# My Male Chauvinistic writing style



## srebak (Feb 4, 2014)

I'll just cut right to the point, i'm starting to think that i don't know how to write strong female characters (lead or supporting). In fact, I'm starting to think that my writing style is pretty biased towards women (either there aren't many female characters or they're just there to be the love interest or rescue victim) and really don't want that to be the case. In this day and age, it's pretty obvious that women are capable of doing anything a man can do (maybe even more so), yet whenever i try to imagine a story, i end up thinking of lines and scenes that could definitely be considered anti-feminist or sexist; them being objects of beauty, them needing a "big, strong man" to come rescue them or them just being the generic love interest and nothing more. I repeat, i don't want that to be the case, especially when i'm thinking about new ways to handle a show or movie that has a strong admirable female lead.


The worst part of it is, i think this stems from my favorite animation company, Disney. A lot of their earlier movies had pretty weak female leads. You would think that since i was born during the time when that was starting to change, this wouldn't be a problem, but it kind of is.


I want to believe that since i can acknowledge something as sexist and anti-feminist, that means i'm not a sexist myself, but i just don't know.


Any thoughts?


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## Feo Takahari (Feb 4, 2014)

A good experiment would be to try to write one short story in which the main character is female. See how it turns out, and keep an eye out for anything that goes wrong.


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## Jabrosky (Feb 4, 2014)

srebak said:


> In this day and age, it's pretty obvious that women are capable of doing anything a man can do (maybe even more so), yet whenever i try to imagine a story, i end up thinking of lines and scenes that could definitely be considered anti-feminist or sexist; them being objects of beauty, them needing a "big, strong man" to come rescue them or them just being the generic love interest and nothing more.


I don't necessarily have a problem with writing female characters who are warriors or who can otherwise take care of themselves, but I will admit that one of my major reasons for having prominent female characters in the first place could be interpreted as "male gaze": namely, I like having sexy ladies in my stories. What can I say, I am a lusty young male.


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## Caged Maiden (Feb 4, 2014)

You know... I'm a woman and I don't really write strong female leads either.  But I get what you're saying.  Most of my female characters are tough, but they aren't warriors.  They have been through the wringer emotionally, but most are lonely, frightened, secretive, sometimes even conniving.  They aren't heroes, they're normal women who have to survive.  

If you want to maybe see female characters in a different way, consider how best to portray them.  Do you enjoy any female movie characters?  Try writing some fun things like a female bounty hunter, a female knight, a female monster hunter.  Get a feel for what kinds of tactics a woman might have to use rather than a man.  I mean... most men aren't the hulking brutes they're portrayed as in some fiction, either.  Most of my male characters aren't brawny beefcakes, but average joes that need to work hard and be a little smarter than they thought, to survive.  

If you are going for realism, think about the things women CAN do well.  I'm a small female and I definitely am at a disadvantage when I sword fight against taller, stronger and more experienced men.  But, on the archery field, I'm at no disadvantage.  I can shoot targets as well my male friends, even with my weaker bow.  How about a magic fight?  I'd imagine I'd be a better healer than most people due to my empathy and I bet I could fry the butt off an axe-wielding brute.

Just think about who they are as people and try fleshing them out, giving them personalities.  There are a multitude of "chracter worksheets" to be found and you can invent one of your own.  It will help you make your less-defined characters into characters people care about.


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## Malik (Feb 4, 2014)

The problem with writing strong female leads is explaining what they're doing out of the kitchen and wearing shoes.

(Ow! Not the face! Don't hit the face! I have meetings!)


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## kayd_mon (Feb 4, 2014)

Just because the female can't punch through a castle wall doesn't necessarily make her a weak character. I think there was an article on the front page about that, and it was great.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 4, 2014)

I've been pondering this quite a bit myself. It's something I worry almost irrationally much about from time to time.

I'm writing a romance story from a male PoV and I really want to make the female romance interest more than just an object for the male to get hung up on and acquire. I think I've come to grips with it though and I think I've created an interesting character with some personality and depth.
There are two things I did that helped me immensely:
1. Don't aim to create a strong woman, aim to create a real woman.
2. Write a few short stories from her perspective.

The first one is clearly the more difficult. It's more of a shift in mind-set than anything else. My female lead is not only a woman, she's also a person. She has her own past, her own issues and her own ambitions. This is where the second point comes in. If you explore her personality through writing short stories about her, you'll get to know her. You'll get a better feel for who the character is and you'll be more confident with her when putting her into the main story.

At least that's the theory. I've completed the shift in mindset (point 1) and I've completed several short stories (point 2) and I feel like I've succeeded. I just haven't actually gotten to the point in my novel when she actually appears. - So take this with a pinch of salt. 


EDIT:
http://mythicscribes.com/forums/showcase/10608-amanda-goes-dancing-flash-fiction-series.html
This is a flash fiction I wrote here on the forums about my character Amanda. It's not polished and not particularly well written, but it's not meant to be. The purpose of that entire exercise was for me (the writer) to spend some time with the character and think about things from her perspective. I like to share my work though as it motivates me to be productive.


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## Chessie (Feb 4, 2014)

Hm, interesting thread. I especially love the OP's concern about this. I'm a lady myself and I can't think of exactly how a strong female lead acts. My take is that men and women just handle things differently. An individual's reactions depend on personality, motivation, etc. And I don't think strong necessarily means kick ass either. When I think of a strong character--male or female--who they are as an individual and how they impact my emotions throughout the story is what stands out. Is that character acting believable to what's happening? 

This depends on the story world. Can women only wait to be rescued or do they have the power to do something to save themselves? My characters will rely on other people if its part of their personality, for example. Whether they are male/female doesn't matter.


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## tlbodine (Feb 4, 2014)

Recognizing you have a problem is the first step.  Kudos on you for the self-awareness -- it's something more people could stand to have.  

I think three things need to happen here.  I think, first, you need to read widely and seek out books with female characters.  Do this in part for pleasure, but also as research.  Take notes, if you're so inclined.  See how other people are doing it and try to internalize those techniques.  

Second, you should talk to women, or at least think about them carefully.  Do you have a mom, aunt, sisters, cousins, female friends, girlfriends, ANYONE in your life who is a woman who you would consider "strong"?  Physically, morally, psychologically, whatever.  Talk to them.  Get their stories.  Get a feeling for what life is like for them day-by-day, how they think about things, how they react to things.  The more strong women you know in real life, the more material you'll have to draw on for characters.  

Third, you need to write.  Don't necessarily worry about it going anywhere.  Just try it for practice.  Try writing some fanfiction from the POV of a female character in a series you like, and think about what their life is like that's different from how the main story goes.  Or take a person you know, one of those women you talked to in step 2, and write her into a story.  Imagine what she'd do if faced with whatever conundrum.  

Once you get a little practice under your belt, it gets easier.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Feb 4, 2014)

Try writing a story that contains ONLY female characters. If there's no men around, that might make it easier for you to avoid falling into the usual anti-feminist tropes.

Remember: feminism is the radical idea that women are people.


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## Mythopoet (Feb 4, 2014)

I'm a woman, and a rather outspoken and strong willed one too. But I don't write Strong Female Characters(tm). In fact, most of my characters are male and all of my main characters are male, at the moment. I like strong male characters and feminine female characters. I expect that when I eventually start publishing I'll receive some criticism for that. There's a certain vocal group that seems to think all stories should have Strong Female Characters(tm) and if they're not the protagonist then they should at least have as much "agency" as the protagonist. I doubt they'll like my work, but frankly I don't care.

I write what I write because I like it and find it interesting. I like to imagine that every writer writes what they do because they like it and find it interesting. If that's the case then I say just keep on doing what you're doing and don't worry about what certain people think you should write about.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 4, 2014)

I posted this in the Chit-Chat forum a while back, but i figured it might be relevant to this thread too: A Day In the Life of An Empowered Female Character


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## Philip Overby (Feb 4, 2014)

What each person perceives as a "strong" character varies from person to person. Some may think physical strength while some think mental or emotional strength. My idea of a strong character is someone who gets brutalized one way or another and manages to still pull through and keep on going. So my idea of a strong character could be like Rocky, who gets beat up over and over and still trains to get both physically and emotionally stronger. Or a character like Cersei Lannister who despite her plans falling apart, continues to press forward with new plans in order to manipulate people to her will. 

So I believe if you write characters who tend to not give up one way or another, you've achieved my definition of what a strong character is. As I said, this may vary from person to person, but that's what I think.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 4, 2014)

You can also, though I think it's less common, define a strong character as one who carries a big part of the story. A character that the reader connects with and who lifts the story above just the events that take place in it.


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## tlbodine (Feb 4, 2014)

I wrote a blog post on the topic of strong characters not so long ago.  I came to the conclusion that the key ingredient is agency.  T.L. Bodine: On Strong Women, Agency and Default Narrative States


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## Penpilot (Feb 4, 2014)

Well, not every female has to be strong, just like not every male has to be strong. Define strong how ever you want. For me, it boils down to one thing when writing any character. Give them dimension and when possible make that dimension start with a three. Every character major or minor wants something. They have dreams and aspirations of their own that they want to pursue. And those aspirations will sometimes conflict with those of the other characters and especially the main character. 

If the hero, Fred, asks his BFF, Lisa, to drop everything in her life to help him win over the girl he loves, Lisa should at least sometimes say, F-off, I'm watching the Superbowl, or You're on your own. I have a date. 

Also, the love interest shouldn't just be sitting around waiting for The Call. They should be pursuing their interests, which may or may not include other people.


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## GroundedTraveler (Feb 4, 2014)

I seem to end up with mostly female villains. They are definitely strong and yet from a writing point of view I need them to be strong to be a decent villain instead of just because they are female.

My second novella I am trying to add a female character to the protagonist side. Like the OP I am a bit worried how to write her, but so far it seems to be going ok.


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## Jabrosky (Feb 4, 2014)

I bet you could avoid most political correctness issues if you just add depth to your characters. The reason stereotypes offend us is because they are simplistic caricatures by nature, and caricatures make for lazy storytelling.


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## SineNomine (Feb 5, 2014)

tlbodine said:


> I wrote a blog post on the topic of strong characters not so long ago.  I came to the conclusion that the key ingredient is agency.  T.L. Bodine: On Strong Women, Agency and Default Narrative States



Great blog post, and gets to what I feel is the heart of the issue.  Agency is absolutely the key.  Strong female characters don't need to be hyper-masculine, they don't need to be physically imposing, they don't need to ignore romance completely.  The biggest thing they need to be is capable of making decisions and taking actions.  Luckily, one of the first major challenges most authors face is already learning to make active, instead of passive, protagonists.  It's not much of a leap to working on making active, instead of passive, female characters.  Not all women need to be strong of course, the problem usually irks people when  ALL of the women in your stories are weak.

The other major issue is the idea of "default" characters.  So much of our media has ingrained in us the idea that "male" is not really a character trait.  Men can be anything, good or evil, heroic or cowardly, calm or emotional...being male doesn't limit them in the least.  But a character being female all of a sudden limit what she can be or how she can act to a narrow range of stereotypes.  In the worst stories, you could predict the entire rest of her character and maybe even her role in the story after simply learning that she is a woman.  The idea that you could do the same with a male character is absurd.

