# The Bechdel Test



## Guru Coyote

This is a fun (an also important) metric to apply to any work of fiction (movie, book, and our own writings)

The Bechdel Test:
1. Is there more than one character in the movie that is female who has lines? 
2. And do these women talk to each other at any point in the movie?
3. And is their conversation about something other than the guy that they both like?

For some background and further thought provocation, watch this TED talk:

Colin Stokes: How movies teach manhood | Video on TED.com

Maybe it's time to renew the good old Hero's Journey... The above test can be passed by a story that follows it, I am sure.


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## Ireth

Heh. My stories definitely pass, especially for point 3; I only have one actual love triangle in all of my novels and roleplays, and it's two guys competing for the same girl. There is one scene where a girl teases her older sister about having to "steal her man", but that's only because they and the man in question are performing in a play, and the sisters' characters are romantic rivals for the man's character. In reality the younger sister has no interest in the man, mainly because he's too old for her.

As for my other female characters, the main ones are a young woman and her stepmother. They talk to each other regularly, and it is only sometimes about men (and not romantic rivals, either. They're both happily taken).


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## Feo Takahari

Did a count of every story I've completed. I have:

2 stories that pass Bechdel and Reverse Bechdel
4 that pass only Bechdel
6 that pass only Reverse Bechdel
5 that pass neither (minimalism, whoo!)
2 that I don't know what to do with (this is what happens when you mess with gender identity!)

I have a tendency towards the "two guys and a girl" format, but I also write two girls and a guy sometimes. (And in case it isn't obvious, I tend not to have many extras.)


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## Guru Coyote

Feo, can you outline the Reverse Bechdel?

Also, I think this test was intended mostly for the movies, as in Hollywood...


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## Guru Coyote

Ireth said:


> Heh. My stories definitely pass, especially for point 3;
> ...



Ireth, I wonder if a young boy/man would be able to identify/relate to the protagonist of your stories?
That was the context in which the Test came up in the TED talk... "We need different kinds of stories for our sons..."


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## Ireth

Guru Coyote said:


> Ireth, I wonder if a young boy/man would be able to identify/relate to the protagonist of your stories?
> That was the context in which the Test came up in the TED talk... "We need different kinds of stories for our sons..."



Well, the main story I mentioned is actually a text-based RP between a female friend and me, so it's not really targeted at anyone but ourselves. It's just such a huge, ongoing project that I treat it like a novel. Let's see how my actual NIPs hold up:

Winter's Queen: 2 major female characters, both with lines; a few conversations between them; most conversations about a man (in this case the villain, who is character 2's brother and trying to marry character 1), but no romantic rivalry exists

Summer's Pawn: 2 major female characters, both with lines; conversation between them is assumed (character 2 hasn't fully entered the story at this point, so it's hard to say); no romantic rivalry exists

Low Road: Only one very significant female character, who does not interact with any of the minor ones.


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## Feo Takahari

Guru Coyote said:


> Feo, can you outline the Reverse Bechdel?



Two men talk to each other about something other than a woman or women. (To be clear, the third rule of the regular Bechdel is just "about something other than a man or men"--there's no specification of romance.) Anyways, most of my stories that fail the reverse Bechdel have only one man, although one has two men who never meet.

P.S. There's also Deggan's Rule, which just requires two non-white characters in a show that's not about race. (They don't have to talk to each other for this test, although it does specify they have to be human.) I've only got two stories that clearly pass this, although I've got several with racially ambiguous characters.


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## Alex97

I think fantasy and fiction in general has come a long way from these sorts of stereotypes.  Films, probably less so.

I'd like to think that the females in my story exist for more than just admiring the male protagonist.


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## Darkblade

Feo Takahari said:


> P.S. There's also Deggan's Rule, which just requires two non-white characters in a show that's not about race. (They don't have to talk to each other for this test, although it does specify they have to be human.) I've only got two stories that clearly pass this, although I've got several with racially ambiguous characters.



Generally in Fantasy you won't pass this test due to how comparatively isolated the races were in pre-industrial/colonial times where most fantasy takes place. Steampunk, Urban Fantasy and assorted other sub-genres not nearly as much but Tolkien and Howard-esque fantasy worlds will usually fail.


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## Alex97

Darkblade said:


> Generally in Fantasy you won't pass this test due to how comparatively isolated the races were in pre-industrial/colonial times where most fantasy takes place. Steampunk, Urban Fantasy and assorted other sub-genres not nearly as much but Tolkien and Howard-esque fantasy worlds will usually fail.



Agreed, although large ports with a significant amount of trade could be an exception. Or cities like Constantinople/Byzantium which sat between the east and west.


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## Feo Takahari

Darkblade said:


> Generally in Fantasy you won't pass this test due to how comparatively isolated the races were in pre-industrial/colonial times where most fantasy takes place. Steampunk, Urban Fantasy and assorted other sub-genres not nearly as much but Tolkien and Howard-esque fantasy worlds will usually fail.



The rule's "non-white", not "non-dominant race". One of my stories primarily stars the agrarian descendents of desert nomads, with the skin tone you'd expect from former desert dwellers. (It's up in the air whether the local equivalent of orcs count as white--if not, the only pure white character is a pseudo-Irish villain from over the seas.)


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## Penpilot

Paraphrasing something I read somewhere. One important thing to add is that the Bechdel Test doesn't measure the quality of a story, nor does it measure whether the story is feminist or not. It is simply a tool to see if females are represented and contribute to the plot in a meaningful way. A story can have feminist undertones and still fail, and likewise be misogynistic yet pass. 

There are plenty of legitimate reasons for a story to fail, like if it's set in an all male prison.


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## Anders Ã„mting

I'm pretty sure all my stories pass the test, given that my MCs are usually girls.



Alex97 said:


> I think fantasy and fiction in general has come a long way from these sorts of stereotypes.  Films, probably less so.



Well, the entire Hollywood movie industry is amazingly backwards in many ways.

I swear Hollywood is entirely ruled by time-travelling 19th century white men.



Penpilot said:


> Paraphrasing something I read somewhere. One important thing to add is that the Bechdel Test doesn't measure the quality of a story, nor does it measure whether the story is feminist or not. It is simply a tool to see if females are represented and contribute to the plot in a meaningful way. A story can have feminist undertones and still fail, and likewise be misogynistic yet pass.
> 
> There are plenty of legitimate reasons for a story to fail, like if it's set in an all male prison.



This is a good point.


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## Chilari

Penpilot is right, it's about representation of women in media. A story or film than passes at worst represents women in a capacity which is not dependent upon male characters, though can still show stereotypes, misogyny etc - the Bechdel-passing scene might just be one where two women talk about shoes, for example. Or such a scene could be overtly radical feminist even to the point of man-hating, and still pass if there's one scene where men aren't mentioned. But at its best, Bechdel-passing films or stories might contain good representations of women of different types with different personalities and motivations. Basically, it can cover a wide range of films. The point is, though, that it identifies films where women are underrepresented. For the vast majority of the films which fail the Bechdel test (I discount films like Master and Commander, set on a naval ship in the Napoleonic wars, when you wouldn't expect any women to be involved), it highlights the lack of female initiative in the plot - such films tend to be male-driven, with female characters incidental as evidenced by the fact they don't talk to other women, only to male characters, or of they do only about male characters. Failure demonstrates a male-centric, female-excluding story.

Having said that I think some examples that fail, though not exempted by context like with Master and Commander, don't necessarily apply. Why? Because if it's a close perspective male main character, it might simply be that the reader/audience doesn't see the conversations between female characters because the POV character doesn't. If there's never a group conversation involving two female characters and the POV character, you'd not see it. But that doesn't mean you can't have female character 1 tell POV character that she was talking to female character 2 earlier about, I dunno, the upcoming diplomatic meeting or the river dredging project or whatever. I would consider that a pass, because they did have a conversation, just it was off screen due to the point of view of the main character.

Also for rule 1, I heard it was named female characters rather than female characters with lines.


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## Guru Coyote

Maybe it is time to propose a new test then...

1. Does the story / movie have groups of mixed race / gender / orinetation?
2. Do the members of these groups talk to each other?

etc.

The Bechdel Test (which was defined in the 80s I think) mainly deals with the question of "Are females mentioned and dealt with as actual characters?"

I think we are beyond that by now. But do all the diverse characters actually work together?


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## Rob P

In my piece of work I have fourteen female characters who have lines, one is the hero, four have major parts, another two are significant while the rest remain in the minor leagues. Only two compete for the affections of a man but that doesn't mean the others are not involved in love interests.

I think it might pass the test.

I have drawn upon a lot of women in my life to flesh these characters out. Some strong, some weak, some angry, some meek.

