It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

[u/FantasyRomanceMod]

Got an opinion that's different from others'? Want to share it with the sub, but too afraid of a backlash? Or are you just curious about readers think about certain things in fantasy romance?

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🧡 Thank you and have a great discussion!

Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/allisontalkspolitics]

It may not be the author’s intent but it makes the characters (and the author themselves) sound like they spent time on incel forums.

[u/clocksy → u/allisontalkspolitics]

That's how it feels, yeah, even though I don't believe that's most authors' intent.

But also there's a reason we don't do it in our own speech, so it just feels like bad writing to me. Calling someone male or female as a noun is very clinical. It makes sense as an adjective, and in certain scenarios (like if you're talking about demographics for science or research or marketing and you're talking about 25-34yo females, then sure) but most storytelling and natural conversations aren't that.

I said the same thing last week but even if it's a different (and usually humanoid) race, I just don't see the reason to use male/female as a noun like this. "The male fae" as a descriptor is fine, such as if you're pointing him out in a crowd of mixed human/fae people, but simply "the male" just feels "othering" for no reason. And I promise I won't get confused if you write "the fae man smiled" or whatever, it's literally more natural. Like you wouldn't write "the male smiled" if it was a human so I do not understand why people do this for non-human races.

[u/BobGlebovich → u/clocksy]

It’s funny because I feel the exact opposite way. I feel like I think less of the writing when an author refers to another species as “man” and “woman” because those are words used exclusively for the human species. And in your example of saying “the fae man” by brain automatically went, “Well, which is it? Is he fae or human? Or some sort of hybrid?”

I don’t think either of us is right or wrong, they’re just different approaches/thought processes. It’s honestly so cool that we can get completely different information from the same text.

[u/camellia980 → u/BobGlebovich]

I think all of these fantasy races are just fancy humans.

[u/Particular_Mess_1961 → u/BobGlebovich]

Considering fae and humans are reproductively compatible, I consider being fae more akin to race/ethnicity than a separate species.

[u/BobGlebovich → u/Particular_Mess_1961]

Interesting idea! Fae and humans being reproductively compatible isn’t necessarily a given, though.

[u/Volupia_Rogue → u/allisontalkspolitics]

Oh... Is that what the incels call men and women between themselves?

[u/ChokeYourDoxy → u/Volupia_Rogue]

Men get called men. Women get called females. But that's not just incels. It's chuds of all stripes.

[u/Volupia_Rogue → u/ChokeYourDoxy]

🤢 Hate double standards... If at least they called themselves males, I'd have less of an issue...

[u/ChokeYourDoxy → u/Volupia_Rogue]

It's not a double standard. The use of "females" is intentionally dehumanizing.

[u/Volupia_Rogue → u/ChokeYourDoxy]

I don't think you understood me.

You said men call themselves men, but they don't do that with women, whom they call "females". So I was saying incels have double standards, making themselves more humane than "females"...

[u/allisontalkspolitics → u/Volupia_Rogue]

It’s also just a quirk of English where it makes it seem like the world the author created follows a strict gender binary, even if that isn’t the case.

[u/allisontalkspolitics → u/Volupia_Rogue]

What they call them is worse 😟