The fact that you recognize this in your own writing and what to improve it is HUGE, it is really all someone could ask of you.  We are all a product of the media we consume in a way, and stretching beyond that is a hard but important step.

For advice, I want to second what Benjamin Clayborne said, because it really is the best possible way to work on it.  Just write a story where every single character is a woman.  The good guy, the bad guy, the side kick, the mentor, the cobbler who has a few lines in chapter 7, the queen and her jester, the princess, the bandits...everyone.  The goal is to simply force yourself to come up with interesting, unique female characters with as many traits as you can possibly think of.  Some of them WILL be really girly.  Some of them will be focused on romance.  Some of them will be passive.  But if you do it right, you will quickly find that it opens your mind in a very subtle but important way, because you are going to have to have women who also aren't those traits at all.  You basically want to bust down those mental blocks in your creativity that are limiting what women you can come up.


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## wordwalker (Feb 5, 2014)

It's a tricky business. 

It's just so blamed *easy* to start writing the women in the more passive roles; "agency" is indeed the measure of that, and it's a challenge because agency can be like a limited commodity in a tale. However complex you think your story's going to be, there are only so many places where a character goes against the tide in ways that have actual effects. Does a female doctor have enough agency if she starts asking questions about the hero's "rapid recovery," or does she get to dig further into the clues? Does she get captured (oops, Damsel in Distress!), or do you vindicate her by escaping on her own or finding clues the hero really needs to save the day-- hmm, that's more and more work to give her agency without letting her take over the story, and of course by now the back of our minds are saying "Maybe she _should_ take it over? Who said the story had a 'hero' anyway, and is any story really non-sexist enough if its protagonist isn't female?"

No, I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying it's all part of the balancing act that writing is anyway.

(In fact, look at some of the history of novels, or Golden Age movies for that matter; for long periods they were written clearly about and for women more than men. Or consider romances; for all the genre's problems, they do build stories more or less around a woman and her decisions.)

Except, we don't always realize how blind we can get. As an example, how often do we leave them out altogether? One filmmaker suggested writers revolutionize Hollywood by writing every description of crowds with the four words "half of them women", but a better test would be to count up our own characters in a story. Writing an all-female tale might be an eye-opener, but it needs to be an organic process of giving the women real roles within a real story.

For me, the real piece on this is Sophia McDougall's I hate Strong Female Characters. Her point is that fictional women don't "need to be strong" (and I love her example of how Captain America's love interest is allowed to gamble with the hero's life "because she's fiesty," sigh), or even have some minimum amount of agency. They need to be _there,_ and dramatically _complete,_ instead of getting token roles. Even roles where they shoot things.


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## BWFoster78 (Feb 5, 2014)

srebak,

I think your process is a good one: identify a flaw in your writing and try to figure out how to fix it.

The suggestions you received to try writing short stories featuring female protagonists or only female characters are good ones.  I would add that perhaps a good thing to do when writing one of those stories is to first identify someone you consider to be a strong female.  Base the character off her.  Put her in a situation and ask yourself how this particular female would react.

Hope this helps!

Brian


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## Hagan (Feb 5, 2014)

Writing strong female characters is not so difficult, once you work out a few details first.  Like male characters, female characters need to be driven, focused and well rounded in your mind before writing.  They need merits and flaws both mental and physical, a distinct voice of their own and a goal, no mater how involved it is.  Pretty much like any male character really.

Strong characters come in all forms, gender included, from the physically imposing to the fanatically faithful, mentally resilient to the devious and the ruthless.  Quietly strong characters rely less on dialogue and more on inner monologue and observation of their actions, whilst talkative characters can be be some of your most devious and scathing of characters, using truth (or clever lies) to empower themselves.  In the end its the force of personality that drives a character, and male or female, the standard rules apply.

A good way of creating a few strong female characters is the 500 word stories, to get some practice in on a small scale, along with reading some other works with strong female casts.  When writing, try to tell the situation through the characters experience rather than just observation, get into the characters head, make it personal to them and let them tell you what is happening, why it happened and how they intend to to bring about a conclusion (but avoid writing the conclusion for now).  If you know a few people who can give them a read through (male and female) then do so, feedback should help highlight where you are going wrong and what you are getting right (You may surprise yourself here).

Kudos on recognizing you have a fault though, and have fun learning something new.


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## srebak (Feb 5, 2014)

After putting more thought into the matter, i guess i just want to know what to do so as not to make a character a sexist and/or anti-feminist caricature.

Hypothetically speaking, say i wanted to make a female character a love interest and i did want the male hero to rescue her from something, how do i do all of this without it coming off as me viewing women as inferior to men (which by all accounts, i shouldn't)?

As i said before, i'm worried that Disney (one of my favorite animation companies) may have played a role in this.


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## buyjupiter (Feb 5, 2014)

[begin gender politicky warning] Part of the problem might be the interchangeability of "female" and "woman" that a bunch of people have seemed to have developed over the last fifteen years. Words are important, and seeing gender confused with sex is a big problem for me.

Some of the most womanly women I've known aren't female at all. Some of the manliest men I've known aren't male. Separating out the two things might give you an idea of how to approach writing women characters. [/gender politicking, all the above is *my* opinion/experience only]

That said, you might try the following exercise: think of a definition of "woman". Try to not define the concept by "not a man" or "female". Think of qualities that you see in the women in your life. Write them down. Then see if you can figure out which qualities are "strong" and which are weaker. Does the same definition of strength apply to your ideas of how men are strong? Maybe do the same thing for men, if you need to.

Any strength you give any character needs to be tempered by some weakness. So, say your strong woman MC is able to do handy-work/car repairs, she shoots whiskey with the boys and she knows how to rope cattle. Maybe she cusses like a sailor, but still knows how to handle a bunch of whiny little kids without snapping. She needs to be balanced or you end up with a perfect, trite, bad stereotype in the other direction. Fear and phobias are a great way of giving balance. But I'd try not to do the typical snakes/spiders thing. Maybe make her deathly afraid of pigeons?


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## Ireth (Feb 5, 2014)

srebak said:


> Hypothetically speaking, say i wanted to make a female character a love interest and i did want the male hero to rescue her from something, how do i do all of this without it coming off as me viewing women as inferior to men (which by all accounts, i shouldn't)?



If you don't want the love interest to have to be rescued by the hero, the solution is simple: don't put her in a position where she needs to be rescued. Maybe they're friendly acquaintances from the same town or village, and she has some skill or knowledge that the hero needs on his journey, so she travels with him from the start. Or maybe they meet later on, and she is the one to rescue him -- not necessarily by fighting off an ogre or something. Maybe she finds him half-dead after eating a poisonous mushroom he mistook for a good one, and she uses her herbalist skills to nurse him back to health.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Feb 5, 2014)

Ireth said:


> If you don't want the love interest to have to be rescued by the hero, the solution is simple: don't put her in a position where she needs to be rescued. Maybe they're friendly acquaintances from the same town or village, and she has some skill or knowledge that the hero needs on his journey, so she travels with him from the start. Or maybe they meet later on, and she is the one to rescue him -- not necessarily by fighting off an ogre or something. Maybe she finds him half-dead after eating a poisonous mushroom he mistook for a good one, and she uses her herbalist skills to nurse him back to health.



Or maybe she rescues him from something too, so that there's rescue parity. Or maybe she gets captured on purpose and he tries to rescue her, accidentally screwing up her plan to have the villain reveal his evil scheme via monologue, etc.


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## Malik (Feb 5, 2014)

Three of the four female characters in my first book end up needing rescuing. Not through any fault or weakness of their own; they end up in situations that anybody would need rescuing from. In the second book, the MC gets rescued a lot.

The thing about the heroine-in-peril shtick is that you have to make the reader care not only about the heroine, but to care about the impact on the characters doing the rescuing should they fail. 

That, to me, is the part of the rescuing that a lot of authors miss: war is not a video game. It really sucks to blow an important mission. Even if it's not your fault, mission failure is nightmare fuel for the rest of your life; the kind of thing that has left tougher men than me heavily medicated. Fortunately, I can only imagine how it must feel to screw the pooch and get someone you care about killed. 

Yet, we always see the main character dashing bravely in and saving the day. No hesitation, no major intelligence gaps, no inkling that the map was wrong or they know he's coming, no serious threat of failure. (There are only 15 pages left! What can go wrong?) 

Make the MC worry. If the MC worries, I'll worry.


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## srebak (Feb 5, 2014)

You know what the worst part of all this is? Not long ago, this didn't bother me all that much. But, in recent years, mainly because i listened to a lot of reviews and commentaries about Disney films, this fear about sexism and anti-feminism has really started to strike a cord in me, because it felt like I was becoming a bit sexist and anti-feminist in my own mind.

You would think that at my age, after spending years of being raised by a single mother and an outspoken and abrasive older sister, along with having a great deal of female teachers, i would be anything but anti-feminist, yet that feeling still exists in me somewhere and i want it to end.

It's become a problem for me this week because i just watched a commentary about Disney's Beauty and the Beast and one of the statements about the Disney Princesses struck a cord in me; Disney did have a habit of making their earlier Princesses rather weak in character. That, coupled with mental issues i'm already having with another show, which i'm trying to hold of on watching until after Valentine's day, are really starting to throw me off. Now, i can't help but view strong female characters as weak sexist caricatures, and as i said, i want that to stop.

I can't believe this happened because I was watching a commentary about a movie with a strong female lead. And for this to happen before Valentine's day, the day celebrating love, it's unsettling. Mainly because, when i think of "love", the first thing that comes to mind is the kind of love felt between a man and a woman. Yet now i'm viewing the woman part of the equation as the weaker part, even a lot of fictional couples out there have the female as the stronger one.

As i've said before, I want this feeling to end, now.


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## Guy (Feb 5, 2014)

srebak said:


> After putting more thought into the matter, i guess i just want to know what to do so as not to make a character a sexist and/or anti-feminist caricature.


The same way you don't make any other character a caricature - give them depth. Make them human.


> Hypothetically speaking, say i wanted to make a female character a love interest and i did want the male hero to rescue her from something, how do i do all of this without it coming off as me viewing women as inferior to men (which by all accounts, i shouldn't)?


I think one of the dangers here is that in trying to avoid one stereotype you can go too far in the other direction and end up with a different stereotype. It's also my theory that when writing, you absolutely should not worry about being politically correct. You will never write anything of any consequence without pissing somebody off, so don't worry about it. As other have said, strong doesn't mean she has to be Red Sonja. She has to be up to the challenges of the story, which can easily include learning to cope with failure. I like the Rocky comparison someone used earlier. I think that encapsulates it quite well.


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## Guy (Feb 5, 2014)

Mythopoet said:


> I write what I write because I like it and find it interesting. I like to imagine that every writer writes what they do because they like it and find it interesting. If that's the case then I say just keep on doing what you're doing and don't worry about what certain people think you should write about.