As a guy, incorporating a healthy amount of female characters into the story helps me attune to a wider selection of emotions but it also helps focus my attention upon the emotions of my male characters more and their interplay when in mixed company.


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## Addison

Mine pass, but it's like Alex 97 said, those stereotypes are pretty near gone in today's books and movies and TV. Heck I'm making all of my characters, male and female, as different and out of pattern as possible. For more information read, or listen to on you tube, the American poem "Shake the Dust".


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## Feo Takahari

Addison said:


> Mine pass, but it's like Alex 97 said, those stereotypes are pretty near gone in today's books and movies and TV.



Books, maybe. Movies, hell no. TV, not unless you're watching something special like Logo. (And I'm a video gamer, which means I'm quite used to women being omitted or written as archetypes rather than characters.)


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## psychotick

Hi,

I'm sorry, I write traditional fantasy. What's a woman again?

Cheers, Greg.


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## Guru Coyote

psychotick said:


> I'm sorry, I write traditional fantasy. What's a woman again?



Colin Stokes: "... the story that a male hero's job is to defeat the villain with violence and then collect the reward, which is a woman who has no friends and doesn't speak ..."

There you go. That is a 'woman.'


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## saellys

Darkblade said:


> Generally in Fantasy you won't pass this test due to how comparatively isolated the races were in pre-industrial/colonial times where most fantasy takes place.



Except it's fantasy, not historical fiction, so you could actually do whatever you want to mingle the races as long as it's justified by internal consistency. 



Alex97 said:


> I think fantasy and fiction in general has come a long way from these sorts of stereotypes.





Addison said:


> Mine pass, but it's like Alex 97 said, those stereotypes are pretty near gone in today's books and movies and TV.



Have you tried applying the Bechdel test to the fantasy books you've read, let alone movies and TV? The tired damsel-in-distress stereotype may have fallen by the wayside, but the first step in writing female characters with the same depth and agency as male characters is still absent from the overwhelming majority of modern fantasy. Books that are lauded here on this forum as well as in the broader literary world fail the Bechdel test. Some of them fail spectacularly in an otherwise beautifully crafted story. You may have read one where the female POV character wishes she had other female friends in her all-male circle so she could--wait for it--talk to them about men. *facepalm*

It is, as Penpilot and Chilari said, not a test of whether a work is feminist in nature. But it's a jumping-off point to more deeply analyze how a writer treats their characters, male and female alike. It's also, as mentioned earlier, a matter of representation. Representation is important. It shapes attitudes.

Keep it in mind during the next book you read (of any genre) and see if it passes. And if you're not writing a story that has a good reason for almost exclusively male characters, try to fit in a conversation between two female characters. Your world will almost certainly be richer for it.

Also, if anyone's curious, the last movie I watched that passed the Bechdel Test and Deggans' Rule was _Tremors 3_. Yeah, I was surprised too.


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## Benjamin Clayborne

I actually make a conscious effort to make sure whatever I write passes the Bechdel test. Doesn't always happen (sometimes a story is just about dudes and there's no women around), but if there's at least one substantial female character, there's no reason there can't be more. Most of my protagonists are women, actually; _Bjarheim's Shadow_ has the first male protagonist I've written in quite a while.


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## Mindfire

I'd be wary of writing a story specifically to pass a certain criterion. The way I see it, being true to the story is more important than shoving in a scene to get feminist brownie points. That's just sugar coated tokenism. The better approach is to let your female characters appear organically and once you create them, remember not to neglect proper development just as you would for a male character of equal standing wrt the plot.


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## Benjamin Clayborne

There's no shoving in to be done at all; I design the story so that women are as fairly represented as they would be in reality. It's too common to end up with most of the characters being male for no other reason than that the writer's male. And all the characters get development, regardless of gender.


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## Steerpike

Actually, the Bechdel Test is so basic that you'll pass it so long as you have more than one female character and they behave as realistic, developed characters. I don't recommend writing to conform to a "test," either, but if you don't pass the Bechdel test then it's at least worthwhile to look at your work again. If you don't pass because the work, by its nature, has no female characters (maybe the whole thing takes place in a fox hole in WWI, I don't know), then that's one thing. If you have female characters and fail the test, you may have a problem.


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## Feo Takahari

Mindfire said:


> I'd be wary of writing a story specifically to pass a certain criterion. The way I see it, being true to the story is more important than shoving in a scene to get feminist brownie points. That's just sugar coated tokenism. The better approach is to let your female characters appear organically and once you create them, remember not to neglect proper development just as you would for a male character of equal standing wrt the plot.



Coincidentally, I read this earlier today. It's about a video game, but the same principle applies.



> Two things frustrate me, and together they frustrate me doubly by existing in parallel . . . Essential Frustration #1: The fear that "diverse" characters are risky and might offend or alienate players by their simple inclusion–that including them requires a magic touch, special bravery, a trembling sensitivity, or a mandate to ignore sales. (Liberation is selling very well, thanks for asking!) . . . Essential Frustration #2: The concept that we don't need to try to create diverse characters–that if it's right for the story, it will just happen. Of course it's not going to just happen. If it did, we wouldn't be having this discussion. The reason it doesn't just happen is contained in my first frustration. It's necessary to fight these assumptions, and stand up for our characters. If we believe in them, we have to rise to the occasion and show ourselves and the people we work with how to bring them to life successfully. But this does not require magic, scary effort–it's effort anyone can put in. It's fun, it adds variety, and it makes a lot of players feel good. It's more than worthwhile and we should definitely try to do more of it.


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## saellys

Mindfire said:


> I'd be wary of writing a story specifically to pass a certain criterion. The way I see it, being true to the story is more important than shoving in a scene to get feminist brownie points. That's just sugar coated tokenism. The better approach is to let your female characters appear organically and once you create them, remember not to neglect proper development just as you would for a male character of equal standing wrt the plot.



Oh gosh, do I ever hate it when people misappropriate the word tokenism to argue against taking care to create well-rounded and diverse stories. I sure do hope people aren't doing this for brownie points (sorry--feminists don't give out badges!), but rather to _write good stories_, where every character, male or female or trans or intersex or not applicable, has a legitimate reason for existing and gets to accomplish something. Passing the Bechdel test, as stated multiple times in this thread, is just the first step. 

As for appearing organically, there are legitimate reasons why female characters might not in a given story, but it doesn't happen often and it should happen even less frequently in a fantasy world where you can quite literally make anything happen. If female characters did grow organically and consistently act naturally, we wouldn't need the Bechdel test. The overwhelming majority of the time, it doesn't happen.


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## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> Citing "historical accuracy" to back up the conscious decision to put your story on a spectrum between female-excluding to outright misogynist does not work when you write within this genre.



Although I agree with most of what you said, this last sentence is too absolute. Authors are free to write what they please, design societies and cultures as they please. Whether or not they choose to include strong female characters may have significances other than misogyny or some male driven desire for "female exclusion". Whether or not that story will work is very subjective. You, of course, may choose not to read that story if it doesn't fit your ideal. If people choose to write about patriarchal societies because they believe them to be more representative of a time period then more power to them.

I don't see where the attraction lies in tests like these. I tell the story I want to tell. The current one has several strong female characters (2 of 5 POVs are strong females) mixed into the male at about a 3:5 ratio overall. For the most part it is a patriarchal society with a few exceptions. Those decisions are not made to rail against, or support, feminist ideals, race inclusion ideals, or the wishes of any other group that may feel underrepresented. The choices are geared towards one thing only...the telling of a story.


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## Mindfire

Feo Takahari said:


> Coincidentally, I read this earlier today. It's about a video game, but the same principle applies.



I object to your implications. My cast is reasonably diverse and I didn't "make" it happen. It just happened. The characters grew organically from the story. Figures from my WIP:

# total significant human characters: 26people of color: 15
women: 9​
Note that these numbers do not include background characters or non-human characters (intelligent animals, spirits, etc.) in order to avoid inflation. Also note that this is for the saga as a whole as I've currently planned it, not for any individual book, though I'll do a tally for each book or more specific breakdowns if asked. I know you can't tell much about how characters are treated based on a few numbers, but I think it supports my position adequately. Diversity _can _spring organically from the story so long as your imagination is broad enough. I didn't say "why don't I put a female character here?" or "why don't I make this character black instead?" The characters simply appeared when I needed them. My main character is even a man of color, which is unusual in fantasy.



Spoiler: .



but then again, this is me:








So I guess I'm not the typical case. Grain of salt?


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## Mindfire

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Those decisions are not made to rail against, or support, feminist ideals, race inclusion ideals, or the wishes of any other group that may feel underrepresented. The choices are geared towards one thing only...the telling of a story.



