Reverse Gender Role Equestria: An Old Type of Bad, Made New Again · 10:54pm Apr 7th, 2018
Hello to you all, my good ladies and gentlemen. I hope to find you all in fine fighting shape.
I should tell you, my dear ladies and gentlemen, that I have been reading fanfiction, and fiction in general, for quite a long time. In that time, I've seen quite a few trends come and go; and some of these, needless to say, really needed to have their throats crushed at birth.
Of course the fact that many of these very clearly needed killing ASAP, and in a better world would never have come into being, didn't change the fact that they were inevitable. The popularity of the LotR movies was always going to bring a lot of new people into the fandom, and some of them were always going to drop their pestilent self inserts into Middle Earth.
Harry/ Hermione shippers were likewise completely unavoidable, and whilst they're not as inherently soul tainting as the average "typical American girl" Tenth Walker, there were absolutely always going to be some of their number who would decide that Ron and/ or Ginny were the True villain(s) of Harry Potter.
And let's not even try to penetrate the utter clusterfuck that is shipping in the Pokémon fandom.
We can, however, narrow the Pokémon Anime down to The Three Absolute Sequential Truths. In this order: Truth One: Ash will not ever win a major championship. Truth Two: Ash will get a new female companion. Truth Three: the fans will ship it, and bitch about it, via fanfiction.
Everyone saw those things coming. Everyone with common sense, anyway. Common sense, sadly, can be quite a rare commodity; just because something is clearly a bad idea doesn't change the fact that plenty of people will do it.
It's not often that these trends take me completely by surprise these days. But it does happen.
On a related note, let's discuss an old, dead sci-fi trope.
Back in the day there were quite a number of sci-fi shows and movies that functioned thus: they would explore a Concept, and then deliver an Aesop. Since a remarkable number of the people writing these were anti-science to the point of being Luddites, a lot of this boiled down to: "And proud man, overstepping his place, created the very thing that would destroy him." The difference's tended to lie in the thing that would be doing the destroying, and the unlikely and often outlandish mechanisms through which this destruction would take place.
A lot of B movies fell into this mold, as well as a couple of TV shows, with The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits being among the most famed examples.
One of the most popular "what if" scenarios that many such shows tended to explore were: "What if the world was ruled by women", or: "What if the world were populated entirely by women?"
How this was handled depended very much on the show or movie in question, but it goes without saying that a fair number were more than a bit misogynistic. "The lone man, dominating the weaker willed women, bringing with him war" was a popular choice. The lone man (there almost always was a lone man introduced) being irresistible to the many women around him, deprived of male companionship as they were, is another common option.
In the worst cases, it was fairly clear that these existed for little more than to metaphorically slap women in general, and feminists in particular, on the backside and order them back into the kitchen.
The women would quite often be exaggerated misandrists who existed to be shown up by the male protagonist. One can also generally rely on him to show up the local make population, if there is one, as not "proper" men. Although there's a fair chance they will be "proper men" by the time he's done. This is particularly true of the "Modern (nineteen fifties to seventies) Earth man enters planet ruled by women" sub-trope.
It is quite rare now to see this sort of thing outside of a parody of old sci-fi; the whole "planet ruled by women" thing is almost never played straight nowadays. It, along with the "And Man grew proud" Aesops, would be considered far too quaint and old fashioned for modern audiences to take seriously.
It has, however, made an unlikely comeback on this site, via the trend in "reverse gender role" Equestria fics.
As a sci-fi fan, seeing new stories in the old "lone man, planet ruled by women" trope, with all the attendant misogyny and aesops, being played completely straight is a bit like being a zoologist who just found a colony of pterosaurs perched on his office roof. One does not expect to see this long dead and extinct thing right in front of one's face in the living flesh.
Unlike many trends, this was hardly an inevitability. And thus, despite all my experience and cynicism, I find myself fairly surprised.
Unlike our hypothetical zoologist, I'm not remotely happy about it.
The best that can be said about these things is that they mostly at least try to play it as comedy. Now if only any of them were remotely funny, and not completely shit. And shit they are. Hell, they don't even have the cheesy so "bad it's good vibe" of those old sci-fi movies and shows. They're just bad.
Here is the description of a prize example of the type:
In Equestria, every stallion is treated with all the chivalries and respect he can bear. Because Stallions are more sensitive and more easily hurt when they aren’t taken care of by the mares around them.
So when Twilight hears of a lone stallion that swears like a sailor at passerby and ‘takes no shit from nobody, whether it good shit or bad shit,’ she’s dubious of the claims, but is sure that no stallion can be allowed to live so close to the Everfree all alone.
So she decides to do her best to save him.
And by save, I mean put him in the care of mares and get him herding.
And by him, I mean me.