This. Hang all the other rules and embrace this one.


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## Jabrosky (Feb 5, 2014)

srebak said:


> You know what the worst part of all this is? Not long ago, this didn't bother me all that much. But, in recent years, mainly because i listened to a lot of reviews and commentaries about Disney films, this fear about sexism and anti-feminism has really started to strike a cord in me, because it felt like I was becoming a bit sexist and anti-feminist in my own mind.
> 
> You would think that at my age, after spending years of being raised by a single mother and an outspoken and abrasive older sister, along with having a great deal of female teachers, i would be anything but anti-feminist, yet that feeling still exists in me somewhere and i want it to end.
> 
> ...


This sounds like you're suffering from the kind of subconscious conditioning that society tends to impart upon us even if we don't agree with that message on a cognitive level. It's rather like how a lot of white people (myself included) don't mean to be racist but nonetheless suffer from a subconscious bias against black people as a consequence of receiving anti-black messages from society. I can't say I know of a surefire way to get rid of those thoughts, but my best guess is that you need to recognize those deeply ingrained biases and act against them.


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## Nameback (Feb 6, 2014)

I'm going to echo everyone who's said something about agency. 

It really all comes down to that. Are the female characters presented as set-dressing, as objects to decorate the male-driven narrative? Or are they actual characters who do things and make things happen? And secondarily, are they well-written? If you have female characters who are subjects, not objects, and who have realistic levels of personal complexity, then you're golden. 

I think you're worrying a bit too much. It doesn't really matter if you have some conditioned biases--all it takes to overcome that is a little conscious effort. Don't worry about purging your mind of instinctive bias; worry about purging your actions (and words) of bias. That's what's within your control, and that's what matters.

Building on that last sentiment, I think it's good sometimes to be very deliberate in busting stereotypes. There's nothing wrong with having a certain moral agenda in your story--certainly all great books have thematic content that demonstrates a point of view on some part of the human experience. If you want to write something feminist, then explicitly go after that! It's just as legitimate of a literary impulse as saying you want to write something with dragons in it. It's your story, and it should reflect your values.

Edit: I should perhaps mention that I do this. I sometimes make decisions about plot or character because I want the narrative to match my values. That's not the same as being ham-fisted; I'm not saying you should have your characters give big moralizing speeches. But, for example, I realized I was 20,000 words into my book without a single scene that passed the Bechdel test, so I went back and changed the gender (and some of the dialogue) of a character.  

Was it necessary? Maybe not, but the story didn't suffer at all for it, and it made me feel better. My protagonist is a young woman of color, quite deliberately. Eventually she earns the nickname "the Lightning Witch" because she fights hand-to-hand and strikes with kinetic energy (and thus the noise) equivalent several pounds of TNT being detonated--so when she fights someone, it sounds like thunder. Yeah, female characters don't have to be physically strong to have agency, but so few female characters really are brutally, terrifyingly strong that I felt like making my MC that way just for the sake of breaking stereotype.


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## Jabrosky (Feb 6, 2014)

SineNomine said:


> For advice, I want to second what Benjamin Clayborne said, because it really is the best possible way to work on it.  Just write a story where every single character is a woman.  The good guy, the bad guy, the side kick, the mentor, the cobbler who has a few lines in chapter 7, the queen and her jester, the princess, the bandits...everyone.  The goal is to simply force yourself to come up with interesting, unique female characters with as many traits as you can possibly think of.


It has certainly been my experience that characterizing people from any "minority" group is a lot easier when said group predominates the setting or otherwise has multiple individuals represented in the story. For a non-gendered example, it's easier for me to write a diverse range of black characters if the story takes place in Africa (or the fantastical analog thereof). That way I don't have to worry about how well my leading black character represents her race, because she is not a singular token surrounded by non-blacks. The same effect should come into play if you experiment a predominantly female cast.


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## Guy (Feb 6, 2014)

It's a western rather than fantasy, but in the movie _Silverado_ I think Stella is a wonderful example of a good, strong female character whose strength does not come from her physicality.


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## The Dark One (Feb 7, 2014)

The problem I see constantly with female characters written by males is simply that they don't have a proper role in the story. They don't have a function in the plot. It is a personal rule of mine that any character who gets a name - male or female - must have an impact on the plot OR at least contribute to the characterisation of a main character. 

Give them something to do and you can't go far wrong.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 7, 2014)

The Dark One said:


> The problem I see constantly with female characters written by males is simply that they don't have a proper role in the story. They don't have a function in the plot. It is a personal rule of mine that any character who gets a name - male or female - must have an impact on the plot OR at least contribute to the characterisation of a main character.
> 
> Give them something to do and you can't go far wrong.



I guess this may be the basis of some kind of rule/advice: "Every character that has a name should have a personality." Maybe that's taking it a little too far? I'm thinking that if a character is important enough to have a name, they're important enough to have a personality go along with it.
What say you?


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## wordwalker (Feb 8, 2014)

Of _course_ Character= personality. A story wants characters because they're each an opportunity to add a new perspective, or at least a moment of flavor. --Although, I like your rule of tying it to names, to recognize which people can be left as "extras."

The problem is that it's too easy to write women with very _small_ personalities, often the same one. Giving them a function in the plot is better, and giving them agency (a degree of control over it) is better still. Sophia McDougall's goal of giving them more personality seems the best of all.


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## The Dark One (Feb 8, 2014)

Yes, I don't see how someone can have an impact on the plot without having something of a personality - even if only a whiff of a one. And if they have an impact, they ought to have a name...even if it's just something like Herbie Trope-factor #7.


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## srebak (Feb 10, 2014)

Another factor in this to consider is that there have been a lot of stories where the female is the smarter and more mature character, while the male is the stupid, reckless and naive one.
For some reason, that bothered me in some cases and that fact about me alone is sexist and anti-feminist


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 10, 2014)

srebak said:


> Another factor in this to consider is that there have been a lot of stories where the female is the smarter and more mature character, while the male is the stupid, reckless and naive one.
> For some reason, that bothered me in some cases and that fact about me alone is sexist and anti-feminist



Are you sure that that's really you being sexist and not the stories? 
What it definitely is though is an experience of what it's like to be stereotyped. It's not fun, but it can happen to anyone. It's also good to be aware of what that feels like.

I've been thinking quite a bit on how to portray women - for pretty much the same reasons you do; I want real characters, not stereotypes. 
One theory I'm liking at the moment is that it's not necessarily just about how I portray the individual male or female character. It's also about how I portray the way the people around my character treats them. In a way, we're shaped by the world around us and how we're treated by it. The world treats' men and women differently in many ways; some obvious, some less so. 

Practical example:
If you're talking to someone and they keep starring at a spot on your forehead you will eventually get uncomfortable and bothered by it, regardless of whether you're a man or a woman. If everyone you talk to always stare at that spot on your forehead you may eventually get used to it. You'll probably still find it bothersome and annoying, but you'll learn to live with it. You may get a bit touchy about talking to people. You don't want to do it unless they have something important to tell you or you need to get something from them. Ideally you'll just talk to them on the phone or chat with them.
Now imagine you're in that scenario, except you're a girl and instead of a spot on your forehead everyone keeps staring at your breasts.

Now this may be an exaggerated example, but I think it illustrates the point. Men and women aren't that different, but they may react in different ways because they have different frames of reference - because the world treats them differently.


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## The Dark One (Feb 11, 2014)

I sometimes think that this subject is painfully artificial (some will think I only see it that way because I'm male...and maybe they're right but I can't help that). The thing is, we are what we are, and while I'm all for reconstruction - up to the point of equality but not beyond - I'm also prey to my own bio-chemistry and fundamental drives. If there are breasts about, I will see them. I'll do my best not to stare, but I'm hard wired to notice things like that and won't pretend otherwise. Too much self-emasculation in this world for my liking.


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## Amanita (Feb 11, 2014)

Most important things have already been said. With plenty of women around you in your life, the challenge should be a manageable one and there have been many good suggestions so far. 
I think it's important to note that female characters in need of rescue aren't sexist in themselves. If your story is set in a society where women aren't expected to fight, they will require help if an armed man attacks them. The problem arises if the female characters only serve as objects or prices for the hero to be won. He receives gold and the princess for his efforts and there's no real difference between the two. I simply fail to understand why the idea that women are human beings with minds and emotions of their own would be a problem for anyone but I don't think that was what you were trying to express. 

Despite of being female, I've never been pregnant so far, therefore I don't know if I could describe this any more accurately than a male writer. In the time of the internet, there are plenty of different people sharing their experiences online which I think is helpful in such cases. Asking people in real life as well of course.
I'm slightly worried about my portrayal of sexual awakening in a teenage boy, a subject less easy to get information on than  pregnancy and I might skip this part completely or keep myself to hints.

I'm always wary about generalisations along the lines of "all women are like this" and "all men are like that" because I have some typical feminine traits and others which are always named among "women are not like this" and even feel somewhat offended about claims such as the one that women are obsessed with feelings/romance while men write about everything else. (I don't care for pure romance stories at all.)
I don't really see the point of constructing such general differences.


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## Guy (Feb 11, 2014)

I thanked, but I felt like that wasn't enough.
*raises glass in a toast*


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Feb 11, 2014)

The Dark One said:


> I sometimes think that this subject is painfully artificial (some will think I only see it that way because I'm male...and maybe they're right but I can't help that). The thing is, we are what we are, and while I'm all for reconstruction - up to the point of equality but not beyond - I'm also prey to my own bio-chemistry and fundamental drives. If there are breasts about, I will see them. I'll do my best not to stare, but I'm hard wired to notice things like that and won't pretend otherwise. Too much self-emasculation in this world for my liking.



The sexualization of breasts is to a large degree a cultural thing. Evolutionarily, seeing breasts was normally not a big deal. To say "Aw, it's all just biology, I can't help it" ignores what biology actually constitutes.


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## A. E. Lowan (Feb 11, 2014)

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> The sexualization of breasts is to a large degree a cultural thing. Evolutionarily, seeing breasts was normally not a big deal. To say "Aw, it's all just biology, I can't help it" ignores what biology actually constitutes.



Both of you are making good points, actually.  The sexualizing of features is culture-specific, yes, but it also feeds into bio-chemistry and the natural sex-drive.  Breasts in the West (of whatever size or shape are popular), wide hips and a round backside in parts of Africa, the back of the neck in Japan - all of these are cultural turn-ons, and turn-ons, after all, feed the sex drive.  We stand up and notice.  I can turn this around and talk about those things in men that we regard as turn-ons, as well, those features which draw the eye and the attention - a deep, resonant voice, broad shoulders, that V thing on either side of the hips marking the path to Happy Land (some of you will know what I'm talking about  ).  These features are just as sexualized to signal the same things biologically and culturally as the above mentioned features in women - that here is a good potential mate.

Now, we want to also add a social consciousness to this, because we left the cave a very long time ago, and we are more than just a collection of stimulus and impulses.  We can as authors also play with cultural signals of attraction, and we can as authors make the choice as to how we wish to address the relationships between and among the sexes - and even if we want to keep ourselves limited to just two, or push the boundaries further.  The whole point is that gender is not defined by our genitals, it is a cultural conception even more than it is biochemical, and that chemistry happens in the brain, and we as people are individuals.