This is the most important thing, I think. I refuse to make any decisions regarding my work for political reasons. And I would be glad if other writers did the same. The main concern should be making the story better. If you believe you can tell the story better by using a character of X demographic, then by all means do so, whitewashing meddlers be damned. But if you're doing it just in the interest of "fairness", then I might call that misguided.


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## Chilari

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Although I agree with most of what you said, this last sentence is too absolute. Authors are free to write what they please, design societies and cultures as they please. Whether or not they choose to include strong female characters may have significances other than misogyny or some male driven desire for "female exclusion". Whether or not that story will work is very subjective. You, of course, may choose not to read that story if it doesn't fit your ideal. If people choose to write about patriarchal societies because they believe them to be more representative of a time period then more power to them.



But the power of fantasy, as opposed to a lot of historical fiction, is that you can chose to focus on whoever you want. If you're setting a story in a Roman legion or in classical Athens or on an early 19th century British naval ship, you have legitimate reasons to have no or few female characters, or if you do, for them not to have a huge amount of direct influence upon the core plot. But in fantasy you can chose what the gender roles are, and even within a patriarchal society you can pick a female perspective and give her some degree of influence and some degree of freedom without someone crying foul because it's not historically accurate.

One example where female roles are shown really well in a patriarchal society in fantasy are Robin Hobb's Liveship books and the sequel trilogy with dragons. It's a society that's becoming more patriarchal, but the female characters, whether they adhere to gender roles or break free of them, have agency and their own unique goals, which, while influenced by other characters including male characters, are not dependent on them.

Basically, what I'm saying is that there's really no need in fantasy to have the characters who influence the plot be exclusively male.

But I think it depends on the author. I think an author who has experience of living in a situation which is diverse, who has had strong female role models - or strong models from ethnic, racial, sexuality or other minorities - will find it a lot easier to write stories which organically present varied characters, whereas someone who has grown up in a traditionalist society where the man is the head of a household and makes the major decisions, where there is little racial diversity and where sexuality is not discussed or expressed might well find it more difficult to present more varied characters. It comes down to experiences: someone who knows a range of different types of people will do better as presenting a range of different characters effectively than someone who has a very small network that's fairly homogeneous. A man who has never had much contact with women besides his mother and maybe the odd girlfriend but otherwise spends all his time with men is not going to have sufficient experience of women to reliably present interesting, well-rounded female characters.


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## T.Allen.Smith

Chilari said:


> But the power of fantasy, as opposed to a lot of historical fiction, is that you can chose to focus on whoever you want. If you're setting a story in a Roman legion or in classical Athens or on an early 19th century British naval ship, you have legitimate reasons to have no or few female characters, or if you do, for them not to have a huge amount of direct influence upon the core plot. But in fantasy you can chose what the gender roles are, and even within a patriarchal society you can pick a female perspective and give her some degree of influence and some degree of freedom without someone crying foul because it's not historically accurate.
> 
> One example where female roles are shown really well in a patriarchal society in fantasy are Robin Hobb's Liveship books and the sequel trilogy with dragons. It's a society that's becoming more patriarchal, but the female characters, whether they adhere to gender roles or break free of them, have agency and their own unique goals, which, while influenced by other characters including male characters, are not dependent on them.
> 
> Basically, what I'm saying is that there's really no need in fantasy to have the characters who influence the plot be exclusively male.


Completely agree. I only meant to state that I believe it's the story that should decide characters, not the political/ideological considerations of making sure certain groups are represented.

Some authors though, may want to stick more closely to accepted (real) history while still not writing what we'd consider historical fantasy. A world that resembles medieval Europe doesn't have to be historical fantasy. In fact, it usually isn't.



Chilari said:


> ...I think an author who has experience of living in a situation which is diverse, who has had strong female role models - or strong models from ethnic, racial, sexuality or other minorities - will find it a lot easier to write stories which organically present varied characters, whereas someone who has grown up in a traditionalist society where the man is the head of a household and makes the major decisions, where there is little racial diversity and where sexuality is not discussed or expressed might well find it more difficult to present more varied characters. It comes down to experiences: someone who knows a range of different types of people will do better as presenting a range of different characters effectively than someone who has a very small network that's fairly homogeneous. A man who has never had much contact with women besides his mother and maybe the odd girlfriend but otherwise spends all his time with men is not going to have sufficient experience of women to reliably present interesting, well-rounded female characters.


I tend to agree here also. Experience can only help in creating real, well fleshed out characters and stories. I don't think it's impossible though, for an author to have an ability to create great characters from nothing more than imagination and a desire to create strong, interesting characters.


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## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Although I agree with most of what you said, this last sentence is too absolute. Authors are free to write what they please, design societies and cultures as they please. Whether or not they choose to include strong female characters may have significances other than misogyny or some male driven desire for "female exclusion". Whether or not that story will work is very subjective. You, of course, may choose not to read that story if it doesn't fit your ideal. If people choose to write about patriarchal societies because they believe them to be more representative of a time period then more power to them.
> 
> I don't see where the attraction lies in tests like these. I tell the story I want to tell. The current one has several strong female characters (2 of 5 POVs are strong females) mixed into the male at about a 3:5 ratio overall. For the most part it is a patriarchal society with a few exceptions. Those decisions are not made to rail against, or support, feminist ideals, race inclusion ideals, or the wishes of any other group that may feel underrepresented. The choices are geared towards one thing only...the telling of a story.



I edited that line out of my post precisely because it would inevitably lead to a rabbit trail, but please note that I said "your story" and not "your world". You can write a female-excluding, patriarchal, and/or even misogynist _world_ while still writing a female-positive _story_. No matter how your world treats women, women are part of your world and should be part of your story as well, barring the aforementioned extreme legitimate men-only examples. 

Tests like these are important, if not necessarily attractive, because anyone who tells a story has a responsibility to think carefully about what their story represents and perpetuates and normalizes. I don't understand the resistance to this notion--you're a great writer who can tell artful stories about women as well as men, so why not make a conscious effort to ensure that your artful stories include both women and men? Nobody loses. Nobody will think less of you. Your story won't suffer, because you're not a hack. 

I'm real happy for all you guys who naturally and organically wrote diverse, woman-friendly casts, but you need to understand that a ton of published and self-published authors don't. Even if you don't personally need the Bechdel Test or respond to it positively, others do and might, and thereby improve their stories and broaden their consciousness and start representing more than a whitewashed all-male story that has already been told a million times.


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## Jabrosky

A lot of my stories involve whole troops or even armies of women warriors, and since these women are always banding together to do something other than winning men over, they pass the Bechdel test by default. Really, I'm surprised more movies don't pass this test, since it comes so easily to me.



Feo Takahari said:


> There's also Deggan's Rule, which just requires two non-white characters in a show that's not about race. (They don't have to talk to each other for this test, although it does specify they have to be human.) I've only got two stories that clearly pass this, although I've got several with racially ambiguous characters.


Also not that hard for me. I prefer more "exotic" settings for my stories anyway.


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## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> Tests like these are important, if not necessarily attractive, because anyone who tells a story has a responsibility to think carefully about what their story represents and perpetuates and normalizes. I don't understand the resistance to this notion...


This is the only point of contention between us, near as I can tell. 

Where these things greatly concern you, I merely want to entertain through the telling of a story. In my view, all considerations are subservient to the story. I don't really care what some may feel the story represents and perpetuates or what some think the story might normalize. I don't feel any level of societal responsibility for guiding, shaping, or conforming to people's viewpoints. 

My only concerns are that I write the story with frank honesty and that people have an emotional reaction to the tale...that they enjoy the reading.


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## BWFoster78

> Basically, what I'm saying is that there's really no need in fantasy to have the characters who influence the plot be exclusively male.



The question that pops into my mind when reading this, and what everyone seems to be dancing around, is:

Is there a need in fantasy to have the characters who influence the plot not be exclusively male?


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## T.Allen.Smith

Wouldn't that just depend on the story?


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## BWFoster78

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Wouldn't that just depend on the story?



Trying to read between the lines - and, admittedly, perhaps failing - that doesn't seem to be the prevailing opinion.  But, again, I could be wrong.


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## Steerpike

BWFoster78 said:


> Trying to read between the lines - and, admittedly, perhaps failing - that doesn't seem to be the prevailing opinion.  But, again, I could be wrong.



I _think_ many would say that if you're writing a lot of those kinds of stories (and there are a lot out there), that:

1) There are societal reasons that you're writing them that way, and that those are worth reflecting on and it is worth considering why the story you created was developed in a such a manner as to not need well-rounded female characters; and

2) Stories project certain values to the readership, and that should be considered as well.

