I’ve been absolutely tearing through the Dresden files for the last few months. The mysteries are engaging, the world is awesome, I like the characters, and I like the prose. But even nine books in I can’t get over the way women are sometimes treated.
I’m about 2/3s of the way through Proven Guilty and while I know the book was released in 2006 things weren’t that weird, right? Part of the point of view character’s thing is that he has some old school attitudes about women, which is fine but I don’t think it’s always a result of Harry’s character. It’s not a coincidence that one of Murphy’s character traits is “mad at misogny” but the old cop calling her a “cast-iron bitch” is still seen as okay. Prominent women are almost always sexually appealing and are either evil seducers (bianca, lashiel) or vulnerable and in need (Molly and Justine). There are sometimes women with agency like Charity or Murphy but they also frequently fall into traps as well. At first murphy and charity were broadly the same, strict and only tolerated Harry because they had to (admittedly this changes for Murphy). The books are mostly good, and it sort of seemed like he was getting better for a while but Proven Guilty has really made it worse for me
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Edit: Some of y’all would do well to hear about [the Thermian Argument](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxV8gAGmbtk)
by camcam9999
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I haven’t gotten that far into the series but it’s not about Harry’s views as a character. The books follow the crime pulp genre tropes. Basically taking a Donald Westlake or Mickey Spillane novel, updating some things to modern era, but then adding fantasy stuff.
I have seen some discussion of this on YouTube and the quotes from even recent books make it clear it doesn’t get better. And some of it is in reference to children which is a hard no from me dawg, so I’m not going to even bother with them.
It doesn’t really get better. It recedes sometimes, but it’s always an underlying tonal choice in the books in the way that women characters are viewed and spoken about.
The portrayal of women is sadly a big blemish in an otherwise fantastic series. I’d say it gets better but not great. It seems like in the first few he was going heavy into the hard-boiled detective, noir femme fatale thing and it just didn’t work out.
I think you’re past the worst of it.
Hugely agree. It has been many years since I’ve read, but tone of the ones which hugely grossed me out was the redheaded werewolf he’d described as something like husky as a teen (barf) in previous novels then she suddenly became curvy and desirable and owned her sexuality and was the most fuckable of them all despite being kinda fat *eyeroll*
I bounced off the series a couple years ago, so my memory is foggy, but I remember it being an issue in all the novels I read. I remember feeling particularly gross about it with the descriptions of Molly Carpenter when she was being portrayed as a teenager. I always felt that Dresden’s justification of “I know its demeaning but I have old fashioned values” is a bit of a cop out, but everyone has different tolerances for this type of thing.
I bowed out of the series around book 6-7. They were great page turners, but some of that stuff got ridiculous. I bailed when he and Murphy and some other dude were clearing out a nest of vampires and to finish or save the hostages or something there was laser security stopping them luckily Murphy was small enough to get under it… IF she took her jeans off. I’m generous with my suspension of disbelief but I’ve seen adult films with more plausible pretexts.
Don’t know if anyone else mentioned this, but in addition to everything everyone has said corroborating this, I remember there was a lot of talk in the fandom that the author’s feelings towards women, especially when it suddenly got worse in the books, was colored by his wife divorcing him.
I got into an argument with some friends over this – they were insistent it was me just looking too hard… I actually haven’t read past the first one, because of it.
It’s an issue that gets better but never goes away. It’s honestly one of those issues where you have to decide if all of the good things about the series outweighs the bad. For me, I was able to look past it because there was way more about the series that I love. I binged the entire series in around 4 months and I’ve been fighting myself on just starting over again. If it’s too much for you to look past and be comfortable reading, that’s completely fine. No one should read more than they’re comfortable with.
Try the Alex Verus series by Benedict Jacka instead! Same strengths as the Dresden files, without the sexism. Plus it’s British, and complete at 12 books. First book is Fated.
OMG it gets worse. The way he describes Molly every time is extremely cringeworthy.
I actually like the Dresden files. They’re fun books, but man are his female characters the dumbest things ever
If you read his other series you can tell his appreciation for women. Dresden files was a spin on PI noir and fantasy. He’s writing it in that style. The women in Dresden files are powerful, intelligent, and sexy.
Dresden Files has the trappings of detective noir pulp fiction. Unfortunately that often includes blatant, gross male gaze.
For what it’s worth I was born in 1990 and the male gaze in the Dresden Files does not phase me in the slightest. I’ve just always assumed, that on average, men are just like that (well… worse than that, actually). On rereads I find early Murphy to be a bit one note, but when I started the series when I was younger I identified with her pretty strongly.
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>It’s not a coincidence that one of Murphy’s character traits is “mad at misogny” but the old cop calling her a “cast-iron bitch” is still seen as okay.