And, in my opinion, there is nothing inherently sexist about characters of any gender noticing and appreciating the attractive features of other characters.  When we deny our characters' most primal drives is when we deprive them of their humanity.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 11, 2014)

This is sort of related to the overall topic, if not to current discussion. Check these pictures out:
















Some fashion pictures. Nothing too out of the ordinary, right?
Now consider that it's the same person in all three pictures. Both of the people in the third picture are the same one edited in twice.


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## Ireth (Feb 11, 2014)

Those pics remind me of my little sister. XD She switches back and forth between a male and female appearance fairly often (wearing boys' clothes and binding down her breasts, wearing her hair up so it looks short), and even has a Facebook page for her male alter ego (she labeled it as her "brother"). I'm still not sure if that's just an unusual way of expressing herself, or if she actually identifies as genderfluid. She is biologically female, and as far as I know she has no intention of being otherwise.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Feb 11, 2014)

Hah, nicely done. I thought the first two might be the same before I read your explanation, but the last one... very well done.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 11, 2014)

Then, on the other side of the coin, you have things like this:


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## The Dark One (Feb 12, 2014)

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> The sexualization of breasts is to a large degree a cultural thing. Evolutionarily, seeing breasts was normally not a big deal. To say "Aw, it's all just biology, I can't help it" ignores what biology actually constitutes.



Now, now Benjamin...you're only responding to half of my post. Naughty!

AEL has already responded eloquently enough on the substantive issue, so I won't waste everyone's time with that, but on the debating issue - I did not say 'Aw it's all just biology, I can't help it.' I spoke also about the effort within individuals to reconstruct themselves despite their biology and suggested that some people go overboard and screw themselves up by denying their biology in pursuit of some artificial gender neutral reality. That was my point, so I'll thank you not to paraphrase me into some sort of brutish Hemingway.

By the way, one of my books is a surrealist/sci-fi comedy which among other things explores gender neutral reality (or GNR as it is referred to in the story).


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 12, 2014)

Okay, so to make an example involving breasts may not have been the best idea I ever had. 

Anyway, my idea wasn't to make guys feel bad about checking out women. My idea was to illustrate with a practical example how the world treats men and women differently and how we as writer can use that knowledge (if we're aware of it) to better portray members of the opposite sex.
It may not work for everyone, but I think it worked out okay for me last time I tried.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Feb 12, 2014)

The Dark One said:


> Now, now Benjamin...you're only responding to half of my post. Naughty!
> 
> AEL has already responded eloquently enough on the substantive issue, so I won't waste everyone's time with that, but on the debating issue - I did not say 'Aw it's all just biology, I can't help it.' I spoke also about the effort within individuals to reconstruct themselves despite their biology and suggested that some people go overboard and screw themselves up by denying their biology in pursuit of some artificial gender neutral reality. That was my point, so I'll thank you not to paraphrase me into some sort of brutish Hemingway.



I didn't figure I needed to address the other half, since it was basically a plea for "geez, I'm tired of hearing about this," rather than acknowledging that there IS a major problem in gender relations and that maybe the people who are up in arms about it have a point. To wit:



> I sometimes think that this subject is painfully artificial (some will think I only see it that way because I'm male...and maybe they're right *but I can't help that*



You can't help being male, but you sure as heck can help having the attitude that this is an "artificial" topic. Try listening to some women who have expressed their experiences with being belittled, insulted, and harassed _just because they're women_ and see if you then feel the same way.



> Too much self-emasculation in this world for my liking.



Yes, men have it so difficult, what with making more money than women, being in far more positions of power, not having the makeup-industrial complex contantly barraging us with messages telling us we're ugly, not having to worry that if we get sexually assaulted that people will blame us instead of the attacker, etc. What we really need to be concerned with is that too many people might be "self-emasculating," which is something that is Not Actually A Problem.


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## Guy (Feb 12, 2014)

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> You can't help being male, but you sure as heck can help having the attitude that this is an "artificial" topic. Try listening to some women who have expressed their experiences with being belittled, insulted, and harassed _just because they're women_ and see if you then feel the same way.


Pretty much everyone has, at some time, been belittled, insulted and harassed just because ________________. Race, religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation. Women are hardly alone in that.


> Yes, men have it so difficult, what with making more money than women, being in far more positions of power,


Like, say, Orpah Winfrey.


> not having the makeup-industrial complex contantly barraging us with messages telling us we're ugly,


Instead, it's a bunch of other industries telling us we're not in good enough shape, lost our competitive edge, or don't have good enough erections. I strongly recommend a book called _The Adonis Complex_. It's a very good account of some pressures men face but no one knows about because, as men, we're not supposed to whine about it. We're supposed to suck it up.


> not having to worry that if we get sexually assaulted that people will blame us instead of the attacker,


As opposed to the robbery victim who's told he should've locked his doors. Or the assault victim who's told he should be able to take care of himself. Or the guy who does successfully defend himself and is prosecuted because the media howled for blood or the prosecutor is up for re-election and wants to look tough on crime. Or the guy who notices the back of a female co-worker's pants are torn and, to spare her the embarrassment of walking around the office like that, he warns her about it. She reports him for sexual harassment and he's immediately suspended without pay pending investigation - guilty until proven innocent. Women are hardly alone in being victims of injustice and unfairness.


> What we really need to be concerned with is that too many people might be "self-emasculating," which is something that is Not Actually A Problem.


This might not be an actual problem to you but is for others, just as gender relations might be a major issue for you but not others.


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## Jabrosky (Feb 13, 2014)

While we're on the subject of guilt about how we as writers handle representational issues, I have noticed a trend in my own writing that I feel reflects badly on me. In my case the problem is not gendered but racial.

Whenever I write a story about international or inter-cultural conflict, more often than not the villains are ethnically Middle Eastern or Mediterranean. The Greeks, Romans, and Biblical Israelites seem to be my favorite punching bags, though sometimes I go after Arabs or Persians. On an intellectual level I don't condone any form of racism, but this trend makes me wonder whether I suffer from some latent prejudice against the Greco-Roman and Jewish cultures. In the case of the former, it may stem from how historians would idealize the Greeks and Romans as the founders of Western civilization who were culturally superior to everyone else in the classical world. As for the anti-Jewish sentiments, I blame bad experiences with Judeo-Christian religious fundamentalists and pro-Israel Zionists.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Feb 13, 2014)

Guy said:


> Pretty much everyone has, at some time, been belittled, insulted and harassed just because ________________. Race, religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation. Women are hardly alone in that.



Where did I say women were alone in it? But it's prima facie absurd to claim that men get the same quantity or intensity of such treatment as women.



> Like, say, Orpah Winfrey.



Yes, one example of a powerful woman disproves the assertion that more men are in positions of power. If you'd like, I could list how many of the Fortune 500 have female CEOs. (For the record, as of a year ago it was 22. 22 out of 500, or 4.4%.) It's much better in Congress, but still only about 20% of the Senate and 19% of the House is female. I don't expect or demand gender parity in all walks of life, but in political representation, it ought to be a damn sight better than one fifth.



> Instead, it's a bunch of other industries telling us we're not in good enough shape, lost our competitive edge, or don't have good enough erections. I strongly recommend a book called _The Adonis Complex_. It's a very good account of some pressures men face but no one knows about because, as men, we're not supposed to whine about it. We're supposed to suck it up.



I don't mean to say that men don't receive those kinds of messages, but we certainly don't receive them with the intensity and frequency that women do.



> As opposed to the robbery victim who's told he should've locked his doors. Or the assault victim who's told he should be able to take care of himself. Or the guy who does successfully defend himself and is prosecuted because the media howled for blood or the prosecutor is up for re-election and wants to look tough on crime. Or the guy who notices the back of a female co-worker's pants are torn and, to spare her the embarrassment of walking around the office like that, he warns her about it. She reports him for sexual harassment and he's immediately suspended without pay pending investigation - guilty until proven innocent. Women are hardly alone in being victims of injustice and unfairness.



All valid concerns, and yet a drop in the bucket compared to what women have to deal with. If you file a robbery report, the police don't typically blame you for getting robbed and refuse to file the report. Women are routinely blamed for getting raped and in many cases authority figures refuse to even listen to their reports.

The assertion was never that everything's great for men and terrible for women; the assertion is that things are much worse for women than they are for men, and when I see someone say that this is an "artificial subject" it upsets me.


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## buyjupiter (Feb 13, 2014)

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> Where did I say women were alone in it? But it's prima facie absurd to claim that men get the same quantity or intensity of such treatment as women.
> 
> All valid concerns, and yet a drop in the bucket compared to what women have to deal with. If you file a robbery report, the police don't typically blame you for getting robbed and refuse to file the report. Women are routinely blamed for getting raped and in many cases authority figures refuse to even listen to their reports.
> 
> The assertion was never that everything's great for men and terrible for women; the assertion is that things are much worse for women than they are for men, and when I see someone say that this is an "artificial subject" it upsets me.



I think people in general might get some benefit in watching "Oppressed Majority" by Eleonore Pourriat. It's a stunning visualization of the reality of what women go through, but genderswapped. It's a short film, and if I could find a link that doesn't automatically show a still from the video that is NSFW, I would post it here. (It is triggerish for assault and everyone should feel uncomfortable watching it.)

This video might also serve as a warning about what not to do to your women (or queer men or transgender) characters unless you are also willing to go in depth into how that behavior affects them and how it alters what choices are available to them. Likewise, if you want to explore how constant sexualization affects men, go for it, but the same thing applies: go in depth on how it affects them. Otherwise it'll most likely come across as titillation.


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## Guy (Feb 13, 2014)

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> Where did I say women were alone in it? But it's prima facie absurd to claim that men get the same quantity or intensity of such treatment as women.


I know of no objective way of measuring it, so it pretty much comes down to a matter of opinion.


> Yes, one example of a powerful woman disproves the assertion that more men are in positions of power. If you'd like, I could list how many of the Fortune 500 have female CEOs. (For the record, as of a year ago it was 22. 22 out of 500, or 4.4%.) It's much better in Congress, but still only about 20% of the Senate and 19% of the House is female. I don't expect or demand gender parity in all walks of life, but in political representation, it ought to be a damn sight better than one fifth.


The point being, there was a time, not so very long ago, when there were _no_ women of Oprah Winfrey's stature, when there were no female CEOs or members of Congress. And numbers alone don't tell the story - how many women actually tried to get those jobs? One reason for gender disparities in careers is because disproportionate numbers of one gender or the other gravitate towards that occupation.


> I don't mean to say that men don't receive those kinds of messages, but we certainly don't receive them with the intensity and frequency that women do.


Again, there's no way to objectively measure that, so it comes down to opinion. It's my opinion that, in the developed world, one sex doesn't face any significantly greater social pressure than the other.