I'm all for writing the story that speaks out to you as the author, and rules and tests be damned. I don't think there is any harm in self-reflection and in looking at these issues, though, to see if you're unintentionally or subconsciously falling into traps with female characters that you don't have to fall into to serve your story. 

I also disagree with a comment above that said if the reason for inclusion is specifically for purposes of 'fairness' or other policy reasons, it is a mistake. That's not always going to be the case. Fiction has long served as a vehicle for commenting on social policy or conditions, and for advocating for change. If your goal in writing a story is to make a political or social point, in addition to entertain, then it makes sense that you would consider these issues and possibly modify the story for reasons specifically related to social equality, fairness, and the like.


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## Feo Takahari

T.Allen.Smith said:


> This is the only point of contention between us, near as I can tell.
> 
> Where these things greatly concern you, I merely want to entertain through the telling of a story. In my view, all considerations are subservient to the story. I don't really care what some may feel the story represents and perpetuates or what some think the story might normalize. I don't feel any level of societal responsibility for guiding, shaping, or conforming to people's viewpoints.
> 
> My only concerns are that I write the story with frank honesty and that people have an emotional reaction to the tale...that they enjoy the reading.



I think there might be a much larger issue at work here, involving liberal versus conservative or moderate (or apathetic) ideology.

To give one example of what I mean, I read a lot of fantasy that involves "the rightful king". This "rightful king" tends to be someone who had the fortune to be born to the previous queen, and takes the throne away from some filthy commoner who stole it. But I'm a socialist. I don't believe in rightful kings. So when, say, _Tales of the Abyss_ makes the case that 



Spoiler: .



the princess, though adopted, is "rightful" because she genuinely cares about the people of the kingdom,


that warms the cockles of my little socialist heart.

A lot of the arguments I start on this site relate to my desire to challenge the assumptions that irritate me, and if a lot of people don't care, maybe that's a sign that I'm more irritated than they are. Maybe they don't really give a **** about rightful or wrongful leaders, or about the individual versus the collective, or about (in this case) media erasure of minorities. (But I'm still going to start small-scale stinks about them, because that's just the sort of ***hole I am, and because Saellys, at least, seems to be with me on some of them.)


----------



## BWFoster78

> I think there might be a much larger issue at work here, involving liberal versus conservative or moderate (or apathetic) ideology.



The think that the issue here that most of us writers are considering is:

Why should we alter our stories based on political ideology?

I think a lot of us, T.Allen and I anyway, just want to tell our stories.


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## Feo Takahari

BWFoster78 said:


> The think that the issue here that most of us writers are considering is:
> 
> Why should we alter our stories based on political ideology?
> 
> I think a lot of us, T.Allen and I anyway, just want to tell our stories.



Like I said, you're apathetic, at least in the sense that the prevalence of certain tropes doesn't actively piss you off. (That, or it matches your own ideology relatively well--it's possible you'd be more rebellious if you had to write for the Japanese market, though since I'm not you, I can't know whether that would be the case.)


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## T.Allen.Smith

Feo Takahari said:


> Like I said, you're apathetic, at least in the sense that the prevalence of certain tropes doesn't actively piss you off. (That, or it matches your own ideology relatively well--it's possible you'd be more rebellious if you had to write for the Japanese market, though since I'm not you, I can't know whether that would be the case.)



It's not that I'm apathetic. I'm quite sympathetic with the majority of these opinions. For my own writing, I just don't care to worry myself with them. I'd rather just tell the story with entertainment as its sole purpose.

That's not to say that one can't write with an effort geared towards a changing contemporary thinking. That's a laudable goal if that's what an author wants to do. It's just not for me, at least at this time. Truth is, all stories have messages and meaning. Im just trying to stay out of my own way as much as possible...if that makes sense. I don't wish to preach or educate, only entertain.


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## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> That's not to say that one can't write with an effort geared towards a changing contemporary thinking. That's a laudable goal if that's what an author wants to do. It's just not for me, at least at this time. Truth is, all stories have messages and meaning. Im just trying to stay out of my own way as much as possible...if that makes sense. I don't wish to preach or educate, only entertain.



All stories have messages and meaning, so you're never just writing for entertainment. Your work represents something whether you want it to or not.



T.Allen.Smith said:


> This is the only point of contention between us, near as I can tell.
> 
> Where these things greatly concern you, I merely want to entertain through the telling of a story. In my view, all considerations are subservient to the story. I don't really care what some may feel the story represents and perpetuates or what some think the story might normalize. I don't feel any level of societal responsibility for guiding, shaping, or conforming to people's viewpoints.
> 
> My only concerns are that I write the story with frank honesty and that people have an emotional reaction to the tale...that they enjoy the reading.



Not caring about what you perpetuate puts you in good company with a lot of writers! 

One question, though: if you wrote a story that did not pass the Bechdel Test and I told you that my enjoyment of said story was diminished by the fact that your two female characters only spoke to each other about a male character, would you feel compelled to change anything about that, or would you simply chalk it up to not conforming to my viewpoint?


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## Mindfire

Steerpike said:


> I also disagree with a comment above that said if the reason for inclusion is specifically for purposes of 'fairness' or other policy reasons, it is a mistake. That's not always going to be the case. Fiction has long served as a vehicle for commenting on social policy or conditions, and for advocating for change. If your goal in writing a story is to make a political or social point, in addition to entertain, then it makes sense that you would consider these issues and possibly modify the story for reasons specifically related to social equality, fairness, and the like.



Perhaps I overgeneralized. I should have used the disclaimer: "Unless you have the specific intent of social commentary..."


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## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> Not caring about what you perpetuate puts you in good company with a lot of writers!


That's a bit backhanded. My concern for honest story telling vastly overrides any concern for ideological writing. That's it. Let's not turn it into anything different. 



saellys said:


> One question, though: if you wrote a story that did not pass the Bechdel Test and I told you that my enjoyment of said story was diminished by the fact that your two female characters only spoke to each other about a male character, would you feel compelled to change anything about that, or would you simply chalk it up to not conforming to my viewpoint?



Great question. The answer is, it depends.

If you're a beta reader, then I selected you for a specific reason. Therefore, I'd definitely take your comments into consideration. Perhaps there'd be changes made based off your opinions, perhaps not. A lot of that would depend on the character's intended purpose in the story.

If you were one of a thousand readers who reviewed the work where your opinion was a minority....probably not. Nothing would appeal to everyone. I accept this. If that opinion was a majority, I might consider alterations. Again though, it would depend on the character's purpose in the story.

That being said, none of my female characters would ever behave that way.


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## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> All stories have messages and meaning, so you're never just writing for entertainment. Your work represents something whether you want it to or not.


I would accept that as an inherent part of story telling. Few things are absolute in nature. I just don't want to concern myself with the messages people infer. I just want to tell the story for entertainment alone.


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## Feo Takahari

This topic's moving pretty quickly, and this will take a while to write, so I'll make this a separate post.

Let me start by explaining the most giant "WAT" I ever gave.

I was reading an anthology of stories by O. Henry. I came upon a discussion between two characters, one of whom had been a match salesman before business dried up. To paraphrase from memory, "Gasoline can have a coon in hell before my matches get him warm enough to discuss religion."

This was, half-literally, a giant flaming WAT--not for the subject matter, but for how casually Henry portrayed it, as just another humorous conversation. I didn't burn the book, or write an angry letter to Henry's estate, or anything silly like that, but it gave me pause.

When I'm looking at a shelf of fantasy books, and almost all of them star white men, that's not a WAT, that's a tiny little hrm. But it's enough of a hrm that I'd like to encourage people to maybe possibly be a little more representative in their fiction. There's nothing wrong with the existence of books about white men. (And truth be told, although I criticized stories about rightful kings, they have a right to exist, too. I'm too much of a fan of Scrooge McDuck to insist that all art be Socialist.) I just want to "hrm" and "er . . ." and "did he just . . ." a little less.


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## saellys

I quoted you almost verbatim: " I don't really care what some may feel the story represents and perpetuates or what some think the story might normalize." 

Fair enough regarding a beta reader vs. a finished product. Nevertheless, brushing off a minority opinion because "nothing would appeal to everyone" seems unwise where valid criticism is concerned. Obviously no one's goal is to appeal to everyone, as that would be fruitless and frustrating. However, somewhere in the list of goals we want to accomplish as writers, "not thoughtlessly perpetuating some harmful idea" and "acknowledging our mistakes without caveat when we do and trying to do better next time" should be line items.