I’m not sure what your point with this sentence was? In the current year of 2023 I’m pretty sure most cops would still refer to a woman like Murphy as a “cast-iron bitch” and it would be seen as okay by the majority of the force.
And 2006 was the year movies like “My Super Ex Girlfriend”, “Idiocracy” and “Borat” came out. It was a super fucking weird time. An American Pie movie even came out that year. I was raised with movies like the original American Pie, so my standard for how the male mind works in media started in the trash.
Whenever I talk to people about this series or recommend it I always put the caveat that “if male gaze-ness doesn’t bother you” because those criticisms are valid. I just keep seeing this series get brought up with this argument and it makes me wanna be like, “Have you ever tried reading Junkyard Druid?” Because that was published in 2016 and I had to DNF it at Chapter 4 due to how disgusting the treatment of the female characters was.
Sorry for this rant, but this series treats women way better than most other fantasy series written by men that I’ve read. Like, he constantly gets his ass saved by women and kicked by women. He gets object lesson after object lesson about respecting women until he finally does. Dresden is one of the only male narrated books that I’ll even read anymore.
TLDR: Criticisms of Dresden for the level of “male gaze” are perfectly valid, but I believe they are overstated when compared to other media, especially books within it’s own genre.
I would say it’s damn good and making believable, HUMAN interactions between various tropey and archetype characters.
Remember, the Dresden Files are neo-noir in addition to paranormal mystery. And cop culture isn’t that woke. You literally list female characters of every trope on all sides of the agency and fridging camps. And there are dozens more who represent even more types: Mavra, pretty much all the fae, Lash, The Archive.
And on the flip side, the same can be said about Male characters. Everyone who isn’t a canon fodder caricature is complex, vulnerable, and HUMAN.
I used to be a huge fan of the series. Maybe you can tell from my handle.
It does not get better. You are on the book where Harry regularly sexualizes his friend’s 17 year old daughter.
He will keep doing so and worse for the next ten books.
If I have to read “tips of her breasts” one more time…
Yeah to be honest, this is what prevented me from getting into the series at all. I had heard great things about it, but couldn’t get past the first few chapters of the first book due to the subtle and not-so-subtle misogyny.
The book when Harry starts eye-fucking Molly was when I quit.
The worst part for me was in books 1 and 2 when Murphy keeps jumping at any and every chance to accuse Dresden of being the villain, as if he’s the only magic user she’s ever heard of. She works in the “magic crimes” division and has encountered warlocks before in her line of work, but every time she see’s a magic circle she freaks out and says “I knew it was you, Harry! How could you?! Get on the ground!”.
What’s amusing is his son writes in the same genre. He doesn’t seem to write women the way his dad does. Their writing is similar but missing the male gaze shit in the son’s.
>There are sometimes women with agency like Charity or Murphy but they also frequently fall into traps as well.
It’s not as if the men in the books don’t fall into traps.
It sounds like your complaint is that Dresden is attracted to and notices women and describes them to the reader. Is that incorrect?
This topic has been brought up ad nauseam since the series started 23 years ago. Yes, The Dresden Files has a “skewed” portrayal of women. It was an intentional stylistic choice that may or may not land depending on the reader. It’s fine to not like it, and it’s fine to drop the series because of it.
Butcher’s treatment of women is fucking disgusting and why I stopped reading that series. I liked the world building but that doesn’t save it from being gross.
It’s probably possible to enjoy 16,000 pages of a storyline and also acknowledge 200 pages have some extent of chauvinism.
Those books sexualize every female character over the age of 16. I really didn’t notice how bad it was until I “re-read” the series via audiobook. James Marsters did *too* good of a job reading them.
Jim Butcher has an issue with women characters. Not sure what it is, but it’s been there through most of his books.
It’s interesting, because he tries to write interesting women, but he can’t seem to commit to it.
Like the thing with Murphy, if you read the side stories, is that she just jives with her cops and is one of the guys. And is, like, respected by the guys that she works with. For the most part. But that isn’t really displayed as well in the main series because it’s always focused on Harry.
Also, Butcher has been called out so many times about his issues, so I’d say he’s pretty aware of his failings? But he is also just kind of stuck with Harry as the main character for the Dresden Files.
The Furies series benefits a lot from not having a single character focal point, but there are. A lot. Of painful parts. Like there’s a badass swordswoman and the main character defeats her by saying she has daddy issues? Awful.
Anyway, I think around 2012 he was getting called out by a lot of people online for his stuff. There was a particular live journal I was reading that mentioned having several interactions with Butcher and him being frustrated about it. He took a pretty long couple sets of breaks.
Butcher was my favorite author for his worldbuilding and for the fact that he always reintroduces characters in each new book. Sometimes he needs a spray bottle though.
Sorry if this isn’t coherent. I have a headache and a lot of thoughts.