> All valid concerns, and yet a drop in the bucket compared to what women have to deal with. If you file a robbery report, the police don't typically blame you for getting robbed and refuse to file the report. Women are routinely blamed for getting raped and in many cases authority figures refuse to even listen to their reports.


Women are more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, but men are more likely to be the victims of homicide. Which is worse?


> The assertion was never that everything's great for men and terrible for women; the assertion is that things are much worse for women than they are for men, and when I see someone say that this is an "artificial subject" it upsets me.


What's the difference between "much worse" and "terrible?" Are their legal rights men have that women don't? Things have improved a great deal, and in a relatively short span of time. Within a single lifespan we've gone from women being barred from voting to women holding political office and being contenders for the presidency. In some countries they have achieved that position. I use Oprah Winfrey as an example because, a few decades ago, it was unthinkable for a woman (and a black one, at that) to achieve such status. Some people get upset at sex discrimination being considered an artificial topic while others get upset when, after all the progress that's been made, some people make it sound like no progress has been made.


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## Jabrosky (Feb 13, 2014)

Guy said:


> Women are more likely to be the victims of sexual assault, but men are more likely to be the victims of homicide. Which is worse?


I always felt the reason rape was considered such a heinous crime had something to do with its gendered domineering connotations. In our culture at least, we associate rape with men dominating women. Of course homicide can be used as a tool of domination too, but it doesn't carry the same patriarchal baggage as rape. If anything, we stereotype homicide as a predominantly male-on-male crime rather than something men do to women.

That said, I never liked the old chivalric traditions which demanded gentler treatment for women. Not only do men like myself find them irritating, but they actually have their roots in the perception that women can't do anything for themselves. The irony of chivalry is that it's sexist towards both sexes.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 13, 2014)

Jabrosky said:


> That said, I never liked the old chivalric traditions which demanded gentler treatment for women. Not only do men like myself find them irritating, but they actually have their roots in the perception that women can't do anything for themselves. The irony of chivalry is that it's sexist towards both sexes.



I've been brought up in a way that means that if I'm in the position to hold a door open for someone I will do it - regardless of who they are. I've also been brought up in a way that makes me see my guests to the door when they leave.
I have a friend who gets annoyed when I hold the door open for her because she thinks I do it just because she's a woman. She also thinks I see her out so that I can be sure she's really left.

These things aren't easy. They will never be.
However, by being aware that misunderstandings like these occur and that people see the world in ways different to our own, we can populate our stories with more diverse and believable characters.

Edit: This is a general statement - it's not directed at just Jabrosky.


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## rhd (Feb 13, 2014)

I've criticized a lot of early Disney films but _The Journey Of Natty Gann_ goes against every sexist role for a female character that they've created, so I'm kinda okay. I saw it as a kid and fricking LOVED it. I hate that they call her tomboyish, oh well may be the term is dated, dressing like a boy must have just been more convenient, plus the her love interest is a boy not much older than her. It's mainly beautiful father-daughter relationship and coming of age story. If you haven't seen it, you simply must. It's was made in 1985.

Anyway, in spite of being feminist, or at least thinking I'm mighty feminist, it took a while to for me to get rid of the standard sexist/tropey plots/characterizations I might have unconsciously created in my book because of the stuff I've swallowed along the way, and I'm glad I didn't put any of it out there before I made those changes. If it's important to you, make a conscious effort to filter it out but give it time and don't be too hard on yourself. Also a feminist plot isn't necessarily so black and white. I realized my MC gets rescued a lot, but the main thing is that she doesn't sit around waiting for it, takes matters into her hands and she's also no one's prize.


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## Jabrosky (Feb 14, 2014)

Svrtnsse said:


> I've been brought up in a way that means that if I'm in the position to hold a door open for someone I will do it - regardless of who they are.


I actually do the same thing for both sexes.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Feb 14, 2014)

Guy said:


> Again, there's no way to objectively measure that, so it comes down to opinion. It's my opinion that, in the developed world, one sex doesn't face any significantly greater social pressure than the other.



There actually are objective ways to measure it: categorizing the content of, and quantifying the intensity and number of, messages that appear in various forms of media, for example. Run experiments where a man and a woman go into an electronics store and ask the exact same question, and gauge whether the response is technical and precise or patronizing and simplified. There's loads of ways to do it, and there's loads of papers that have been written about it. As nice as it must feel to declare that "there's no way to objectively measure it," that just ain't so.

I'm going to assume you're male, mainly because I have trouble thinking of any woman who would say what you did. How many times in the past year have you had some random person on the street mutter comments about your appearance, or how sexy you are, or about sexual things they'd like to do to you? How many times did someone say or imply to you that you don't know what you're doing just because you're male? Or that you should smile more, or that you'd be more attractive if you wore makeup? How many times have you gone into a store with a female companion and had the clerk ignore you and talk to her even when you address the clerk directly? I'm going to guess that none of these things happened to you in the last year, and I'd bet cash that every woman you know has had at least one of those things–or some other belittling, patronizing comment that is made _only because of her gender_–happen to her. Most likely multiple times.



> some people make it sound like no progress has been made.



Just because things used to be worse doesn't mean there aren't still problems. The message you're sending is along these lines: "Sure, women only get paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same jobs as men, but you shouldn't complain, because it used to be _55_ cents!"


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## The Dark One (Feb 14, 2014)

Jeez I go away for a couple of days and all hell breaks loose!

Perhaps I explained myself a little clumsily. I don't disagree with any of Benjamin's points in the real world, but I wasn't really talking about the real world...I was talking about its impact on male writers.

Some males (I believe) get so screwed up trying to be sensitive and reconstructed that they come across all preachy and turn their characters into boring ciphers. That's not the way to write characters and stories that will have an impact - regardless of your social engineering agenda.

To give an example of what I mean (in a different context) - I wrote a comedy screenplay about greed. One of my friends (also a writer) made several suggestions for its improvement, but they were all about changing things to turn the story - very overtly - into a moral tale. The thing was, it was already a moral tale because the morality happens in the mind of the reader/watcher in response to the appalling actions of the characters.

Another example - my first published book (Mr Cleansheets) was, among other things, an anti-racism crusade. Not once does any character say racism is bad and there are some evil racists in the book who say and do racist things. You can't have a novel about racism without there being such characters (bad things happen to them in the end which wouldn't have happened if they hadn't been racist).

There is also my surrealist sci-fi comedy which is very much about 'the battle of the sexes'. It is a subtle book and only gets slowly to the point, but there is some casual misogyny/chauvinism in the early parts which may well put some readers off, but...you can't have a book about sexism without there being sexists. And they must be unselfconscious about their sexism or it gets too preachy and cipherous.

That was my point, expressed poorly above when I used the word artificial. If you want to be a writer who has an impact, don't get all hung up about how people might perceive you as a person through your evil characters. Write fearlessly what has to be written and let the readers respond as they must.


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## A. E. Lowan (Feb 14, 2014)

The Dark One said:


> That was my point, expressed poorly above when I used the word artificial. If you want to be a writer who has an impact, don't get all hung up about how people might perceive you as a person through your evil characters. Write fearlessly what has to be written and let the readers respond as they must.



We take this a step further.  It's not just our antagonists who exhibit what might be perceived as negative attitudes and actions towards members of the opposite sex, or less "dominant" members of their own sex.  For example, one of our male main characters is an 800 year-old faerie knight.  He is not a gentleman, he is not chivalrous, and he is not very empathic.  He is protective of those he cares about, and gentle towards them after his own fashion, but he is quick to exhibit violence to anyone who threatens them - regardless of their gender.  Where he comes from women are as dangerous as men, so he makes no distinction.

Our world is a very close, but alternative version of our modern one, and our characters live in a very violent subculture where many are immortals who are hundreds of years old and at their core products of their time.  The rest live by rules that have gone unchanged for centuries, and those rules are not fair.  There isn't a lot of room in this setting for high-minded virtues and trying to change the world - but that doesn't stop some characters from trying.


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## Svrtnsse (Feb 14, 2014)

The Dark One said:


> Some males (I believe) get so screwed up trying to be sensitive and reconstructed that they come across all preachy and turn their characters into boring ciphers. That's not the way to write characters and stories that will have an impact - regardless of your social engineering agenda.



Guilty as charged.
For me it's a balancing act, but I think that me being nervous and insecure about it made it a lot more difficult than it needed to be.

Just recently I got some really positive feedback on a female character I'd written and it was a real confidence boost for me. Since then I've worried a lot less about it. I still think about how to portray my characters to make them come across as real and believable, but I no longer get (as) nervous worrying about getting them right.

I guess what I needed was just a little encouragement - some confirmation I'm playing in the right ballpark.

I have no idea if I'll be able to repeat it with another character, but I know I did it once, so I should be able to do it again, right?


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## Guy (Feb 14, 2014)

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> There actually are objective ways to measure it: categorizing the content of, and quantifying the intensity and number of, messages that appear in various forms of media, for example. Run experiments where a man and a woman go into an electronics store and ask the exact same question, and gauge whether the response is technical and precise or patronizing and simplified. There's loads of ways to do it, and there's loads of papers that have been written about it. As nice as it must feel to declare that "there's no way to objectively measure it," that just ain't so.


My point was there's no way to objectively measure how much one suffers more than the other unless you define "suffering," and that's where it gets subjective. In fact, much of the results of a study would hinge on that definition. For example, is demeaning someone based on their religion or ethnicity not as bad as demeaning someone based on sex? How about political affiliation? Sexual orientation? Is there a point system or something? How do you quantify such things? 


> I'm going to assume you're male, mainly because I have trouble thinking of any woman who would say what you did.


Not one woman I know thinks her lot in life is "much worse" than those of men. You'd be surprised at the variety of opinions among them. Sort of like how there's a variety of opinions among guys...


> How many times in the past year have you had some random person on the street mutter comments about your appearance, or how sexy you are, or about sexual things they'd like to do to you?


In my life I've encountered plenty of random and pointless hostility from complete strangers. Not sure why we're limiting ourselves to a year, but let's try this one on for size:  within the last year, have you introduced yourself to someone and had that person respond by yelling, "Get a life, you Wiccan prick!" at you? I have.  


> How many times did someone say or imply to you that you don't know what you're doing just because you're male?


How often do you hear women talking about what idiots men are? About as often as you hear guys complaining about how irrational women are.  


> Or that you should smile more,


Yep, I get that one a lot. And that I should be more sociable. Or that I should talk more. And when I do I'm told I talk too much. Sort of like how when a woman is told she should be more confident and is promptly labeled a bitch when she does so.


> or that you'd be more attractive if you wore makeup?


Women are judged on looks. Men are judged on achievements, and I'm not exactly what you'd call a go-getter. I've been made fun of because I suck at sports, am about as handy around the house as a goldfish and can't tell one type of car from another. I never felt the need to go around being assertive. I don't give a hoot in hell about climbing to the top of the ladder or dying with the most toys or beating the Joneses. My great desire in life is to be left alone. I'm an introvert in a society that prizes the extroverted male. And when I hit thirty my hair fell out. According to the standards our society judges men by, these traits make me quite undesirable. So women are judged on stupid things. But so are men. Instead of trying to quantify the differences, my natural impulse is to try and empathize. No, I don't know what it's like to be the target of crude sexual propositions, but I do know what it's like to be the object of irrational hate, or what it's like to be the odd person out. And through that I see something I and the sexually harassed woman have in common - being the objects of contempt from our fellow humans, not the idea that her suffering on a scale of 1 - 10 was a 7 while mine was only a 5 so I need to sit down and shut up. I see a common bond, not a demographic division. 