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## Mindfire

I think the wall saellys and feo are bumping into is twofold. First, I think writers resent being told a story is insufficient, not because of a storytelling defect, but because it didn't tick boxes on someone's checklist. And second, nobody here it seems wants to bear the burden of writing "the feminist story", or "addressing the issue". No one wants to shoulder the load of political correctness. We only want to tell our story in peace.


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## Jabrosky

About the erasure of minorities from the media mentioned earlier, while part of that is undoubtedly due to racial prejudice or implicit bias, it has also been my experience that certain people will look for offensive content in the odd instance when PoC are portrayed. I've had people accuse me of racist denigration of African women because I draw them so often, even though my intention is the exact opposite (practically all my major black female characters are supposed to be beautiful, and most are sympathetic). If you have all these knee-jerk PC pseudoliberals deliberately over-analyzing your creative productions for the slightest whiff of a stereotype, I can see why you might feel discouraged from portraying PoC at all.


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## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> I quoted you almost verbatim: " I don't really care what some may feel the story represents and perpetuates or what some think the story might normalize."


Yes, and I stand by that statement. Let me be clear because I feel my message is getting lost, or at least muddled.

I talk a lot about honesty in writing. In fact, I mentioned it early in this thread. I choose story elements (plots, characters, etc) because I think it will make for a good tale. I don't want to start worrying about how some people might interpret the story. If I select an all male cast, there's a reason. If I mix sexes, races, sexual orientations, there's a reason. In every choice the reason is because it serves the story. If I started to select genders, or races, because I'm concerned about them being underrepresented in the story or altering their role so I don't offend...well that feels dishonest to me. It's not what the story called for, it's what i think society demands. 

The only unforgivable sin in writing is dishonesty....That's a quote. I just forget who said it. By not concerning myself with messages, or how people may view story elements, I stay true to the story vision. To me, that's more honest than going over characters to make sure I don't violate sensibilities. 



saellys said:


> Fair enough regarding a beta reader vs. a finished product. Nevertheless, brushing off a minority opinion because "nothing would appeal to everyone" seems unwise where valid criticism is concerned. Obviously no one's goal is to appeal to everyone, as that would be fruitless and frustrating. However, somewhere in the list of goals we want to accomplish as writers, "not thoughtlessly perpetuating some harmful idea" and "acknowledging our mistakes without caveat when we do and trying to do better next time" should be line items.


I always will want to get better. The others are your goals, not mine.


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## Steerpike

Good discussion (and topic). Let's remember to keep _ad hominems_ out of it, as well as criticisms of people personally based on their view of social policy. If you're making arguments that characterize the person rather than the issue, you're headed in the wrong direction.

This is not directed at a specific individual, so don't read anything into it. Just a reminder from your friendly neighborhood feline. Look into my eyes!


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## Feo Takahari

Jabrosky said:


> About the erasure of minorities from the media mentioned earlier, while part of that is undoubtedly due to racial prejudice or implicit bias, it has also been my experience that certain people will look for offensive content in the odd instance when PoC are portrayed. I've had people accuse me of racist denigration of African women because I draw them so often, even though my intention is the exact opposite (practically all my major black female characters are supposed to be beautiful, and most are sympathetic). If you have all these knee-jerk PC pseudoliberals deliberately over-analyzing your creative productions for the slightest whiff of a stereotype, I can see why you might feel discouraged from portraying PoC at all.



Speaking generally, I haven't seen many people criticize a work for racism who weren't picking up on a problem. Often, they weren't picking up on a _racial_ problem, but they were (mis)identifying something the author could have fixed. (To give a personal example, a beta reader thought the orcs in one of my stories were a thinly veiled copy of the "magical Native American" stereotype. Looking over her criticism, I realized I hadn't properly set up my planned criticism of the orcs' way of life--that criticism was intended to make them less idealized and bring them down to Earth.)


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## Feo Takahari

Separate post for a separate issue.

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding the whole "honesty" thing, and ironically, it might be because I _don't_ really care about categories very much--I just find it off-putting that the same categories keep showing up. 

In _Worms_ (a story I keep coming back to for examples), I built the plot around one character's betrayal of another, and that other character's response. I wrote a long and impassioned post here about my uncertainty as to how to end it--whether with vengeance or mercy--because that was the crux of the story, and I didn't want to make a mistake.

As part of the story's twist, I impulsively decided to give the victim a name having to do with the word "white", and settled on Zurie. This being a French name, I gave her the randomly chosen French surname Laprisse. This symbolism was minor--there was no reason she couldn't have been Zuri (a Swahili name), or Zuriel (Hebrew), or, for that matter, Shannon. I just chose at random, on the principle of "why not?", because this wasn't a story about race. (On the other hand, I wanted to specifically draw a parallel to male-on-female rape, which is why I didn't write about Zurishaddai--maybe next story?)

I guess you could call this "organic" writing--I certainly never thought "Oh, I need to write a French character to keep French people from being pissed off." But I did think "Hey, I've never written someone French before. I guess I might as well." I think a bit more "might as well" would go a long way towards having more diversity.

P.S. To be clear, I'm aware that culture significantly impacts how a character behaves. Were my Zurie from Saudi Arabia, that might have had a significant effect on how she handled the events of the story. But I was writing about a situation that was a bit outside the scope of current events (we certainly won't have interstellar travel anytime soon), so I had a bit of leeway in writing characters instead of culture. (And in any event, to quote J.K. Rowling, "There are weirdos in every breed.")

P.P.S. Come to think of it, nationality is probably a much bigger obstacle than race. I don't think I could convincingly write a character who'd spent his or her entire life in Japan, at least not as easily as I could write a Japanese-American, or even a spacefaring Japan-descendant. (Then again, we're fantasy writers--we mostly write about fictional societies anyway.)


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## saellys

Mindfire said:


> I think the wall saellys and feo are bumping into is twofold. First, I think writers resent being told a story is insufficient, not because of a storytelling defect, but because it didn't tick boxes on someone's checklist. And second, nobody here it seems wants to bear the burden of writing "the feminist story", or "addressing the issue". No one wants to shoulder the load of political correctness. We only want to tell our story in peace.



I'm not asking anyone to address any issues. I'm not asking anyone to be politically correct, because that's a term that doesn't mean anything and is only ever used as an excuse for saying something offensive. I'm not telling anyone that any one story is insufficient. I'm just asking people to run their work through the Bechdel test. It's not hard; it won't hurt; and as you can surely attest, it's even kind of fun to see how many different ways you pass it. 



Feo Takahari said:


> I guess you could call this "organic" writing--I certainly never thought "Oh, I need to write a French character to keep French people from being pissed off." But I did think "Hey, I've never written someone French before. I guess I might as well." I think a bit more "might as well" would go a long way towards having more diversity.



This. 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> By not concerning myself with messages, or how people may view story elements, I stay true to the story vision. To me, that's more honest than going over characters to make sure I don't violate sensibilities.



I feel like our fundamental disagreement involves two things. First is which stage of the writing process is appropriate for taking these considerations. You seem to think I'm asking people to do it from the start--to say to themselves "I'm writing about nine people on an epic quest--how many of them can I make female, POCs, or non-heterosexual?" That's not at all what I'm saying (though it could certainly be very interesting to build a world and story around how such a diverse group interacts with each other and the world around them). Every stage of the writing process is an opportunity to examine our choices as writers. If you* get your nine characters figured out, and then realize there's no reason why several of them can't be women or varying ethnicities or asexual, and then you make that change and write them as real human beings (or lizardmen/women or orcs or some such), you have just drastically increased the breadth of your audience. Your story hasn't suffered because you're a great writer, and the non-straight-white-male reading your story has that much more to enjoy about it because they see some aspect of themselves represented. Again, everyone wins!

The second thing involves the reduction of these concepts to "sensibilities" (or "feminist brownie points" or "political correctness" or everything else they've been called in this thread so far). Representation in the media is a problem, not just a quirk of a minority slice of your audience whose opinion ultimately doesn't really matter. These things are actually important, and belittling them with such word choices implies that a) there is no problem, and b) if there is, there's no point challenging the status quo, or at the very least, it's Someone Else's Job. 

*All instances of "you" and "your" are purely hypothetical and not intended as ad hominem statements.


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## Benjamin Clayborne

T.Allen.Smith said:


> It's not that I'm apathetic. I'm quite sympathetic with the majority of these opinions. For my own writing, I just don't care to worry myself with them. I'd rather just tell the story with entertainment as its sole purpose.



That's entirely up to you, but I think a writer whose _only_ purpose is to entertain is selling themselves short. Art can have many purposes. Entertainment might be the most important purpose (to you) but there's no reason it has to be the only one.

