I've talked so much about this that I must be boring everybody to tears by now. Hopefully, this will be my last comment in this thread.

When I was a kid, I noticed that most stories were about men, whereas a disproportionate number of deathfics were about women. Although I couldn't express it in so many words, I did feel, from a very early age, that men's lives were considered more important than women's and women's deaths were considered less important than men's.

When somebody's life - anybody's life - is used just so that I can experience a "cleansing" by imagining it being snuffed out, I don't feel cleansed, but enraged as well as depressed. I think the value of human life is being reduced and demeaned that way.

But especially, just because I feel that women's lives are generally considered cheaper and less valuable than men's, I get particularly enraged when a woman is killed either to offer us "cleansing", to allow us to wallow in death and still remain untouched by it, or to make a male character experience some interesting emotions. Rigoletto, Lot, Clark and even Black Beauty were treated as the natural and obvious protagonists of their stories, while Rigoletto's daughter, Lot's wife, Lois, Mayson and even Ginger the mare were the female sacrificial lambs, those whose lives were considered cheaper and less interesting than their male counterparts', and who could therefore be killed while their male counterparts lived on.

I'm a feminist, but I don't think I'm too extreme most of the time. But nothing, honestly, makes me more furious than seeing women's lives, their very existence, being considered less interesting and cheaper than that of males, so that they can be sacrificed just to elicit interesting reactions from the males, who are regarded as the main characters anyway. I will never, ever like a story that treats men as people and women as cannon fodder. I will always hate any Lois and Clark story where Clark is treated as the main character and Lois is a plaything or a tool which can be tweaked and bent in various directions just so that we get to watch Clark react.

Ann