Only Women Bleed

Because what's a discussion about misogyny in vampire fiction without an Alice Cooper reference?

So remember how I was talking about the creepy eroguro scene in True Blood? And the conservative backlash against Twilight ('cause, let's face it, there are people trying to sell Bella and Edward as a chaste couple, which is the kinda allies the sexual counter-revolution don't need)? Here's an interesting article from Buckley's magazine about how Twilight is damn creepy.

But seriously, and just in general, what exactly does vampire fiction have against women? Mina Harker's actually one of the strongest female characters in 19th century fiction—she's the strongest outside Jane Austen—but she's a rare exception. Star in the Lost Boys is pretty good, too. But otherwise? I mean, Anita Blake's decay is at least as famous as that of Cerebus the Aardvark—or even Ikari Shinji, given how Laurell K. Hamilton appears to be working out her own issues with this horse-hockey. It's somewhat excusable in Anne Rice's case; nobody expects respectfully portrayed women in bodice-rippers.

Arguably the worst offender is Buffy. Yeah, I said it, go ahead and issue a fatwa against me. Whedon postures like she's this big girl-power figure—indeed that he's the original girl-power writer—but it's no coincidence that Buffy (and River, among others) spend a lot of time curled up and crying. Because Whedon is not actually about women being empowered. His women are flat, rote, mechanical whenever they're empowered. The only scenes he can write believably at all are them being abused and victimized. Now, there is a charitable interpretation—that Whedon is such a loser he's only capable of writing failure, so scenes involving strength just don't feel alive from him—but you really do have to suspect that there's something up, when the scenes he obviously has the most emotional investment in are the ones that completely undermine his stated message.

Anyway though, why is misogyny the norm for vampire fiction? I mean, I get the appeal of girls in peril, the male (or lesbian) vampire as a threat to the life and/or chastity of the nubile ingenue. But I'm afraid I'm so constituted as to feel that damsels in distress ought to be rescued, and if they're not, the work ought not to wallow in their death and degradation; fade to black and then cut to the heroes (possibly, perhaps even ideally, including the surviving victim) setting out for vengeance.

Besides, why not show vampires killing men? I'm sorry, are they all Ventrue (a clan in Vampire: the Masquerade who can only feed from some specific type of person)? 'Cause last I checked a lot of vampires in folklore fed from men and children, at least as often as from women.

So why not kill men in vampire fiction (sorry, I fully support the taboo on killing children in fiction)? Because pretty much all vampire violence in modern fiction is eroticized, and male homoeroticism doesn't sell as well as heteroeroticism or female homoeroticism. There's also some unfortunate implications to the comparative dearth of female vampires who prey on men instead of other women; the problem isn't actually homophobia (to the extent such a thing exists) so much as it's some weird idea that women shouldn't be sexually aggressive toward men. Even Whedon has that, for all his feminist posturing.

Aside from vampire victims always being women, whatever the sex of the vampires, is the non-vampire women who deal with vampires. Who are, let's face it, Bond Girls at best. Anita Blake, post-decay, is basically a Bond Girl who fights vampires—which is to say a slut. And I hate to break it to the paleo-feminists out there but that's not empowering; movies about women like that are called "exploitation" for a reason.

All too frequently, though, the women who hang around vampires are worse, rap-video type arm-candy or Harley Quinn-esque doormats (the girl who played Bella would look fetching in motley). Now of course it'd be one thing if a vampire had a harem of "blood dolls" or a moll who severely lacks in assertiveness; such things are common trappings of villains, in real life as well as fiction. But even non-villain vampires act like that, and it's supposed to be a good thing! Edward Cullen is not a decent person by any stretch of the imagination, except for his constantly telling Bella he's no good for her...which she ignores, with her author's blessing. See that's what's so dysfunctional here—Edward knows he's dangerous, not just in the "these people are our @#$%ing food" way but in the "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" way, and yet not only does Bella keep flinging herself at his head anyway, Meyer seems to think it's a good thing! Why are you rubber-stamping the self-destructive infatuations of every 7th-grade girl who reads you, woman?!

Frankly this aspect of it is more puzzling than the "vampires always preying on women" thing. Has our society so completely warped its perception of masculinity that it actually lionizes, not mere sexual predators but sexualized beings whose predations are literal? Come to think of it it might be related to the victims-always-female thing, but taken together the implications are even more disturbing.

I really hope I'm wrong, I happen to really like vampire fiction.

Oh well, guess I'll just have to write the vampire stories I want. Why is Nemesis Pteroessa (Winged Vengeance) my muse?