> How many times have you gone into a store with a female companion and had the clerk ignore you and talk to her even when you address the clerk directly?


Nor have I had a clerk ignore my wife and focus on me.


> I'm going to guess that none of these things happened to you in the last year, and I'd bet cash that every woman you know has had at least one of those things—or some other belittling, patronizing comment that is made _only because of her gender_—happen to her. Most likely multiple times.


Well, you'd lose that bet. You're making way too many assumptions here. You know nothing of my life, nor of the women I know. Maybe it's the women I'm around. I don't recall them ever expressing the thought that their lives were so much worse than men's. When problems or obstacles arose, they did what functioning adults, male or female, do - they dealt with them and moved on. 

And why is belittling or patronizing speech based only on gender counted? Is belittling, patronizing speech based on other reasons not as bad? If not, why not?


> Just because things used to be worse doesn't mean there aren't still problems. The message you're sending is along these lines: "Sure, women only get paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same jobs as men, but you shouldn't complain, because it used to be _55_ cents!"


I never said there weren't problems. I said things have gotten a lot better, those improvements shouldn't be ignored or trivialized, and that I think the idea that things for women are "much worse" than for men is a bit strong. To my mind that phrase would apply more to places that still have forced genital mutilation. Most women I know are pretty happy. They've got crap to deal with, much of it unfair, but that's true of everyone. The ones that aren't happy aren't unhappy because men have it soooooo much better than they do. They're unhappy for the whole host of reasons other people are unhappy. None of the women I've known have been stopped from doing something they wanted to do because they were women.

Men who who treat women with contempt tend to treat other guys with contempt, too. They'll be contemptuous of anyone they perceive as weaker than they, male or female, because they're jackasses.


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## A. E. Lowan (Feb 14, 2014)

Ben and Guy,

While I, and I'm sure many of us, approve of and applaud both of you for standing up and being passionate about your beliefs, I think we need to try to keep the discussion on writing, and sexism in _writing_, rather than opinions of real-world social realities.  This is how these threads have gotten derailed and finally locked in the past, and it would be nice to see if we can avoid that happening, here.

If you want to keep discussing, why don't you gentlemen take it into Private Messages?

Thanks!


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## Guy (Feb 15, 2014)

Fair enough.


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## srebak (Apr 24, 2014)

I just don't know what it is, you guys; you've all given me advice that might help me with my Male Chauvinistic issues in my writing style, yet my brain seems to reject the very idea of even trying them out. I can't figure it, it's like my mind wants to remain stuck in a Male chauvinistic state of mind, which is wrong on so many levels.

I don't want to be one of those sexist, anti-feminist pigs who are disrespectful towards women and see them as nothing more than objects to be won. I was raised by a single working mother with an incredibly dominant older sister for for goodness sake! Part of me probably started this thread so that i could hear someone tell me that i wasn't sexist, but if my state of mind is still the same as it was when i first posted, then i am sexist and i hate that so much. 

A good writer should be able to write characters that are their own people, not just generic love interests and damsels in distress. Disney made its share of movies and TV shows with no-nonsense female leads who could take care of themselves, yet my mind seems to be focusing on the movies/TV shows with male protagonists.

I need to know: right here, right now, am i a sexist, anti-feminist pig?


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## A. E. Lowan (Apr 24, 2014)

Here are some thoughts on the matter by another writer...

The Four Levels of Discrimination (and You) (and Me, Too) | Whatever


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## srebak (Apr 25, 2014)

As i've said before, your suggestions seem valid, but for some reason, my mind and instincts just seem to be rejecting them. I can't figure it out

I don't know why i can't flesh out the female characters like i try to do with the males, even though i know deep down that i should. I just can't help but focus on the boys. Though, in at least three cases, it's because i feel sorry for the boy.

I don't know why i can't follow your advice and try out your exercises, there's just something inside me that won't even let me try.

I guess when it comes down to it, I don't handle change or admitting when i'm wrong very well, that's just the way i am. I just don't want being Sexist to be apart of that statement, especially when it's because i'm doing something that felt okay at the time (the main female leading mainly being a love interest).


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## Jabrosky (Apr 25, 2014)

Today when writing an outline for a new story, I found myself in a similar situation as you. I was writing bios for the male and female leads, and I noticed that I had fleshed out my heroine's personality and back-story less than that of my male hero. I knew her occupation, relationship to the male hero (love interest of course), and certainly what she looked like (I've already drawn two portraits of her), but not much beyond that. In the end she came out looking like a supporting character for the male lead rather than a protagonist in her own right.


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## Mythopoet (Apr 25, 2014)

Well, let me stress again that I am saying this as a woman, and perhaps I'm the only one who sees it this way, but in my opinion, the approach to storytelling that requires a careful equalization between the sexes (or, as some would prefer, everything weighted toward the female, as in, it would be better to some people for there to be no significant male characters than for there to be no significant female characters) seems to me far more sexist than just letting authors get on with telling the stories that come to them. Certainly in as much as it is preoccupied with sex more than story. 

There is nothing wrong with telling stories that focus on male characters and have female characters as supporting. It is not sexist just to tell stories mostly featuring male characters. Sexism is found in how female characters are viewed within the story, not without. 

For instance, I've been rereading The Magic of Recluce by L.E. Modesitt. Lately at every Inn that the male MC stops at he looks at the female servers and evaluates them physically, becoming aroused by one and deeming another just a "skinny thing" and gives her no more mind. The former girl smiles at him at one point and he thinks she is offering him sex and hopes she will come to his room later. (She doesn't because thinking a smile equal sex is stupid.) Now, this may or may not be realistic behavior for a teenage male, but I don't care. It is a sexist way to view women and has gone a long way to making me hate the character. There really isn't any need to show him thinking such awful things. (I wonder if the publisher and the author assumed a male audience at the time.) However, the fact that the book is about a male character and has only a few supporting female characters doesn't, in its self, make it sexist. The character's actions have done that. 

That's my opinion anyway.


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## Scribble (Apr 25, 2014)

srebak said:


> As i've said before, your suggestions seem valid, but for some reason, my mind and instincts just seem to be rejecting them. I can't figure it out
> 
> I don't know why i can't flesh out the female characters like i try to do with the males, even though i know deep down that i should. I just can't help but focus on the boys. Though, in at least three cases, it's because i feel sorry for the boy.
> 
> ...



I would enjoy much more reading a character who is struggling with this idea of sexism than reading something that is an obviously politically-forced hacking of characters to fit current sensibilities. I have daughters, so I have a vested interest in feminism. At the same time, I am painfully aware that political correctness turns fiction into unreadable garbage like no other force I can think of.

I'd enjoy reading an honest character - one who is sexist and is becoming aware of it, but who struggles with it, in a way that is part of the fiction - and maybe he doesn't fully "evolve" in the current sense. I'd much rather read that than yet another token ass-kicking female character bolted on in an attempt to make the story unoffensive to women. I find it more offensive, but very forgivable, if I perceive it as well-meaning. If it appears to be pandering, then it irritates me.

Not one of us wants to be regarded as sexist. The male writer today has Woman with a capital W looking over the words he writes. So do women, but they have the advantage of being on "team W". I struggle with this also because I think about my daughters reading my work. That pressure is not conducive to creativity, but rather it can be paralyzing to your creativity. If the story is about a man and I try to force in a second main character who happens to be female just to please my sense of political correctness, I'll end up filling it with stuff that is _not the story_ and it will suffer for it. 

I say write your stories, let them be what they are, let your characters be who they are, and _then_ worry about the market and public perception. It may be the difference between writing fiction few people want to read and writing fiction _no _people want to read.


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## Chessie (Apr 25, 2014)

Srebak, I face something similar in my work. I am a woman, and the characters in my stories tend to be mostly female, with male supporting. Its not that I have a problem writing male characters, just that female ones interest me more in the fantasy scope because I don't usually read about them. So if writing male characters is more to your liking/comfort, then stick with that. Perhaps the right female character for you to write about hasn't come along?  Think of it as a goal you'd like to reach in your writing, and it will come to you someday.


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## SineNomine (Apr 25, 2014)

A. E. Lowan said:


> Here are some thoughts on the matter by another writer...
> 
> The Four Levels of Discrimination (and You) (and Me, Too) | Whatever



Great article, and gets to the heart of why I find some of the things discussed here a bit frustrating.

I will say that we authors as a whole are very, very good at convincing ourselves of what they want to believe.  We're an introspective lot, and a group that loves internal arguments.  We get lots of practice.  We can find any excuse imaginable to justify what we already want to be true, and very little can shake us from it.  It's especially dangerous with the -isms since we demonize them so strongly that it makes it difficult to accept that we have even a tacit, passive role in a system of discrimination, much less an active one.

I apologize if this is really aggressive but...what do you really want here, TC?  You said that you can't imagine actually using any offered advice to try and improve how you write female characters, so do you not want to write them better?  Do you just want reassurance that you aren't a sexist?  Do you want to be confirmed as a sexist so you can shrug your shoulders and not have to think about it any more because that's just who you are?  Thinking critically about the issue is already a huge first step few people take so...well, you've sort of taken a bite of the fruit of tree of the knowledge of good and evil if you will, and there is no more going back.  You have to know what you want for others to be able to help you get it.

Edit - Restating a good quote from the linked article:

_Ambient discrimination makes us discriminatory. We all do it; we’re all that way because that’s what we get all around us. What makes us not a sexist, or a racist, or a homophobe, or whatever, is what we choose to do when we recognize our discriminatory behaviors or attitudes (or have them pointed out by others). If you work to minimize them going forward, in yourself and in your larger world, then you’re probably not a sexist/racist/homophobe/whatever. If you sort of shrug, and go, yeah, well, that’s life, then, yes. You’re totally a sexist/racist/homophobe/whatever. You don’t have to wait to claim that title, or have it justifiably applied to you._


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## Guy (Apr 26, 2014)

Mythopoet said:


> For instance, I've been rereading The Magic of Recluce by L.E. Modesitt. Lately at every Inn that the male MC stops at he looks at the female servers and evaluates them physically, becoming aroused by one and deeming another just a "skinny thing" and gives her no more mind. The former girl smiles at him at one point and he thinks she is offering him sex and hopes she will come to his room later. (She doesn't because thinking a smile equal sex is stupid.) Now, this may or may not be realistic behavior for a teenage male, but I don't care. It is a sexist way to view women and has gone a long way to making me hate the character. There really isn't any need to show him thinking such awful things. (I wonder if the publisher and the author assumed a male audience at the time.)


