much just being asexual and having no real interest in intimacy besides pleasing their husbands, meant that men who had were intimate with other men were thought to be doing so more often as men were thought to have more interest, so people thought “Two men? Must be constantly wanting intimacy then!”. Werewolves are animalistic creatures and have low inhibitions. They’re usually associated with males, although I have seen some female werewolves, they tend to be male usually.

Ok, so we’ve covered how lesbians are portrayed, and how straight girls are portrayed. But what about Bi girls? Well they’ve got the worst of both worlds. If they’re with a guy, then people see them as straight and they get treated like that, and if they’re with a girl then they are clearly a man-hating lesbian who got turned by one and is now a misandrist. And Pansexuals? Clearly they’re just looking for attention. I don’t hear much about asexual women, I guess they’d get a similar response that some lesbians get when they say they’re not interested (you’re not now, but you will be!)

Any thoughts? Sorry for the long post, but if you read all this- thank you.

 

No, I haven't heard of that book before- but I'll see if I can look into it. I agree about the whole purpose thing. Yeah, I've seen that film- in fact I love that film actually (that solidarity song sometimes gets stuck in my head still, and it's been a while since I last watched the film. I've seen the musical version as well).

Yeah, I liked how they used the fact that he was bad at boxing to progress the plot (making him stay behind to practice, so he ends up meeting the dance class when he has to give the key back to the dance teacher, that was some smooth progression of plot right there).

You've made me want to see that film again. :icon_wink

 

Around the 19th Century, in rural England, has been the kind of poetry we've been focusing on recently.