Sterilization as the Red Room graduation is so... it's a very male idea
YES. I think this is one aspect of what I've been poking at lately with a lot of canons' lack of narrative empathy with their female characters, because they can have all the pieces in place, and lots of screen time for the women, and yet come at the whole thing from a point of view that is just, in very subtle ways, wrong. And I think this is a good example of that! It's taking the whole nightmare scenario of the Red Room, and the loss of bodily autonomy there, and distilling it down to a shorthand involving reproductive parts. It's not that reproductive horror/bodily horror wouldn't be part of the Red Room -- actually, it quite likely is -- but it just feels ... well. Like you said, very male -- like a guy's idea of what women would be afraid of in those circumstances, which isn't actually quite what we are afraid of.
Natasha did get some excellent scenes in the movie, though, including the one you mentioned! I just wish I didn't have so much "nope" over a lot of the romance. Ah well.
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YES. I think this is one aspect of what I've been poking at lately with a lot of canons' lack of narrative empathy with their female characters, because they can have all the pieces in place, and lots of screen time for the women, and yet come at the whole thing from a point of view that is just, in very subtle ways, wrong. And I think this is a good example of that! It's taking the whole nightmare scenario of the Red Room, and the loss of bodily autonomy there, and distilling it down to a shorthand involving reproductive parts. It's not that reproductive horror/bodily horror wouldn't be part of the Red Room -- actually, it quite likely is -- but it just feels ... well. Like you said, very male -- like a guy's idea of what women would be afraid of in those circumstances, which isn't actually quite what we are afraid of.
Natasha did get some excellent scenes in the movie, though, including the one you mentioned! I just wish I didn't have so much "nope" over a lot of the romance. Ah well.