My first guess would be the writer was trying to accurately portray a male adolescent  mind, in which case the writer succeeded. The male adolescent mind typically spends a great deal of time of evaluating potential mates and engaging in _very_ wishful thinking.


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## Mythopoet (Apr 26, 2014)

Guy said:


> My first guess would be the writer was trying to accurately portray a male adolescent  mind, in which case the writer succeeded. The male adolescent mind typically spends a great deal of time of evaluating potential mates and engaging in _very_ wishful thinking.



Very likely. Not having ever been a teenage male, I didn't want to assume. However, I would still maintain that it's not something I should have to read about. To a woman reading those passages, it feels insulting to my entire sex. Which is why I wonder if at the time of publication there was an assumption that the books would have only a male audience. (The old publisher assumption that women only read romance and only teenage males read sci fi and fantasy, perhaps?) Males might sympathize with Lerris for such thoughts, I have trouble imagining a female who would. I think this is a good example of the kind of thing writers should avoid if they are trying to write for a wider audience that includes both sexes.


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## Steerpike (Apr 26, 2014)

My feeling is that while there may be statistical differences between men and women as a whole, characters are not stats. I know men who are feminine and women who are masculine. I focus on character, and having them be true to themselves, and not what traditional thoughts of gender might indicate.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Apr 28, 2014)

@Mythpoet, before reading Guy's post, I was thinking something similar. I may be wrong, not having read the book myself, but it seems the author is very accurately portraying the main character's teenage-male mind, and the sexism is on the character's part. What made me think that is, as you said, the character thought a smile meant sex and it really didn't. That the character never ends up with this waitress doesn't make him less clueless, I'm guessing.

Of course, if this makes you hate the character or the story--and if you dislike the author for his choice to tell it that way, there's nothing wrong with your reaction. I think as authors, we take risks that our characters or stories will alienate readers.

In fact, I think you sharing that reaction really hits the finer point behind the OP's concern. It may not be a question of "Are my female characters strong enough?" but more like "Am I portraying gender differences in a way that will alienate readers?"

My personal struggle is that I'm not GRRM. His world is a very sexist world where women are treated differently and mistreated differently than men, and the reader gets very graphic descriptions of... lots of things. So if I have a scene that, say, features female nudity I get all uptight and ask myself if it comes off as gratuitous and all these other questions I never asked when a male character was naked. Then I read GRRM and say, "Well, I didn't even come close to THAT." But seeing how I'm not famous, I don't want to come close to crossing lines.

I don't really have an answer to the above, as it's an ongoing struggle. So I just try to tell my story in a way that's interesting to me, then ask myself if I'd let my daughters read it (when they're older). If the answer is no, I need to cut/edit.


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## Julian S Bartz (Apr 28, 2014)

In my earlier writing I also struggled to write a strong female character. I'm not talking strong physically. Strength comes in many different forms. And in Fantasy writing often female characters are more emotionally and mentally strong. 

Having my two main editors being female has helped me overcome this. They tell me what I am getting wrong about the female mind. Without them I would be lost in another world.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Apr 29, 2014)

It's a good thing to consciously question our choices as writers and actively pursue improvement. That being said, I think it's always a mistake to write to avoid offense.  

I'm not saying don't worry about how certain elements are perceived. You should always put thought into your choices. But, if you want to write a character, as in the example above, where the author portrays the over-sexualized mind of a teenage boy, then by all means you should do so.   

Are you running the risk of turning off readers like Mytho? Sure, I'll grant that much. However, I think the greater risk lies in the creation of something bland and lifeless...writing which doesn't skirt any boundaries & lacks any edge.   

Art will offend, if it's any good.  Personally, I'd prefer some people love my work while others hate it. The other option lies in producing sterilized stories that give every reader a blasÃ© reaction.


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## Steerpike (Apr 29, 2014)

I agree that it is a mistake to write to avoid offense.

I also think it is a mistake to assume that there is some kind of monolithic "female mind" that can be gotten wrong when writing a character.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Apr 29, 2014)

Steerpike said:


> I agree that it is a mistake to write to avoid offense.
> 
> I also think it is a mistake to assume that there is some kind of monolithic "female mind" that can be gotten wrong when writing a character.


Yes, I think this is right as well & I didn't mean to give that impression. Rather, I tried to specifically use Mytho as an example since she stated her dislike of the author's choice.


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## Amanita (Apr 29, 2014)

Well, srebak, I can't really claim to be able to sympathize with the problem. You know quite a few women in your life closely and you're able to view them as people in their own right (I hope.) So why is it so hard to do that with your characters as well? As much as you view characters as people anyway.
If you want to write a patriarchal society, where women are not supposed to know how to fight, it's quite obvious that they'd need male heplp if attacked with violence. This doesn't make you or your story sexist, it's simply a choice of setting. (One which many fantasy writers have made and I'd like to see something different but I don't ask you to write it.) You don't have to have many female characters if you prefer writing males either but try to get into the head of the ones you do have and write them as human beings rather than objects as well. 

Concerning the larger discussion: I agree that characters' views shouldn't be mistaken for what the author believes if there's no clear indication to do so. I wouldn't have been offended by the male character who thinks about sex when he sees attractive women either but I haven't read the book and therefore don't know how exactly it was worded. It would have become different if the character had started to threaten or force her or made sure she's fired from the inn for refusing, something along those lines.
I'm mainly bothered by the high amount of violence against women in fiction. Female victims who serve as inspiration for the male hero are still common place and "innocent" victims in detective films are almost always women or girls which really bothers me. During the past years, there have been a few cases where people have been brutally beaten by gangs of youngsters on the subway. Recently there has been a movie made about the subject and while the real victims have all been male, they made the movie victim a woman for no reason. There seems to be something about describing traumatized male victims that bothers people or they hope women will attract more sympathy, maybe it's both.
In fantasy, violence against women is often part of the background and described as the norm, even in books by "feminist" authors who have the one "worthless girl" standing up to the men and showing them without any large scale change. If there are discussions about this, people claim that "a society without conflict would be boring" but in many of those stories, it's not "conflict" at all but simply the normal way things are.
I especially hate stories which feature supposedly "strong" women who are captured, tortured, turn into the "helpless victim"-trope for some other reason and require male saving after all because they need a "vulnerable side".
Ziva has been my favourite character in NCIS for example because this kind of role for a female character is so rare and I really don't get why they thought it was necessary to have her captured, tortured and possibly raped by terrorists and freed by her male team members. So annoyed by this.


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## Ophiucha (Apr 29, 2014)

I mean, strictly speaking, there are numerous individuals in the SFF community who are deeply offended by "political correctness" (an awful term, we need something better to describe this), so you can't please everyone. Write what you like, and if you really _do_ want to write better female characters, just read more stories about them and practice until you've written a few good ones. Not much else to be done for it.

And in agreement with Mytho's point about what I find sexist in a work, I'd probably prefer a story with few female characters to badly written/misogynistic female characters.


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## Ravana (Apr 29, 2014)

You can always hand the stories to female peer reviewers and ask if the female characters feel right to them, and why or why not.

I find it interesting that this question rarely appears in the reverse–female authors asking if their male characters seem plausible. I imagine it's been argued that this is due to the greater incidences of male representation in literature… I'm not so sure if I buy that, though. Seems too facile an explanation.

I'm never quite sure if I write female and male characters equally well or not–mostly because I write them pretty much the same way. What I find truly interesting is that, in most cases, people reading my work can't tell whether _I'm_ female or male… so I guess I must be doing something right, somewhere along the line. The only thing I can think of in this regard is that I write both types of character as _people_, making no assumptions about internal differences between genders.

So perhaps that would be useful, for some who are struggling with this (perceived) issue: rather than trying to write females _as_ females and males _as_ males, rather than trying to identify and represent those differences, to whatever extent they genuinely exist in the real world, just write them all as human beings. Do unto your characters as you would have others do unto you if you _were_ the characters. That may not be absolutely faithful to reality–though I'm willing to bet it's a lot closer than most people credit–but it at least avoids most of the problems of stereotyping "the female (male) mind."


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## Nihal (Apr 29, 2014)

Write women as people. If men can come in all shapes and mindsets, so can the women.

Also, as mentioned on this thread there _is_ difference between who the character is and how the society sees the character. It's not because you're writing a patriarchal society you'll have dull and passive women. That's what this society expects them to be, but they are not their gender, nor they're a bag of stereotypical characteristics and expectatives, they're individuals.

As individuals they'll make choices, they'll conform to norms, ignore them or rebel against them. They'll have *something to live for*, and whatever it is it moves them. That's where most badly written fantasy women fall short, they simply lack objectives, they orbit a male MC at best. Shy people have their passions, even passive people have something that moves them.

If you're really having trouble to disconnect from what _our_ society dictates women are start fleshing out the character from its core. Don't think "it's a woman who (...)", think "this person (...)". Think in a genderless or even male entity if that helps. Delineate the personality, discover what this person knows, what moves him/her. Add the gender vs society variables last, when you already have a personality to react to them.


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## Svrtnsse (Apr 29, 2014)

One thing to keep in mind as well is that it's okay to get things wrong. As long as you listen to feedback and address those issues that your readers bring up. Technically, getting a character wrong isn't all that different from getting anything else wrong.


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## Svrtnsse (Apr 29, 2014)

Ravana said:


> I find it interesting that this question rarely appears in the reverse—female authors asking if their male characters seem plausible. I imagine it's been argued that this is due to the greater incidences of male representation in literature… I'm not so sure if I buy that, though. Seems too facile an explanation.



There was a thread here about men and manliness a while back: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/world-building/11322-men-manhood-manliness.html which saw some interesting discussion on that topic.

I think you're making another interesting point though: why are men so nervous about portraying women?

For me...
My concern was that I really didn't want my female characters to be portrayed in a sexist/misogynistic way. I was really nervous about it. I worried about how it would reflect on me if I tried my best to portray a good female character and failed. Would that mean I really was sexist or misogynistic even if I thought I wasn't? Would it mean I didn't actually know anything about women after all? 
That worried me.

However, in the very beginning, when I started writing, I didn't think about it and it didn't worry me at all. I've got several short stories I've written with female leads where I didn't even consider whether or not the portrayal of these women could be seen as sexist. They were just characters living their lives and doing their thing. I'm pretty sure they're fine and that with a bit of work I could turn them into real, well-rounded character.

Then at some point a friend of mine pointed out that I was stereotyping women as taking long time washing their hair in a story I'd written. I hadn't even considered it when I wrote it. I felt that the context implied she did a fair bit more in the time the hour took to pass than just wash her hair so I didn't agree (and I still don't). 
It was a minor detail, but it made me start thinking and for quite a long time I was hyper-sensitive in trying to root out anything that could possible be imagined to be even slightly sexist or stereotyping in any way. It got really annoying. 
I've been somewhat active in different discussions about the subject and I'm pretty confident I'm over it now. I figured out a way of dealing with it that works for me and I'm now confident I'm reasonably able to portray my character's fairly.