And by me, I mean an earth-pony badass, formerly a human, formerly of Earth.
And by does her best, I mean she can try.
Bring it on whorse. I’m a hormonally imbalanced human psychopath with a death wish and an alcohol addiction trapped in the body of a tiny fucking horse.
In other words, I’m a pissed man who’s gonna have a helluva good time shattering your sexism through insults and violence.
I love to set the world afire, don’t you?
Let's do a point by point, shall we:
Straw misandrists, who act and think like typical straw misogynists with the pronouns swapped?
A few minutes later Twilight finally found the newly erected house just on the edge of the dangerous forest. It was a strong house, made of stone and wooden beams, with a sturdy roof. Clearly a mare’s work.
Breathless, she quickly rapped on the door, not sparing a second to get this defenseless stallion to safety.
Check.
Modern Earth man?
And by me, I mean an earth-pony badass, formerly a human, formerly of Earth.
Check.
Dominating the weak willed women?
“What do ye want purple horse?”
Twilight turned bright red at the insult and just barely managed to stammer out her words without lacing them with anger.
“W-wha- well I-... P-please Jack, I only want to talk.”
Check.
The local males not "proper men"?
every stallion is treated with all the chivalries and respect he can bear. Because Stallions are more sensitive and more easily hurt when they aren’t taken care of by the mares around them.
Check.
Women present to be shown up by the male protagonist?
Twilight had her rant derailed by those two words she never would have expected from a stallion.
“Huh?”
“No feckin’ mare built this! I put my own blood, sweat, and shite into this house! Thank you very FOCKIN’ much!”
“B-but it’s so well made! An-“
“Also, who the fock are you!? Telling me to leave my house! I worked my ass off to build the damn place! No way in hell am I leaving it! You’ll have to kill me first!”
Check.
Women highly attracted to him?
“Okay girls, here’s what we know: a hysterical earth pony stallion has locked himself in this house he built himself, he’s vulgar, rude, prone to self harm, very strong, a little handsome-“
“Twilight!”
Twilight blushed and went on.
“A-and he says he doesn’t have a mare of his own, which is honestly ridiculous and impossible, which means he’s avail- I mean-vulnerable all alone here.
Check.
Much of this is just from the description. Here is the protagonist in his on page introduction:
“The Fock!?”
Before Twilight could properly gasp at the coarse language, she found herself back outside the doorway with a sore jaw. The stallion had... punched her? And it actually hurt?
She pulled herself off the ground to see a glowering grey and black earth stallion with blood-red eyes glaring down at her from a two-legged stand. His front hooves crossed over his barrel in an impressive display of balance.
“Don’t fuckin’ touch me ye damn bitch.”
He only gets worse from here. This is the logical end point of response dissonance in character interaction, with a character who is relentlessly unpleasant, and nothing but unpleasant, in every second of his page time, yet attracts and maintains the Mane Six's interest. And by that, I mean they all fancy him.
It must be said that this is supposed to be a comedy, and is thus not intended to be taken entirely seriously, but it's a comedy in the fashion of Anon fics, and follows many of the same tropes. Indeed, in similar fics, Anon is often the protagonist. Only the fans of Anon and his fics will glean any kind of enjoyment out of it.
To anyone else it's a truly miserable read, with terrible characterisation, a ridiculous and loathsome self insert protagonist and all the laughs of a memorial service to murdered orphan children. Fanfiction in general has a bad reputation. Fics like this one are why.
As of this writing, it is featured and sports seven hundred and forty six upvotes.
It is an extreme example, but RGR Equestria fics are increasingly becoming a thing, and the success of this one will only accelerate that process. We will be seeing more in the near future.
I await the day this newest "sub-genre" drowns in it's own filth and bodily fluids with happy anticipation. I look forward to hearing from you, my good ladies and gentlemen.
I always felt glad I managed to be born late enough to miss most of that tripe and it's rather a shame to see it being tracked in on the clean new rug like so much offal.
4835445
I feel that way about so many things nowadays... 😟
4835464 *hugs*
Don't you need several degrees to even approximate the love geometry there?
As for this trend... It's not the first time I've seen the concept played with on this site—people were concocting RGR Equestrias almost from the word go given Celestia and Luna—but it's certainly the one of the most distasteful presentations I've seen.
4835481
Were I to even attempt it, I would certainly want someone with a Ph.D in polydimensional space on board for the effort.
Is “RGR Equestria” another shitty 4chan trend, like “Anon in Equestria”? It sounds exactly like the sort of wank-fantasy-with-unnecessary-worldbuilding-attached that they just eat up.
