Reviews Literature / Anita Blake

I disagree, you can say she's a feminist but not necessarily a feminist role model.

• Reviewing point one. I don't think bigotry toward a group of women discredits her "badge" of feminism. Her prejudice is more than likely a misattribution of feelings toward "uneducated" females, still rooted from her father's remarriage. I would say that is still a decidedly "feminist" outlook. Just not a pretty one.
• Reviewing point two. Not a very feminist perspective though it may be attributed to her "liberated sex life" and nature as a vampire hunter, she cannot truly understand the rape victims perspective. Not to mention it was the stepson of her friend. She might just put friends and family ahead of "women everywhere". It's like a black person defending their white friend who was accused of a hate crime.
• It's probably disingenuous to suggest that sexuality has no role in female empowerment. She can still be considered a feminist, just one who seized power for herself.

if she is a feminist its more straw than anything else. At least until obsidian butterfly, then it is just insulting.

1. I honestly don't see how using hair color as a basis for general disdain of other women is "feminist." Could your elaborate on that, please?

Anita's constant scorn for other women- directed at a mother for crying when her two children are kidnapped, at a female wereleopard for wearing revealing clothing while in human form, at a teenage vampire girl for being scared when Anita interrogates/terrorizes her, at a female werewolf for having the sheer audacity to be physically attractive -is not feminism. It's the opposite- she shames other women for feminine tastes, showing her own misogyny.

2. It's worth noting that Anita (A) doesn't know the stepson in question very well, (B) was only hearing about the information secondhand and therefore did not know many details but still just totally disregarded the very idea, despite her police training and near obligation to play Devil's Advocate to the accused, and (C) the stepson in question had also been raped a few years earlier when he was 14, so Anita should have known that there is a slim possibility that he may have become a sexual aggressor due to his own trauma.

Furthermore, Anita is always sympathetic towards male rape victims, such as Peter, the friend's stepson, or Nathaniel, one of the guys in her harem. But she never hesitates to be dismissive of other women who claim to/have suffered sexual assault.

Also notable are the dub-con situations Anita herself is involved in- Micah has sex with while she actively and genuinely protests, Nathaniel continues domming her even when she shouts the safeword, and the villain in Obsidian Butterfly has sex with her despite her protests (Changed in the Orwellian Retcon- now she didn't protest "enough," you see). All have the distinctive taint of Its Not Rape If You Enjoyed It.

3. Sexuality and female empowerment can be mutually exclusive, believe it or not. A woman does not necessarily need to have sex in order to achieve her goals. My point is that a women having sex doesn't equate with female empowerment. A woman can be empowered without having sex, a woman can have sex and be empowered. But due to the Ardeur, it seems as though the only way Anita is able to empower herself is through sex. Sex with high school boys, that is.

I'm kind of curious. Why exactly do you believe that Anita is feminist? Because she has a guy killed for refusing to have sex with her?