EDIT: More specifically, I would encourage all writers to do more than simply try to entertain. I believe that your art serves both you and the world best when you try to _say_ something with it, rather than just entertain.


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## Mindfire

Actually, the way Feo put it ("might as well" or "why not?") appeals to me more than the vibe I've been getting from that side of the conversation up until now, which has come off as more "you ought to do this, or else [you're an evil, evil person]. Shame on you!"

Yes, that's hyperbole. No reason this discussion has to be humorless.

And yes, I get the representation thing. I'm a minority and while I know what it's like when people who resemble you are absent from media, the fact that Batman is white does not cause me to writhe in existential agony. But it does annoy me when people add characters inorganically for diversity's sake, and not because they were interesting or necessary.







Which of these things is not like the others? Could it be the TEEN TITANS MEMBER?


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## Mindfire

And now, for an example of diversity done right...


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## Jabrosky

saellys said:


> You seem to think I'm asking people to do it from the start--to say to themselves "I'm writing about nine people on an epic quest--how many of them can I make female, POCs, or non-heterosexual?" That's not at all what I'm saying (though it could certainly be very interesting to build a world and story around how such a diverse group interacts with each other and the world around them). Every stage of the writing process is an opportunity to examine our choices as writers. If you* get your nine characters figured out, and then realize *there's no reason why several of them can't be women or varying ethnicities or asexual*, and then you make that change and write them as real human beings (or lizardmen/women or orcs or some such), you have just drastically increased the breadth of your audience. Your story hasn't suffered because you're a great writer, and the non-straight-white-male reading your story has that much more to enjoy about it because they see some aspect of themselves represented. Again, everyone wins!


I realize we are talking fantasy here, but assuming a certain degree of realism how often is that actually going to be the case? Such a scenario would require getting together a mixed-sex assortment of people with varying sexual orientations and from various parts of the world, which is improbable if the world in question isn't like the modern United States. For instance, if a story were set in the fantasy equivalent of Africa, odds are that any Asian and European types would be outnumber by natives. Homosexuality is a statistically rare sexual orientation, and asexuality or pansexuality or whatever are even rarer, so unless the organizers of the band went out of their way to incorporate diverse sexualities, the statistical odds are that most nine-people bands in most settings will be predominantly heterosexual. I will admit the mixed-sex situation would be a lot easier to pull off as long as the society in question wasn't patriarchal like most historical civilizations.

Furthermore, while I write both male and female PoC all the time, I must admit that homosexuality and asexuality aren't my personal cup of tea. I'm all for marriage equality and gay rights, but I am still a straight guy and therefore don't find homosexual relationships particularly, uh, attractive. Whenever I write romance or sexuality into a story, I write whatever I personally find most appealing, not what someone else might find politically correct. That said, I have no problem with gay people writing their own gay romances, because everyone has different tastes.


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## Jabrosky

Mindfire said:


> And yes, I get the representation thing. I'm a minority and while I know what it's like when people who resemble you are absent from media, the fact that Batman is white does not cause me to writhe in existential agony. But it does annoy me when people add characters inorganically for diversity's sake, and not because they were interesting or necessary.


I don't mind Batman being white either, but I have to confess that, as an artist, I do sometimes enjoy taking a famous white character and drawing them as non-white. For example, I once drew an unmasked Darth Vader as African-American, thinking it would complement his accent well. That doesn't mean I would _demand_ that filmmakers cast a black man to play Darth Vader simply for diversity, but given that he is from the distant and presumably more multicultural future, I don't see why he can't be black either.


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## Ireth

Jabrosky said:


> I don't mind Batman being white either, but I have to confess that, as an artist, I do sometimes enjoy taking a famous white character and drawing them as non-white. For example, I once drew an unmasked Darth Vader as African-American, thinking it would complement his accent well. That doesn't mean I would _demand_ that filmmakers cast a black man to play Darth Vader simply for diversity, but given that he is from the distant and presumably more multicultural future, I don't see why he can't be black either.



Darth Vader's actor, James Earl Jones, is multiracial. Just saying.


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## Jabrosky

Ireth said:


> Darth Vader's actor, James Earl Jones, is multiracial. Just saying.


Technically he is, but for some reason I always saw him as a black man. Which is funny given that I'm normally reluctant to call biracial people like Barack Obama black, but that's for another thread.


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## T.Allen.Smith

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> That's entirely up to you, but I think a writer whose only purpose is to entertain is selling themselves short. Art can have many purposes. Entertainment might be the most important purpose (to you) but there's no reason it has to be the only one.
> 
> EDIT: More specifically, I would encourage all writers to do more than simply try to entertain. I believe that your art serves both you and the world best when you try to say something with it, rather than just entertain.



I agree that it's a laudable goal, as stated before. I'm certainly not trying to dissuade anyone from taking that approach. I only stated my opinion, that you don't have to concern yourself with these issues. You can just tell a good story. Never did I state that entertainment has to be the ONLY goal. 

Maybe, later in my career, I may choose a loftier purpose. For now, telling a good story is enough.


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## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> Representation in the media is a problem, not just a quirk of a minority slice of your audience whose opinion ultimately doesn't really matter. These things are actually important, and belittling them with such word choices implies that a) there is no problem, and b) if there is, there's no point challenging the status quo, or at the very least, it's Someone Else's Job.


Although I recognize & agree that these problems exist, they aren't as important to everyone. Some of the sentiments expressed here imply that because they are so important to some, they should be of great concern to all. I just can't buy into that. 

I'm certainly not trying to say that people should avoid these issues. Thats up to each writer to decide for themselves. I'm merely trying to state that they don't HAVE to inspect their characters with this level of scrutiny & still be able to tell a good story.

If your goal is to highlight societal ills or draw attention to what you perceive as problems, more power to you.


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## Feo Takahari

T.Allen.Smith said:


> I'm certainly not trying to say that people should avoid these issues. Thats up to each writer to decide for themselves. I'm merely trying to state that they don't HAVE to inspect their characters with this level of scrutiny & still be able to tell a good story.
> 
> If your goal is to highlight societal ills or draw attention to what you perceive as problems, more power to you.



I'd like to note that the former paragraph's action by no means requires the latter's. There's nothing about having minority characters that, in and of itself, qualifies as social advocacy or directly draws attention to a problem. I think that representation is required _for_ advocacy, but I also think that works that contain minority representation without having any sort of social advocacy still lay the groundwork for others' advocacy, and thus contribute positively to social change.


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## Jabrosky

Feo Takahari said:


> Speaking generally, I haven't seen many people criticize a work for racism who weren't picking up on a problem. Often, they weren't picking up on a _racial_ problem, but they were (mis)identifying something the author could have fixed. (To give a personal example, a beta reader thought the orcs in one of my stories were a thinly veiled copy of the "magical Native American" stereotype. Looking over her criticism, I realized I hadn't properly set up my planned criticism of the orcs' way of life--that criticism was intended to make them less idealized and bring them down to Earth.)


In my case, the usual complaint was that I sexualize my black female characters too much. Now, I admit that I often like to portray black women as sexy, so the charge isn't _technically _inaccurate, but these critics always threw it using a negative tone that implicitly accused me of racial insensitivity which I regard as unfair. The thought never crossed their minds that my intention was to portray black women as beautiful and desirable, as in the kind of women you would want to marry, which is actually a world apart from denigrating them as cheap Jezebels worthy of nothing more than sexual violence. It's one thing to draw a woman of color in a sexual way, but sexual does _not _entail degradation the way I see it.

That touches on one problem I see with this type of political correctness: it accuses writers and artists of anti-egalitarian attitudes based on the slightest "offenses" without taking into account the overall context of their productions. For example, one of my critics objected to my drawing a black female character wearing animal skins, saying it was stereotypical and racist. What they overlooked was that my character came from a prehistoric time period where animal skins made sense as clothing material, and more importantly that she was supposed to be beautiful and heroic. Said critic also ignored all the other black women I've drawn who came from more urbanized civilizations based on ancient Egypt, Nubia, or Mali and wore lots of gold jewelry and non-animal-skin textile clothing. This critic basically fixated on one minor, vague resemblance to a stereotype in my artwork while ignoring the more positive context surrounding it.

Of course, no matter how hard any artist tries, they're always going to offend _someone_. As artists and writers, we can only control our intentions in creating any given production, not how other people react to it.


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## T.Allen.Smith

Feo Takahari said:


> Separate post for a separate issue.
> I'm having a bit of trouble understanding the whole "honesty" thing, and ironically, it might be because I don't really care about categories very much--I just find it off-putting that the same categories keep showing up.



Feo, 
Apologies. I missed this part earlier.

I'll try to explain what I mean by "honesty in writing" from two different angles. 