Rethinking what I've just written it may seem like I'm coming out as a former alcoholic or drug addict or something. I blew the issue out of all proportion and made it a much bigger deal than it really is. I don't think I'm the only guy who's had this issue though. I'm not saying it happens to everyone; there are plenty of individuals out there who probably just skip this phase and just write great characters without getting hung up on details of physiology.
For those of us who don't, talking it out like this is probably a pretty good idea.


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## A. E. Lowan (Apr 30, 2014)

Legendary Sidekick said:


> In fact, I think you sharing that reaction really hits the finer point behind the OP's concern. It may not be a question of "Are my female characters strong enough?" but more like "Am I portraying gender differences in a way that will alienate readers?"
> 
> My personal struggle is that I'm not GRRM. His world is a very sexist world where women are treated differently and mistreated differently than men, and the reader gets very graphic descriptions of... lots of things. So if I have a scene that, say, features female nudity I get all uptight and ask myself if it comes off as gratuitous and all these other questions I never asked when a male character was naked. Then I read GRRM and say, "Well, I didn't even come close to THAT." But seeing how I'm not famous, I don't want to come close to crossing lines.
> 
> I don't really have an answer to the above, as it's an ongoing struggle. So I just try to tell my story in a way that's interesting to me, then ask myself if I'd let my daughters read it (when they're older). If the answer is no, I need to cut/edit.



Going back and picking up a couple of the threads of our discussion here, I found an interesting correlation between Scalzi's idea of "ambient discrimination," in this case sexism, and Sidekick's thoughts on GRRM.  The other night I was reading the Rolling Stone interview with GRRM that I posted in another thread and there is a quote by him that just floored me.



> History is written in blood, a gold mine — *the kings, the princes, the generals and the whores*, and all the betrayals and wars and confidences.



And as I'm reading this I'm thinking, "Oooh, love that first part... yes, I agree... wait, what the ***?!?"  I'm still processing this.


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## Feo Takahari (Apr 30, 2014)

Probably relevant.

The reason I've been so quiet in this thread is that I've lost count of how many times I've been accused of bigotry. Important female character whose personality is largely passive? Misogyny! Agender character portrayed from the POV of a character who has no clue what "agender" is? Transphobic! Orcs portrayed as having a society that's strongly connected to nature? Fetishizing Native Americans!* And the thing is, even though I could whine and protest that that's not what I meant, in each case it was to some degree my fault that people interpreted the story that way, and in each case I could have written the story differently to prevent that interpretation.

I think what matters is that I keep trying and trying and trying. It stings me to be called a bigot, more than any other word I can possibly be called. It makes me want to curl up and expire in a corner and be forgotten. But I can only hope that if I keep trying new approaches, I'll eventually find one where people won't call me a bigot anymore. (And there are so MANY stories I want to write that are about people who aren't straight white men!)

* Seriously. I didn't see any connection at all between orcs and actual Native American tribes, but I forgot to account for pop-culture stereotypes.


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## Jabrosky (Apr 30, 2014)

Feo Takahari said:


> Probably relevant.
> 
> The reason I've been so quiet in this thread is that I've lost count of how many times I've been accused of bigotry. Important female character whose personality is largely passive? Misogyny! Agender character portrayed from the POV of a character who has no clue what "agender" is? Transphobic! Orcs portrayed as having a society that's strongly connected to nature? Fetishizing Native Americans!* And the thing is, even though I could whine and protest that that's not what I meant, in each case it was to some degree my fault that people interpreted the story that way, and in each case I could have written the story differently to prevent that interpretation.
> 
> ...


It may be a cliche observation by now, but everything ever written is going to be interpreted as potentially offensive by someone out there. The human imagination has enough power to see any kind of message through anything. I can even name instances where people perceived offensiveness in something for opposite reasons.

Take the Amanda Waller character from DC Comics. She's an anti-heroic African-American woman who started out very overweight, which reminded me of certain race/gender stereotypes I've always thought very offensive (e.g. the fat Black Mammy or Sapphire). More recently the DC artists took all that excess weight off her, yet to my surprise this has _incensed_ the so-called social justice crowd. You'd think they would endorse a less racist-looking portrayal of an African woman, yet instead they're whining about fat-shaming. Goes to show you that even progressive moves can be construed as oppressive by certain individuals.


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## A. E. Lowan (Apr 30, 2014)

I'm going to make a confession here.  It's a little embarrassing.  I had a realization during the trouble I started with the Diversity thread - http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/10373-what-im-saying-search-equality-pretty-messy.html

Anyway, in our WIP, _Faerie Rising_, we have several characters who are fae in origin, that is to say they're not only not human, they come from a culture where sexuality is fluid (and in their home realm gender, time, and even whole kingdoms share this fluid nature).  The rest of the characters are mostly women, minorities, and vampires (who also tend to be sexually flexible).  Anyway, I'm reading through the thread, wondering what I've done, and suddenly I start thinking over our own cast list and it occurs to me...

...we've forgotten to include Straight White Males!

I swear, it didn't happen on purpose!    It's just how the characters developed.  The next book has several, as does the rest of the series, but for _this_ book, with the cultural background of half the cast of POV characters as dictated by the plot... yeah, we left the SWM on the side of the road somewhere.  I told my writing partner, and after she got done laughing at me we sat down and had to rewrite the background of a couple of characters - this, by the way, is the one and only time we've ever gone out of our way to hit a button.  *shakes head*


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## Feo Takahari (Apr 30, 2014)

@Jabrosky: At risk of derailing, Waller got so much praise because she was so unusual for DC. So many young, thin, beautiful women, and here's this one female character who actually looks like a normal human being but still gets to be badass. Then they changed her to look just like all the other characters. (It's a bit like the Oracle debacle--people were pissed when she was first put in the wheelchair, but later writers made her one of the best handicapped protagonists since Professor X, and then she was taken out of the wheelchair and there really wasn't that much distinctive about her anymore.)


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## Ophiucha (Apr 30, 2014)

@Feo, I understand that, and I think it's at least partially because it's definitely been done before. The dwarves in Middle Earth are fairly blatantly inspired by Jewish stereotypes, and the ways in which that is the case are generally offensive ('gold madness' and whatnot among them). So if you've been burned before, you'd be more weary of races - particularly very inhuman races like orcs - who play on tropes that are commonly used to stereotype real races. That's not to say the criticism was _correct_, but I understand why someone would look at it from that perspective.

I'd agree with you on Waller. There are at least a handful of thin WOC in DC, but she's basically the only inoffensively portrayed fat character in... any mainstream comic. Though there definitely are stereotypes about plus-sized black and [email protected] women, looking at the range of characters as a whole meant that she was favoured _for_ being fat, and taking that away meant they'd taken away the only non-villainous, non-stereotyped example in the DC universe.

Which I think pretty much sums up the entire issue many people have in the first place: it's rarely just _your_ characters or _your_ worldbuilding, it's everyone else's in the genre. It's unfortunate, but when there are relatively few, say, transgender characters, I think readers are going to be more keen to look for something wrong not because they _want_ to see something wrong, but because every other time there has been something, _inarguably_ wrong with the portrayal. Blatant misgendering the most common for trans* characters, but every group - women included - has something that you're just so used to seeing that you've gotten a bit bitter about it.

Which isn't good, critically, but I empathize with it.

It all just comes down to the fact that you can't please everyone. Do what you think is right, and be aware of _why_ you think it's right, and then just write. Only thing you can do, in the end. And you may be surprised who _does_ end up liking it. I'm probably the most 'social justice'-y person on this board and I like _Lovecraft_. _*Lovecraft*_.


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## Jabrosky (May 1, 2014)

Might be another derail, but...


Ophiucha said:


> It all just comes down to the fact that you can't please everyone. Do what you think is right, and be aware of _why_ you think it's right, and then just write. Only thing you can do, in the end. And you may be surprised who _does_ end up liking it. I'm probably the most 'social justice'-y person on this board and I like _Lovecraft_. _*Lovecraft*_.


I myself am fond of Lovecraft's buddy Robert E. Howard, even if his stories are saturated with typical 1920-30s racial stereotypes. Ironically, the racism in Howard's fiction may actually provide a major source of inspiration for me. Very often I wonder what the Hyborian Age would look like if the African nations weren't limited to ooga-booga tribes and had shining kingdoms of their own, and very often I wonder how a Conan story would play out if the buxom maiden wasn't ivory-skinned for once. It's like a lot of the stories I set out to write are responses to Howard.

Of course there is actually quite a bit of sword & sorcery fiction out there with African themes, most of it by African and Afro-Diasporan authors, but you have to look in the right places to find it.


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## Steerpike (May 1, 2014)

I always pictured Belit as black, because it makes more sense than her being strangely white as described.


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## Chessie (May 1, 2014)

I think its also a matter of sometimes its nice to write about a different perspective just for the experience. As a Hispanic female, I have found my pov straight white male character to be a bit of a challenge.   I like exploring different races and sexuality in my stories when applicable. And I have yet to write about a Latina woman.


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## rhd (May 1, 2014)

TBH, from one woman's point of view, I've come come across some brave women/girls in ordinary day to day life, however among the men/boys, not one, and I can't even pick out one, among acquaintances or relatives, who have displayed any evidence of a spine if a particular situation demanded it, aggression, yes plenty, plain solidarity and bravery, nope. In war or natural disasters, one is forced to act, but in ordinary one life is allowed choose. So one could say I am bereft of real life examples of 'strong male characters'. With SO many heroes in movies and stories, I wonder whether they're just catering to the male ego more that providing an example to young people, and I get absolutely livid when they make a particular character look weak in order to make the hero strong, it's escapist and sexist. I've been exposed to both local and international movies and literature, so I know this isn't just cultural bias. The word 'strong' begins to lose significance.
Now putting all that aside, I have seen _one_  example of empathy from an ordinary man and hold that dear when I write male characters. And when I read books or watch movies, I can't abide traditional heroism because I'm pretty sick of it, I find deviants and empaths more interesting. My advice to you, since you're finding it so difficult, as an exercise, start from scratch and re-define your idea of what 'strong' means.


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## srebak (May 14, 2014)

I've spoken with some people, and a few of them say that i'm not sexist or anti-feminist. I want to believe them, but the fact remains; whenever i hear someone (on an online review or a commentary or documentary) say that it's a good thing that a female character isn't just a damsel-in-distress or a conquest for the male characters (which by all means, i should agree with), my mind takes the female characters from shows and movies that i like and makes it so that they say that it's a good thing to be  a damsel-in-distress and male character's conquest, which is completely sexist disrespectful (to their characters and to women in general).


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## Jabrosky (May 14, 2014)

srebak said:


> I've spoken with some people, and a few of them say that i'm not sexist or anti-feminist. I want to believe them, but the fact remains; whenever i hear someone (on an online review or a commentary or documentary) say that it's a good thing that a female character isn't just a damsel-in-distress or a conquest for the male characters (which by all means, i should agree with), my mind takes the female characters from shows and movies that i like and makes it so that they say that it's a good thing to be  a damsel-in-distress and male character's conquest, which is completely sexist disrespectful (to their characters and to women in general).


Honestly I wonder where this attitude is coming from. This sounds like it goes beyond the usual subconscious bias.


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