Fair for Its Day/Playing With
Basic Trope: A work or part of a work seems laden with Values Dissonance to modern readers, but it made perfect sense (or was even a bit radical) in the time and place it was written in.
- Played Straight: A set of laws gives its women certain rights (such as initiating divorce, partial inheritance, prohibiting the killing of a baby girl just because it's a girl, etc.) but not all the same rights or treatment as men.
- Exaggerated: However, the work goes on to specifically mention things (such as how women are to behave, how men are the head of the family, etc.) that sound very backwards to modern readers used to gender equality.
- Inverted: The laws in question give women the same rights and responsibilities as men (and thus make perfect sense in the modern age).
- Justified: Some changes were needed, but people are slow to affect change. Giving women some rights is better than giving them no rights at all.
- Subverted: The work sounds like it was written in The Dung Ages or even belongs in a historical Dork Age.
- Double Subverted: But it was, in fact, really radical and controversial for its time.
- Deconstructed: Even if it was comparatively fair, the work's Values Dissonance is so bad (eg the "moral" of the story is a racist sentiment) that the work is far too offensive to be taken seriously.
- Reconstructed: But still, it gives valuable insight into the context the work was made in
- Parodied:
- Lampshaded:
- Averted: The work makes perfect sense to modern readers.
- Enforced: A period drama deliberately invokes this values dissonance in its characters for authenticity, but goes as far as possible to the fair side as to not completely alienate the audience.
- Invoked: Someone is less-than-satisfied about how women are treated in his/her society, and wants to do something about it, but knows that doing too much would be too radical for people to accept.
- Defied: This person writes in laws and edicts that specifically grant women the same rights, treatment, and responsibilities as men, and if people don't like it, too bad.
- Discussed:
- Conversed: "That poem was so sexist." "It was, but compare it to everything else written back then."
- Played For Laughs: The edicts are similar to "Blue Laws" that made perfect sense to the society in question, but sound absurd and nitpicky to modern readers.
- Played For Drama: Very often is.
"This site may seem oppressive, what with requiring editors to sign their edits with a screen name, but compared to similar sites of the time that required e-mail addresses, it was very much Fair for Its Day."