On the face of it, there’s no reason why the concept of a genderflipped society needs to be written in such a misogynistic way. One of the great things about SF is that you can invent an alien society, and use them to make a point about humans that might get past your audience’s kneejerk “Nuh uh!” reaction. So a fictional society with gender roles reversed could be a vehicle for an honest exploration of our gender roles—or to mock their absurdity. Or it could just be a legitimate piece of world-building, extrapolated from some other prior causes in-universe. MLPFIM is particularly suited to either approach. As 4835481 mentioned, the country is ruled by a pair of Princesses, so it’s reasonable to extrapolate that they’re a matriarchal society, and in the first few seasons, there did seem to be more mares than stallions in the background.
I recall Lise Eclair’s Equestrian Fanfiction, in one of its hundreds of B-plots, takes the “hold a dark mirror up to humanity” approach, with mares talking about stallions in the same way men talk about women, and stallions having to deal with low-key sexual harassment. And Sunset Shimmer, who was used to mares taking charge in a relationship, has a really hard time adjusting to gender roles on the human planet. But no outsider ever comes in to “put those stupid mares in their place.” The gender roles is just a detail of the setting, which doesn’t change much by the end of the story.
It’s a pity that other jerk writers keep going back to the well of “If it’s all women, who opens the jars for them? LOL”
4835535
A good point, well made.
Authors quite often have "mildly matriarchal" as part of their world building, and have since the start of the show.
What sets these fics apart, however, is that, like the old sci-fi that they resemble, they are very misogynistic. They exist to represent an outlet for the author's and reader's misogyny in a way that provides plausible deniability: first defense being the behaviour of the mares as written, and the second being that it's a comedy.
I have seen on or two RGREs that are ok, mostly ones that focus on the CMC as awkward teenagers, but they are the exception, rather than the rule (and honestly, that's a good story despite using the trope, it would probably be better without it).
Sounds like you've been watching Dark Mirror!
honestly, my problem with it is that most of them are very boring, unimaginative, and not actually trying to do the idea justice. They just put men in female bodies and women in male bodies, and basically have their fictional society go on as usual just with pronouns switched.
I mean, there is plenty to work with. there are feminine behaviors just as toxic as the masculine ones, and feminine power mechanics are just as capable of controlling people. But they don’t use them.
Putting the women in power doesn’t require turning the men into effeminate housekeepers who raise the children at home.
You can have men who are men and still not in power, all you have to do is make a society that devalue men and their work, which is super easy in a magical setting like Equestria:
why value your laborers doing gross or backbreaking work when you have telekinesis?
why value your soldiers when your land is defended by epic magic wielded by princesses?
Seriously.
This is a good point. On thing I bought up in the Rage Reviews thread was that the mares in these fics act like stawman misogynists with the pronouns switched. Because "funny", apparently.
4836630
...Because most of the food production is done by the members of society who aren't magic users, because the men can use magic too (and quite frequently do), and because Things Are More Complicated Than That Even in Real LIfe?
I think even this basic idea is still a bit of a letdown. The major issue I've always seen with these stories is that it isn't like there aren't matriarchal societies in real history you can study, none of which need magical bullshit to explain their existence. Not every ancient civilization was patriarchal. The Iriquouis had male soldiers and war-leaders but clan mothers elected those war-leaders and male governors and had the right to pull them out of power. There are industries dominated by women in patriarchal societies. Female spaces. There's tons of these things and you can explore all of them.
Really though, the fundamental issue with this story in particular happens right here:
The main character, by his own admission, is an imbalanced crazy alcoholic with basically no redeeming characteristics, and we're supposed to cheer for him because...?
So many people think they can walk that delicate balance of having a protagonist you're not supposed to 'like' take down antagonists you're supposed to like less. So many people fail utterly at that because it is a really hard balance not only to get right in the first place but to sustain without eventually making your main character less of a shithole as time goes on. Which these fics just never seem to do.
There's also the added bonus of "well obviously the only reason women are in charge in this world is that the men aren't acting like men" which.... hoo boy that's a spicy meatball.
4845904
Which is basically what's going on here:
One way in which these things resemble the old sci-fi "world of women" trope is that they're often very misogynistic; which is certainly the case with the example given here. This thought process involved can be summed up thus:
"Look at those silly cows, playing at being men. Stupid bitches, let's show how things would go if they had to deal with a real man. Hey fellas, come take a look! Let a proper man deal with these girls, and they soon go back to as they should be. Take a look, fellas, it's hilarious!"
Take a look, fellas, it's hilarious. That, in short, is the humour, for want of a better term, of it: the audience is expected to cheer the OC on because he's putting the uppity women in their place (I feel dirty just typing that). It provides an opportunity for the audience to indulge in their own misogynistic tendencies with plausible deniability, as the OC is nominally the victim of sexism in the piece.
The annoying thing is that these are getting more popular. There is one in the feature box at present, written by this user. The story in question, fyi, is porn. It's noteworthy in that it follows the same "stallion in the Everfree" form as a couple of other featured fics (which is apparently becoming it's own thing within a thing), because fuck originality.