Did you just imply that Molly does not have agency
I will have you know that – oh wait a sec *flips back in your post*
I will wait until you have completed the series before I publish my MASTER reply I was just typing
/S
I agree with you Jim Butcher is one of those dudes with a lot of what I will call ‘probably systemic and unconscious sexism”. Dresden is still an awesome story while acknowledging that is a valid criticism and we should try to do better with our future.
I think you will like how Molly’s character develops tho she rules IMO
All these comments defending him makes me think he must have a *colossal* incel following.
I read and enjoyed five or six of his books but I don’t think your take is unfair or controversial in the slightest.
It’s not just about the character of Dresden being horny, he is somehow a sex magnet to *all* the women, including the teenage ones. The female characters can be powerful up to a point, but are all fodder for the male gaze.
People are talking about sexism being a trope of the noir stories he is referencing, but that’s such a lazy copout. Truth is, the porny female-body-objectifying elements of Butcher’s writing are a feature not a bug, so he’s naturally going to appeal to guys who like that, and they are naturally going to resist this being labelled as problematic because it’s not a good look to admit that stuff turns you on. That’s why they appeal to 1950s era values, and that’s probably why Butcher writes it that way. Even though most of the best noir writers weren’t as frankly objectifying of women in their work.
Like I said, a *big* incel, and incel adjacent audience.
This is why I haven’t read them. I hear good things, but I also hear about this and I don’t think I could put up with it.
I think a key is that the books are a story told from Harry’s perspective. Harry is the problem. He treats women like some weird holy object he can’t touch. If anything I appreciate that fact that Butcher has Murphy very aware of it and thinking of Harry as a super nerd with no attraction because of those kind of traits.
And, to be fair, Harry’s relationship with women in general does change over time and he does become to realize they’re kinda just people with the same goals and concerns.
I think it’s also important to mention that there are NO normal women in the book. Every woman of significance is supernatural in some way and has had very far from a simple and traditional upbringing in any way. Every woman in the books has experienced a lotta trauma and has a ton of hangups and triggers. I don’t know if this is good or not. I just know I’m not expecting any of them to be ‘normal’ and react the same as people I encounter most days in my boring life. Bianca isn’t going to chat with Harry about how the price of limes has gone from $0.25 to $0.45 in the last year. She’s a vampire that runs a whorehouse where people come in to get sucked and wind up getting sucked….but not like that. I don’t know why we would expect her to NOT be an evil seducer. That’s really what she is. She isn’t even a woman. She’s some kinda weird bat monster with a nice latex bodysuit.
I think it’s also fair to say that Butcher isn’t writing about the world as it SHOULD be – he’s writing about the world his characters are experiencing. And, I totally believe that Murphy was called a lotta names at work and I totally believe that she didn’t have a lotta options other than acting like one-of-the-guys and giving it back like she got it.
I think if you skip the Dresden Files because you think there might be some sub-par treatment of women you’ll only be robbing yourself of a chance to enjoy a really good story with a lotta imperfect characters doing the best they can in a shit world.
You pretty much stated my exact thoughts when I tried his stuff a couple years ago. I loved the strong, beautiful vampire, not sure of her name I’m sure you mentioned her, who fell into tears after her makeup got blown off by a bit of sunlight. It was awful.
I always feel like he thinks having Harry be self aware of his attitude gives him a pass and never has to grow in that regard.
I DNF the first book. My (male) friends were RAVING about the series and even based a DND campaign around it so I got curious and picked them up.
I couldn’t get past the fact every single time a woman showed up it was basically “I may or may not know this person. They look kinda hot but in a different way that last lady did. I’d probably tap that. But not today. There is work to do.”
I understand the appeal. Apart from that it was pretty good but it was so…icky. And so frequent.
If you don’t like the way women are depicted in the books, stop reading. It gets worse. I wish I had stopped before the 2 books he released in 2020, and now I will never get what he did to those characters out of my head.
Yeahhh in the stories the women are always cunning and have some ulterior motive or strong/independent needs no man.
They can never just be people.
hey you got further than I did. The second book absolutely broke me. I don’t know how much the writing and treatment of women was responsible but it was absolutely one of the obvious issues. I thought it was turning a corner in 3 because a lot of the book was about harry facing apparent consequences for the way he had treated women in the previous book. But by that point I had no motivation or care to keep going
Dresden is nothing but a very convenient scapegoat for the author to use. “My books aren’t like this, it’s just Harry, which is on purpose.” Fans will often say the same thing.
The issue is that demeaning and sexist shit often happens outside of Harry’s POV. Things like Butters turning into an Uber Chad with two hot supernatural women shows how Butcher is the one steering the ship.
Haven’t read these in a long time, but stopped at the one with the werewolves in it . If he called the woman wolf a bitch once, he called her it on every page. The one thing worse than misogyny is tedious misogyny.