I certainly agree that a story is poorly written when the protagonist is not meaningfully challenged by the threats in the story. Absolutely. It's hard to care if fixing things is too easy.
But we can say that without using a gendered phrase that has repeatedly been used to attack and dismiss female characters that are appropriately skilled for the challenges they must overcome.
I think that the term Mary Sue is inherently sexist by etymology and also that it has been repeatedly used to denigrate female writers and female characters when similar male characters written by male authors are praised.
That is not the _only_ way the term has been used, of course, but it has been used that way so often that I think we should stop using it completely. Even if you don't intend the term to be sexist, you can't take away the sexist associations that the term has from the way many other people have used it. To use an analogy, I think using "Mary Sue" and expecting people to not hear the sexism in the term is like using "gay" anywhere but in a traditional Christmas carol and hoping people won't think "homosexual."
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Date: 2016-01-21 07:52 pm (UTC)But we can say that without using a gendered phrase that has repeatedly been used to attack and dismiss female characters that are appropriately skilled for the challenges they must overcome.
I think that the term Mary Sue is inherently sexist by etymology and also that it has been repeatedly used to denigrate female writers and female characters when similar male characters written by male authors are praised.
That is not the _only_ way the term has been used, of course, but it has been used that way so often that I think we should stop using it completely. Even if you don't intend the term to be sexist, you can't take away the sexist associations that the term has from the way many other people have used it. To use an analogy, I think using "Mary Sue" and expecting people to not hear the sexism in the term is like using "gay" anywhere but in a traditional Christmas carol and hoping people won't think "homosexual."
(edited--dang typos!)