Pseudopod 265: Biba Jibun

[The Far Stairs]

Truth: It's a hard world out there for women, who have to fight against a lot of destructive ideas and assumptions.

Perspective: Socialized to be "nice," lots of women perceive themselves as acting "mean" when they are assertive. Used to "nice" women, lots of men perceive perfectly nice assertive women as "mean" or "bitchy."

Trauma: It is very easy for people who have been victimized or abused to become their abuser. This can be as true of groups, culturally, as it is of individuals. I sometimes think that a lot of women who seem to justify genuinely cruel, bitchy behavior with "it's a man's world - you need to be mean to be successful" are just acting out the abuse they've suffered.

Good analysis!

Also, I agree: the fact that this was billed as a horror story is what makes it work. If it had been billed as a self-discovery or female-empowerment story, then we'd have to worry about the author's sexual politics a little bit more.

[Unblinking]

I guess for me, the saving grace is that it's a horror story. You know unreliable narrators? Horror stories have unreliable universes. When the way things out is so clearly portrayed as off-kilter, out of order, wicked, and wrong, I don't pick it apart in the same way. I mean, the bad guys win. Virtue fails and dies. The end of this story isn't glorious or affirming, it's terrible and depressing. That's why it's horror. That's the point.

In other words, for me the story wasn't saying "Yes, you are right, you people who think strong women are unnatural and demonic.  That's the way it works." The story was saying "Behold! In this story, virtue fails and dies before the corrupting might of our terrible sexist world!"

I guess that's where we differ.  Whether it's a horror story or a fantasy story doesn't really change how I interpret the themes.  This could easily have been published on Podcastle, but my reaction would be the same.  It seemed to me that this was meant to be contemporary fantasy, set in a version of the world indistinguishable from ours. 

To me, I didn't feel the story was saying "virtue fails and dies before the corrupting might of our terrible sexist world".  Honestly, I'm not even sure what that phrase is meant to mean.  What virtue is dying, exactly?  I didn't find the protagonist to virtue-less.  Certainly she is learning from her demon mother to be violent and manipulative, but at this point both are turning their wrath only on those who choose to provoke them.  I really wanted to cheer when she stabbed the groper's hand on the subway.  While I don't think violence is always the best answer, it certainly is an attention-grabber.  That guy and others who hear about it will be much more reluctant to allow their hands to wander.  Not only is she deterring that kind of behavior against herself, but she is discouraging it against others as well, and at her own risk.  Presumably she could be arrested and charged for her attack, but you can see her as a revolutionary of women's rights, and she is risking herself to further the cause.  Would this be the only way to advance the cause:  certainly not, but nonetheless, it is a way.  Even if it's not the best way, I like that she is willing to take action despite the risk to herself.  Really, I find her later realization of her self easier to cheer for than her earlier completely passive self.  But with the way the story's written implies to me that her human side is incapable of such initiative, and that bothers me.

[Gary]

I enjoyed this one.
I kept thinking that this was going to be one of those stories where our main character was going to find inner strength from her trials and becomes some sort of "good spirit". You know ... like a Podcastle story. What kept it horror (As I saw it) was that she went over to "The Dark Side". The author created a truly horrible world. Like ours but very very dark. In the end, I don't think there was one redeemable character in this story!

Oh, I also thought the reading was fantastic!

[Scattercat]

I approve of Eugie Foster.

I agree with Unblinking to a certain extent, in that the gender dynamics trouble me.  However, I take it more as ElectricPaladin did: in a horror story, terrible things happen.  A young girl will not become a fully actualized human being, but instead will become the aggressor herself, using her sexuality as a weapon.  I don't think the story expects us to take any of these characters as a moral guide, nor that any of them are meant to be representative.  

[Umbrageofsnow]

Am I the only one that read the train-jumping at the end as not entirely driven by shame and being followed by a creepy girl?  To me it seemed there might be an element of the supernatural to that, like Rini was causing a Poe-like irrational panic, leading to his death so she could feed off him somehow.

And I hate to say this about such a dark story, but I was laughing my ass off for the first half, particularly during the bathroom scene and the date with "Daddy".  "A panda who solicited men for money" was a great bit of characteristic description. 

I think we need to ask: is Rini really happier at the end.  She is no longer tormented by train perverts, but I imagine the girl from the beginning of the story would be horrified by the end worse than any of us outside observers.  Her personal change isn't just scary from a gender-politics perspective, it is scary because she seems to have lost herself.  Is she really any more free than she was at the beginning, or is she just blinding following her mother's lead?  It almost reads like a possession story, she is changing, becoming someone totally alien and it isn't clear that she has any real choice in the matter, other than the initial choice to not walk out of that bathroom.

On one hand, the shy girl would have lost her innocence and ended up an extremely damaged person when her uncle inevitably molested her, on the other, when she starts taking joy in killing perverts she is certainly no longer innocent, and maybe not any less damaged.  She completely avoids the middle ground as ElectricPaladin points out.  Is the horror maybe that she is happy with her murderous predatory existence?

I definitely liked the story, and rabbit spirits are an under-represented monster-minority; it's nice to get a story that truly makes them scary.

P.S. the foreshadowing hand-stab in class seems to indicate that her wrath is not limited to perverts, just generally aimed that way.

[Unblinking]

Is the horror maybe that she is happy with her murderous predatory existence?

I got the impression that's what the author was aiming for.  I could be wrong. 

[Balu]

I guess to me, what bothered me is not so much that she gave up her humanity, but that I sensed an implication that the only way to take control of your life is to give up your humanity, that a woman who tolerates no abuse must be inhuman.

I quite liked that same implication, because I think that there is a truth in it..

Not many people can get by without making endless compromises and putting up with endless bullshit. I don't know if that is 'humanity', but if it isn't, it is at least the human condition.

Can people take control of their lives unless they are willing to put that rabbity, good citizen, inoffensive conformism aside?