The misogyny of Lacenet discourse around Hornet being a mother figure or Lace being a child is a really interesting microcosm of the way audience’s ingrained perception of real women poisons the well of possible women we can write about.
There are a lot of intense systems impressed upon us by society with regard to what women should be: maternal, in control, not too pushy, subservient, calm, pleasant, doting, etc. When we women fail at these things, say in the way Lace does by being erratic, cruel, jealous, and controlled, society says that we should be viewed as a failed woman. Lace lacks all of the markers of being good (read: ready to serve the patriarchy). This strikes me as the core from where infantilizing comes from: if you don’t succeed at being a woman then you are a child. And, if you aren’t an actual child, then you are to be reviled. For audience members poisoned by this way of thinking, I reckon the Lace is a child, despite the in fiction insistence that she’s old, is actually trying to solve for this problem. We like Lace but she’s failing at being a woman so she has to be a child or else we have to hate her.
What’s funny is Hornet does also fail at all of these things, but she does not have the same infantilizing done to her, mostly because Hornet does female masculinity in one of the rare approved ways we have for that in our culture: she is masculine in a way that is maternal, I.e. she’s fixing everything and she’s not annoying.
This is the one way we, as dykes, can avoid being infantilized and, to make this a little personal, it’s a scar that runs down the whole of my life. How many decisions have I made about how I present and engage with world that center around not wanting to be a barefoot ass doting mother? How often do I take control of situations because that’s the expectation? It is a sort of motherhood thrust upon us, but I think it’s mechanically different because it’s a bargain the patriarchy gives women with the “charisma” to pay for it. I get to be a sort of accepted woman who isn’t a mother because I’m not annoying to men and I summon a sort of badass, I know how to fix this attitude. But in that way I sacrifice the whole of my identity, the ways I am deeply feminine, the ways I struggle, suffer, want, need, and wish, to not be thrown into the fail woman pit (which is not a consequence any of us can afford to ignore, believe me).
With that in mind, it would be deeply wrong to say I’m mature because I take that bargain. I am not, I’m just trying to survive. Hornet is not any more of a grown spider either: she is just trying to survive. It’s honestly a very fascinating depiction and I’m really enamored with it (even if it is a little bit of TC playing into this facet of misogyny) because it feels so real. It’s for this reason that I am so personally upset at the idea that Hornet should become a mother. It is implying her character growth requires her to switch her bargain from being a butch in a approved way to being a doting mother.
Lace, as the fail woman taking none of the bargains, is left nothing but being infantilized and marked for “needing fixing” and our society does not allow for broken women to find healing in a relationship, especially not with another woman.
Why does this happen? Well if you’re lost in the sauce of this system, struggling to fit into it and not aware of its full scope, then what you have is that innate, wordless discomfort about what is permitted and what is not. I feel like there’s a real insistence in online spaces to defend our beliefs, and so people often fall into the trap of: I feel this and I hope that I am good so the thing I feel must be good. If you feel discomfort at Lace being a failure in her womanhood and still deserving a romantic partner, it is perhaps easier to say “there’s something wrong with this ship” than “there’s something wrong with my entire life and everything about it, and it might be totally unfixable.”
I am sympathetic to the way that this is not anyone’s fault. It is a machine that grinds us up forever. However, it’s also something I am honor bound to lash out at, not only out of desire to carve a world kinder for me and my sisters, but also because mapping this restrictive, brutal, cruel system of good vs bad women leads to extremely boring fiction. The idea that Lace needs to do so much fixing to become good enough for Hornet is a boring and baseless claim. It is not steeped in writing critique or feminism laundered to justify the bad feeling in people’s bellies. It is sexism.
As a woman who dates and loves women on occasion, I can tell you with certainty that there’s a lot to love about flawed women. I’ve loved plenty of them without “needing to fix them” and I’ve been one and been loved and haven’t made much progress on my flaws. I know this is hard and that society doesn’t help us do that, but I do categorically expect everyone to confront this curse a bit and to really think when something makes you uncomfortable.
We owe seeing Lace as a life beyond her frail, wasting existence, a being capable of loving and being loved, because we owe it to ourselves and the women in our lives.
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