Like, I don’t think I have to explain how perfect an analogy lycanthropy is for a period, so why is it that the only real films exploring that are Ginger Snaps and maybe Turning Red if you stretch the definition. I get that there are female werewolves in media but they’re usually side characters with little depth.
I’d also say werewolves are typically presented as a masc thing, like the whole juvenile “dogs are boys, cats are girls” presentation in a lot of media, but even that could lead to some interesting storytelling with typically masc characters having to go through a very fem experience.
Please, we cannot let the only deep exploration of lycanthropy and sexuality in mainstream media be Joannas botched attempts to make it an analogy for aids and then have a character attack and infect children. So I guess this is a stupid question and a call for requests.
Terry Pratchett features a prominent female werewolf in the Watch books of Discworld
You know I love a good Pratchett, but even there Anguia (sorry, I forget her name) only appears as a side character, I did almost bring her up to make a point of universes where werewolves exist only male ones get any real spotlight, but she is the most well detailed mainstream example I suppose.
She’s a pretty major character later in the Watch series, I think The Fifth Elephant in particular.
Well, I think part of the reason is the target audiences.
In movies, they shoot for general audiences as horror usually, which means you just want big and scary, so the gender of the werewolf doesn’t matter. They’ll just be big and scary with little character development anyway, so the male dominated industry just sticks with the default.
In books, however, the target audience now is the paranormal romance audience, which skews heavily female. You’d think this would result in more werewolf women being the main character, but it’s the opposite. The readers don’t want to be werewolves, they want the fantasy of fucking them and taming the bad boy (the genre is very much a hetero dominated one). So the viewpoint character is most often going to be just some woman drawn into whatever the situation is.
Mind you, we’re talking traditionally published here, there’s plenty of casual writers putting stories out on an archive of our own.
However, the field is not empty! Forgive the source, butGoodreads is still good about being able to find things by topic
The third one on that list, Bitten, is part of a fairly decent series that isn’t just soft core erotica or pure romance. Leans little heavy into the whole “alpha” bullshit with the werewolves, but that’s a matter of taste.
Some of those are even more standard urban fantasy rather than paranormal romance, though I’ve found that any urban fantasy with a female protagonist is usually going to include romance at some point.
Anyway, I still think it comes down to writers/producers having a target audience, and putting out what they think will profit rather than primarily trying to explore a concept in depth. You really don’t see much of that in any genre tbh, what with so many production companies and publishers wanting only to invest in something that sells, and having a narrow view of what that is.
I think the thing that I’m learning is the “male dominated industry” part is a hefty portion of the answer to that question.
You need to watch the TV show Wolf Like Me.
That looks cool, thanks for the rec!
Originally the folk concept was heavily affiliated with violent sexual energy, occultism and dark ritualistic sadism. I guess male protagonists conform more readily to those gender stereotypes of the cyclically violent and uncontrollable rapist. During the few witch hunting incidents involving werewolf accusations, the accused were always male. They were also linked with profanation of tombs to devour the recently passed or cannibalism in general. It was also almost always portrayed as either permanent or even voluntary power. The involuntary property or its curse nature rarely universal. With the full moon transformation being almost entirely a Hollywood fabrication.
I think it is interesting to think about the weaving of gender into such symbolism, as the periodic monthly phenomenon is not universal. There’s an Armenian belief that it was a punishment to women, who had to eat children every night for seven years in wolf form. That one is very bleak, but more related to godly punishment of sin by having mothers destroy their locus of adoration, their own children and children in general.
Modern werewolves are related to late 19th century narratives, heavily inspired by Serbian vukodlaks. Dracula himself was kin to werewolves and could transform into one. With some interpreting the gothic tales as an expression of the contemporary anxieties and fears of the victorian era, specially the fears of the patriarchy towards anything they couldn’t control or understand. Anything that was besides the proper order and structure of religion and enlightenment.
The real question is “When a female transforms into her werewolf form, does she also sprout 8 more tiddies?”
Being Human UK version has a female werewolf and a great show.
Also The Magicians has a female werewolf making a period blood reference in a later season but isn’t really much about werewolfs. Great show too.
That’s Nina right? As I recall she gets turned and very abruptly disappears at the end of season 2.
Yeah Nina. Spoilers>!She gets turned in season 2, becomes a main character in season 3, then “disappears” after season 3 before season 4 starts!<
Is my app bugged? Try putting a space between “Spoilers” and “>!” ?
There is a whole genre of werewolf porn literature and the audience is primarily female. Lindsey Ellis did a couple of videos about this a few years ago.
That’s almost definitely of mostly make werewolves, not female ones like op is asking about
But dub con hetero and original mpreg Omegaverse fiction kind of answers some of the underlying questions that OP is asking.
The sexy werewolf in these stories exhibit certain traits which align with the male gender over the female gender. Outside of furry fiction, I don’t know what a woman werewolf taps into.
In contrast, vampires seem to be more gender balanced. There are a lot of stories out there of a woman vampire seducing an acolyte and her being a woman can be part of the story and not distract from the allure.
In comics, Alan Moore wrote Swamp Thing vol 2 #40 (1982)'s ‘The Curse’.
So the movie Dog Soldiers is a favorite popcorn movie that has female werewolf in it. On a more serious note the book Moondance by Sumtow is an amazing novel that delves into so many different themes and folklore surrounding werewolves. It’s one of my favorite novels.
Love it, did almost bring it up, but again, Werewolves are very much used as a benchmark for masculinity throughout.
Alan Moore’s The Curse is in that direction.
Thanks for the recommendation, I haven’t kept up with Alan Moore outside of his famous stuff, so that’ll be a good exploration.
If ‘the curse’ looks good to you, Rachel Deerling’s Anathema is another take.
I would say there’s the obvious industry sexism that limits it, but I do question if there’s a significant market for it? Werewolves are generally characterized as big, strong, hairy, violent, and bestial, and those tend to be characteristics a lot of women either don’t or don’t want to identify with. While there’s elements of werewolf mythos that some women might identify with, the common understanding of them as an archetype of everything that the social construction of femininity tells women they should be suppressing in themselves. While there’s certainly women out there that reject the common social construction and even actively defy it, I would suggest that that’s a rather niche market. That doesn’t excuse not publishing material for that market, lots of works do quite well playing to the niche, but I wonder if books like that would have any chance of making it into mainstream consciousness… at least without a fandom that becomes known for being a bit… rabid (I’m sorry, I had to).