I really want this sub-genre to hurry up and die quickly.
4845904
Yes I know things are more complicated in real life, thank you captain obvious.
Let's put aside the question of 'do earth ponies have magic or not', because that one is basically up to your personal worldbuilding and headcanon.
You do know just because a society have people doing a job, doesn't necessarily mean that said society respects those people or puts a high value on their service? - well, until they go on strike and shit start piling up.
I didn't say men couldn't do magic.
I said that magic is so great a measure of power that minor physical advantages from sexual dimorphism becomes basically meaningless.
in hindsight I didn't do a great job articulating my idea in my comment. it was a pain to write, so I'm not that surprised. -- I sometimes get writer's block just trying to write comments.
the thing is, I basically agree with you.
4846710
And I with you, but as a worldbuilding nitpick I do think it's reductive as hell to try to write Equestria as "we devalued 'male' roles because labor, etc. are fundamentally changed by magic."
Like, first off that's in opposition to the show itself, which has never really gone deep in on the whole "matriarchal equestria" thing anyway unless you think having a female ruler means a society is matriarchal. In which case Victorian England is the grandest matriarchal society of our times. But even ignoring that for the sake of AU worldbuilding, I just feel like the idea of "sexual dimorphism is less important, which explains why women have moved into more valued positions" is just bad sociology. Writing around the idea that dimorphism absent magic inevitably results in patriarchy seems like just a bad worldbuilding idea on its face.
I work retail. That should answer your question right there.
Seriously though, re-read your original post. Your implications were kinda that magic causes physical labor to be devalued in Equestria, which seems pretty sketchy to me. if that were the case, I'd expect earth ponies to be devalued considerably, which isn't really a canon thing at all and never has been.
4847120
Frankly, I was working under the idea that it would be an AU. At least if the matriarchal Equestria is a full blown matriarchy, and not just an egalitarian meritocracy ruled by extraordinary women. -- as someone dyslexic, those were some big and hard to spell words that took forever to get right, so I hope you appreciate them.
A "matriarchal Equestria" would sort of imply that men would also have a much harder time getting to the top.
that makes me wonder if Shining Armor would have his job in a matriarchal Equestria? Or would he have a lower rank and work under a female superior?
Would he be one of the rare exceptions who managed to worked their ass off and get to the top? Or would he only get to the top thanks to nepotism from his extremely well-connected girlfriend and sister pulling strings?
Hell, if he even got to the top, would he be respected by his coworkers? Or would he be seen as an interloper acting above his station?
It is not really something I have seen addressed at all in such stories.
yeah, I know my original comment was pretty lame.
It was just a quick and dirty alternative to: in
Soviet RussiaEquestria, women are the misogynists and the patriarchy.I can't say I have any grant ideas for such a story.
ah, you have my condolences.
but honestly, stallions being treated like retail workers would be more interesting then the usual effeminate housekeepers.
Hi, stumbled across this journal entry while simply trying to look up a concise definition of the RGR Equestria setting and... well... I'd have to say I'm impressed by how closely you've actually nailed it right down. I mean, for most of the fics I read about such a setting that does tend to be the typical setup.
Now personally, I've read a few that I did find to be pretty funny and I do toy with the concept of an Equestria where females are the more dominant types than the males are. I do also certainly understand that it's a niche theme and I might not have been there around the sci-fi craze that it had or may have simply missed the "Women bad, Men good" message that seems to be in those stories but my personal preference finds it funny to think of a situation where a guy from a world that, typically, would have the guy take action (like proposing, asking on dates, or even being seen as the person to 'bring home the bacon') being put in a world where it's the guys who are into typically 'girly' things like fashion and being the stay at home parent while their significant other is out making the money.
You do make a good point in this article and I do see where you're coming from, so I do appreciate the outside perspective and thank you for the review of the genre so that I can have something to refer back to at a later point.
4835481
Not really everyone x everyone.
Extremely late to the party, but I wanted to give you my two cents.
Another RGRE fic is in the featured box right now. It's a fun little concept--Anonfilly as (human) Anonymous's biological daughter with Nurse Redheart (squickiness aside)--but it checks all the boxes you're describing here.
I like the writing and the worldbuilding, at least in principle, but it also rubbed me the wrong way for reasons I was having a hard time articulating. While trying to figure out why, I stumbled on this post. This is an excellent little writeup of what's going on in that fic, and why it's bothersome.
An additional little treat in this case--Anon is simply irresistible to women--even Anon, Jr.'s preteen friends. She continually reminds us that she can smell her friends getting turned on every time her dad is around. Sexualizing adults is one thing, but sexualizing minors is a whole 'nother ball of wax.