Male Feminists?

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So, the other day, gabrielleabelle made a post questioning the labeling of Angel as a feminist icon. The general consensus, not surprisingly, is that Angel is NOT the feminist icon we are looking for. But it did make me wonder - are there ANY male feminist icons in popular culture? I can't think of any.

Okay. "Icon" is a pretty high bar. How about just a portrayal of a male feminist character? Any medium. How many can you think of?

I'm also including gingerwall's list of criteria from the same post, just for reference. Your criteria may be different (I expect the third one is particularly difficult to find in pop culture, which might eliminate everybody, lol), but I thought it might be helpful for people who want guidelines.

Here would be my qualifications for the Best Male Feminist Role Model in All of Everything Ever:
- Let the women in his life be autonomous agents and make their own decisions.
- Listen to and carefully consider what women have to say about issues that affect both of them.
- Be aware of how organizations that he is a part of contribute to the oppression of the women in his life and work to change or protest those cultures, all the while getting feedback from those women to make sure he is accurately reflecting their lived experience.
- Encourage the women in his life to defy traditional gender roles and take on powerful positions, even at the expense of his own control and power.

Comments

[mikeda.livejournal.com]

- Let the women in his life be autonomous agents and make their own decisions.
- Listen to and carefully consider what women have to say about issues that affect both of them.
- Be aware of how organizations that he is a part of contribute to the oppression of the women in his life and work to change or protest those cultures, all the while getting feedback from those women to make sure he is accurately reflecting their lived experience.
- Encourage the women in his life to defy traditional gender roles and take on powerful positions, even at the expense of his own control and power.


I think many (and probably most of the protagonist characters) of the male characters in Charles De Lint's urban fantasy novels probably count. Especially for points 1,2, and 4. 3 is more iffy as generally the stories aren't about changing the culture per se as trying make improvements in individual lives.

St. Germain of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Saint-Germain novels also seems to count. Again, point 3 is the most questionable as Saint-Germain generally works within the culture of whatever time he's in rather than directly trying to change it.

(Of course, someone who's 4000 years old and potentially immortal does tend to have a different perspective on things.)

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Interesting! I haven't read either set of novels - this post is good for getting recs, too, lol.

Of course, someone who's 4000 years old and potentially immortal does tend to have a different perspective on things.

Heh. I don't know if you read through the comments, but up above agnes_bean and I were talking about that issue in reference to the Doctor, Captain Jack, and Angel. :)

[mikeda.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that there are actually a fair amount of books out there where feminist ideals aren't so much directly expressed as implicitly accepted by most of the protagonist characters. Two examples that come quickly to mind are Mercedes Lackey's own interlinked urban fantasy novels and Diane Duane's Young Wizards novels.

An interesting example from the 60's-early 70's are several of James Schmitz's books (especially those Hub stories starring Trigger Argee, Telzey Amberdon, or Nile Etland). They aren't perfect in that sense by any means, but there's a lot of stuff out there that's a lot worse even now.

(I'm not sure if Schmitz was consciously trying to write feminist stories, if he even thought in those terms. He IS consciously avoiding suggestions of rigid gender roles or gendered personality traits. And he is, I think, trying to portray a basically gender-egalitarian society. Again, not with complete success, but mostly not that bad even for today.)

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Yeah, you know, now that I think about it, you tend to see gender-egalitarian societies as a common theme in SF/F. I wonder if that's somehow more believable, or just more palatable, than trying to write feminist characters in our real-world culture...