As a younger writer, there was a piece of me that was once concerned whether certain people I know (relatives, friends, etc.) might read something I wrote and attach sentiments or dialogue words to me, as if the ideas or actions expressed by a character were my own as the author. 

As I matured, I grew to no longer care what people thought about those scenes or ideas. They were free to infer anything they wanted from the prose, and it really didn't matter to me, as long as I was being true to the story. Being true to the story (honesty in writing) means only that I am willing, as the author, to write whatever I need to tell the best story I can. 

This swings both ways. As much as I dislike the idea of self-censorship to keep people from thinking my views are in line with any character, I also don't want to force myself to include some aspect for no other reason than an expectation to include those elements...and if i don't then I'm not writing a worthy piece.


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## Feo Takahari

So are you saying that including minority characters would make your stories worse, or wouldn't make them better? Because those are two _very_ different statements. (Or are you already including tons of minority characters, and just balking at an implied "should"?)


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## T.Allen.Smith

Neither. I don't try to make stories better by "searching" for opportunities to use minority characters or different gender ratios. However, if the story calls for ANY type of character I would write that way. 

I feel that inclusion of any minority would only make the story worse if the only reason for writing a particular character was for the goal of inclusion alone.


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## BWFoster78

> I'm all for writing the story that speaks out to you as the author, and rules and tests be damned. I don't think there is any harm in self-reflection and in looking at these issues, though, to see if you're unintentionally or subconsciously falling into traps with female characters that you don't have to fall into to serve your story.



Steerpike,

I didn't mean to ignore your post yesterday.  I only had a few minutes to respond and never had a chance to get back to the board.

I think that this is a well thought out, measured approach that I agree with.

I'm all about analyzing all parts of writing: how, what, why, and who.

I just didn't feel that the subtext from some of the posts truly advocated such a measured approach.  What I'm getting from this discussion is that some people think that an author has some kind of moral or ethical obligation to put forth a particular agenda through stories.

If I am accurately interpreting this sentiment, I don't agree.

T.Allen has stated many times that "the story comes first" but, I think, has, perhaps, failed to adequately convey the why of the truth of that statement.  Here's my attempt:

The creative process, at least for me, is a mystical, mysterious thing.  Unlike technique where I analyze everything and try to codify all that I can, I have no idea from where my ideas come.  There are many times when I think, "I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen next."  After a little bit of floundering, the words just start flowing and, all of a sudden, I have this really cool plot twist that I never saw coming.  Cool.

I feel that a lot of my plot and character decisions come from instinct rather than analysis, and I'm wary of trying to inorganically insert anything at any stage of the process.  I simply feel that such modifications, no matter the societal benefit, hurt the writing.  Anything that hurts the writing is going to hurt my chances of success.  If I don't succeed, nothing I write to "help" society is going to do much anyway.

On another note: Each person's moral and ethical compass is theirs to determine, and, quite frankly, I don't feel bad in the least if I don't take up an issue just because someone else feels that it's the most important thing in the world.  There are a lot of issues out there, and there are some that I feel passionate about (for instance, not wasting words by using unnecessary speech tags  )  I don't ask anyone else to take up the standard of my causes and don't feel that anyone is justified in expecting me to take up theirs.


----------



## Amanita

I did try the Bechdel Test with my own stuff now. 
When going through my original story waiting to be edited, I thought that this was a complete non-issue. The main character is female and of course she’s talking to other women about all kinds of things. Was actually completely natural to the story. 
Looking upon my fanfic stuff I did realize that the situation was different though and I never realized that before. The female characters I’m writing there have very little female support, especially at the point of time where I’m writing. It’s quite strange because I never realized that before. 
I do think that it can be a bit awkward if the story is told from a single point-of-view and the character is male. He might not naturally stumble over two female characters discussing something among themselves. Would it count if a female character walked up to him and told him about something plot-relevant she found out together with another female character? If the main villain is male, this would have been about a man again though.
If there are female characters who give important input, I wouldn’t consider the book sexist even if they never talked to each other alone on screen.

As far as the entire inclusion issue goes, I’m in two minds. My main character isn’t only female but also has brown skin. While I’m not worried about offending anyone for gender-related reasons, I do worry because of her skin color. In my world, skin color is a trait related to the climate of the place where the person comes from but has no history of slavery etc. attached to it. 
Her people do suffer some discrimination for cultural and magical reasons however but there are other people of color in the story who come from different places and don’t have to deal with anything like that.  
I keep wondering if making her white would be the less offensive choice there but it goes against my mental image and therefore I haven’t done it so far.

As far as the rest of the discussion goes, I’m somewhere in the middle again. I definitely want to see strong female characters but I don’t think anyone should write something he doesn’t feel like writing for social reasons. I also don’t think a writer has any obligation to research how to write people with outlooks on life very different from his own if it’s not relevant for the story he wants to tell. 
The lack of characters of non-European background in fantasy as well as the treatment of women do bother me as well however. If there’s a war or quest without much female participation I might not mind that much but I have strong problems with stories where women only turn up as prostitutes, objects of quick affairs and rape victims. Especially if all of the above is condoned by the protagonists for reasons of “realism.” 
I do think that this kind a thing can have effects on people especially if it’s becoming common and read again and again. 
That actually belongs into the other thread but this is a problem I do see with the surge in “gritty” stories without any moral boundaries. Novels aren’t supposed to be moral guidelines, but if the opposite becomes too prevalent, there’s danger as well. I agree with Brian about the way the creative process works, it's similar for me as well. I also believe that a writer has a certain amount of responsibility for the things he actually does bring into the public. I might make myself unpopular with this statement but I think that not every dark twist the writer's mind creates belongs there.
This isn’t only about women’s roles by the way but about a variety of subject matters.


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## BWFoster78

> I also believe that a writer has a certain amount of responsibility for the things he actually does bring into the public. I might make myself unpopular with this statement but I think that not every dark twist the writer's mind creates belongs there.



Not sure why, but I think you're on slightly less shaky footing with the argument that an author shouldn't advocate for something reprehensible versus arguing that an author has an obligation to argue against something reprehensible.


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## Chime85

Wohoo! I passed! Mind you, my story has quite a few female lead roles. On that trail of thought, I reversed the test for males, and I passed again! 

Tests aside though, I don’t think it’s really a question of inclusion, more a question of character realism. One of the main reasons many dislike the female role being near silent and spending half the story with wide eyes and a skipped heart every time the male lead enters the scene is because that is an unrealistic (and somewhat insulting) portrayal of women in general. 

Now when I say realism, I don’t mean how someone would act in this day and age (and world) but instead by the rules of the world the story is set in. As much as I try, I have yet to imagine a world where the women of society simply wait for a man to rescue them from whatever plight they find themselves in. If that was the case, there would be a whole host of men crossing a single woman across the street in the hopes of winning her heart. Somehow, I don’t think that is a typical case in regards to most stories. 

Oddly enough, Jabrosky has found himself in an interesting situation. Where he has included many black characters, he has been accused of portraying them as a stereotype (I imagine the critic means a negative stereotype) because of reasons X Y and Z. 

This is a rather unfair observation of poor Jabroski’s work (in my eyes, anyway) because frankly, it’s his world. He created it and has set up the history, civilisations and all the other countless things that make up a world. He also raises a good point when it comes to clothing his warriors. Let’s face it, they’re not likely to find a decent set of jeans at the local Gap any time soon.
Secondly, is the critic simply seeing the colour of his characters skin and joining the dots themselves? I gave this some thought and replaced his warrior into a “girl next door” type character with long blonde hair and green eyes and pale skin. I then placed her in this world and age and replaced her spear with a “Miss California” and dress her in a mini skirt and tube top. Then I wondered, would the same critic make the same accusation? Seeing as such examples exist in many movies (most of them cheesy horror movies. I’m looking at you, Freddy VS Jason!) and nobody bats an eye, I doubt Jabroski’s critic would.

Personally, I am a big fan of inclusion. Not because I feel the need to tick as many diversity boxes as possible (in fact, trying to do that is detrimental to the artistic integrity of the author).  No, I personally enjoy making a varied world, along with characters from many different back rounds. That said, I can say that I have no LGBT people in my stories. This does in no way reflect my opinion on that group (for goodness sake, I cover two of those letters myself!) but because I have yet to find a reason to include sexuality or gender identity in my stories (as of yet). There is no room for it and any inclusion of that would be sideline and distracting at best. 

Eg: 

Aragorn: (from the film) _Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you *stand, Men of the West!* *Btw, my love for Arwen is a sham, I loved Boromir *_

As you can see (from this very crude and slapped together example) it would serve no purpose.  Which brings to my final point, why should (or should not) an author have the final say on who to include or how they should portray them? At the end of the day, any author worth his or her salt would consider the setting and situation before drawing upon a conclusion on how the characters in the scene would act. If a reader finds offense to that, that is their right to do so. As authors we cannot control or demand the reaction to our stories. However, as a reader, it is their responsibility to ask why did the story include (or not include) this person or that? Would that have changed the story for better or worse? Finally, the reader should understand that views within a story does not particularly reflect the views of the author.

x


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## SineNomine

I think this entire line of discussion points to why things like racial inequality are so damn persistent and hard to kill:  It THRIVES on the shared responsibility of many where any individual can be slippery enough to not feel that same responsibility.  I think there is something to be said for the fact, considering how ineffable most of our creative processes can be, no one should feel forced to include a character they otherwise wouldn't solely for the sake of diversity.  That benefits no one, especially since if all your characters are white and you are feeling "forced" to include at least one PoC as a character, lets be frank, you may not do it very well.  

That being said though, I do think there is a shared responsibility that authors of SFF have, as a whole, to diversify their stories.  SFF has long, long suffered from being incredibly white-centric, and, to a lesser extent, male-centric.  The goal isn't to create some sort of artificial tally of all characters making sure that they line up with real world demographics personally, it's to try and avoid alienating potential readers.  PoC absolutely don't need every book filled with PoC characters to relate to, that's silly, but it is great to have heroes here and there that don't conform to the exact same body specifications (And this is about more than just PoC of course, this is the same with genders, sexual identites, etc).

Ultimately, it shouldn't be an issue.  You shouldn't have to feel put upon to diversify because your stories just end up diverse naturally.  Not ALL stories need to be, but the attitude should mostly be "Why SHOULDN'T I have non-white/non-male/non-straight characters?".  If there is a good enough reason within the context of the story, that's fine.  You only need to worry when you look back at everything you've written and it is CONSISTENTLY lacking in diversity.  In that case, why not start slow?  Take random, interesting characters and just choose to make them slightly different.  In most stories, it's not going to be that big a deal.  Just take extra special care to avoid negative stereotyping.  Do it enough times and you will very naturally start producing more diverse stories.

It's just really sad to see so many people fall into the pit of "this is just the way fantasy is".  THAT'S the real painful thing to hear, because it is a terrible reason, and more than that, it's just a shrug and acceptance of the fact that it will always be that way, as if it just can't be changed.  Being based on medieval Europe doesn't mean that only white people exist.  That wasn't even true in medieval Europe, it's mostly just a construct of, you guessed it, past trends in fantasy.


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## Ankari

I'm of like mind with BWFoster78 and TAS.  

A few points I would like to point out.  From what I've read (about 90% of this thread) the general consensus is that a story lacking multiple female characters discussing other things besides men is outdated.  So, the way to balance antiquated beliefs of male dominance is to force male characters from a scene, or create scenes that feature only women, to be considered as a modern thinking writer.

The problem I have with anything labelled a "test" is the inferred meaning that whatever is tested is either right or wrong. That the purpose behind the test is right and those that fail the test are wrong.  The people who feel that such requirements are mandatory should create content on their own rather than force every writer out there into a mold.  

What is wrong with the stories of knights saving the damsel in distress from her dark fate?  Are you saying that this isn't a story worthy of teaching males?  That males shouldn't read such neandertholic stories because it features a somewhat outdated representation of a male saving a somewhat outdated representation of a female?  Why are they considered outdated?  Sure, a majority of the western women wouldn't sit around waiting for a man to show up and save her.  _A majority of western women._

What's so incredibly odd about this test is that is attempts to wipe out cultures and histories from our arsenal of things to build upon.  There are posts I've read that lament the lack of diversity in fantasy settings.  They ask why there isn't a story based on ancient Meso-Americans, or Africa, or the Far East.  Are we to use these cultures only as clothing?  The characters _look_ the part, but don't deal with the problems faced found in the original culture.  (The fact that we would even label these aspects as problems is a whole other post.)  We can't incorporate the complete culture because they would fail some contrived "test".

Whenever a post hits the World Building Forums asking if this is right, or that can be done, the predominant answer is "Yes.  It's you're world, do whatever you want."  This rule applies to everything except gender (and other socially sensitive subjects) because it may infuriate a small population, or even a significant one?  What is the saying?  You can't please everyone so stop trying to or your writing will suffer.  At the end of the day, isn't up to your wallets/purses/money clips/plastic to voice your opinions? 

Another problem I have with this "test" is that a man and woman talking to each other about any subject matter isn't considered a proper representation of women.  Why?  Because a male is in the scene?  So I can't have a queen address a duke in private about a need for resources.  I have to think, before writing the scene, that it should be a duchess instead?  Or, if I stay with that scene I have to comb over my outline to make sure another scene has two females talking about anything else except men......

No.  Let me tell my story and I'll let you tell your story.  I'll judge it for it's entertainment value.  Whether you feature a whole cast of butt-kicking women or not, won't have any influence on my enjoyment.  After all, the ultimate goal is to create something that we, and others, _enjoy_.


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## BWFoster78

> That being said though, I do think there is a shared responsibility that authors of SFF have, as a whole, to diversify their stories.



Why?  From where does this "responsibility" originate?  Why is THIS issue so much more important than hundreds of other issues that fiction could perhaps be somehow used to "fix?"

Do we have a responsibility to fix all societal wrongs?

What about drunk driving?  I've read a lot of fantasy stories that feature drunk nobles riding around on horses.  This could lead to someone somehow not realizing that they shouldn't drive drunk.  Should SFF writers as a whole include more characters who suffer bad consequences of drinking and riding?

Where does this responsibility end?


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## Chime85

BWFoster78 said:


> Why?  From where does this "responsibility" originate?  Why is THIS issue so much more important than hundreds of other issues that fiction could perhaps be somehow used to "fix?"
> 
> Do we have a responsibility to fix all societal wrongs?
> 
> What about drunk driving?  I've read a lot of fantasy stories that feature drunk nobles riding around on horses.  This could lead to someone somehow not realizing that they shouldn't drive drunk.  Should SFF writers as a whole include more characters who suffer bad consequences of drinking and riding?
> 
> Where does this responsibility end?



You example made me laugh. "yes, yes, your story is very well constructed. The plot is tight and your style is refreshing. Just one nit to pick...."
"what's that? Is it the grammer? Is it the prose?"
"no, there are people riding horses while under the influence of alcohol"
"ok, so?"
"well, do you not think it sets a bad example. To us, it puts drink driving in a positive light, people are going to look to this hero of yours, you know!"
"For crying out loud! What about when he betrays his country and stabs people in the face, is that acceptable?"
"yes, yes that's fine"


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## Jabrosky

Things like the Bechdel Test probably work better when describing larger trends across multiple works by multiple authors rather than singling out one work or one author. If one story lacks two women talking about something other than a man, that won't bother me. It's when you have a large proportion of fiction that lacks the same thing when you notice a problem. It works rather like cliches: one work having a given cliche doesn't necessarily condemn it all by itself, but if the same cliche exists across fiction, that's when people crave for something different.


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## Chilari

Ankari said:


> Another problem I have with this "test" is that a man and woman talking to each other about any subject matter isn't considered a proper representation of women.  Why?  Because a male is in the scene?  So I can't have a queen address a duke in private about a need for resources.  I have to think, before writing the scene, that it should be a duchess instead?  Or, if I stay with that scene I have to comb over my outline to make sure another scene has two females talking about anything else except men...



I don't think that's really what this is. The test isn't telling you that you must change male characters into female ones, or that scenes with men in them are worth less than scenes without. If you want a queen and a duke having a chat about resources, there's nothing wrong with that. The test, by my interpretation, is designed to provoke consideration about approach to women in fiction. There's no part of the test that says "if you fail this, you're a bad writer" or "if you fail this, you need to change your story". There's just the three questions. It's not an attack on stories that fail. It's an exercise to consider women's representation in fiction - and not even necessarily your own. It's fun to look at famous movies and books to see how they fare. Fight Club only has one named female character, for example. Lord of the Rings has two but they never meet, though they do present different types of women sympathetically.



			
				BWFoster78 said:
			
		

> Do we have a responsibility to fix all societal wrongs?


The entertainment media we consume, be it film, TV, games or books, can have an impact upon the way we view the real world and can shape our opinions and guide our moral choices. The entertainment media we create, therefore, has the opportunity to influence others. What we chose to include, and how we chose to present it, can have an impact beyond the mere entertaining.

As a result, we could do harm or we could do good to society through what we produce. Sure, if we want to merely write for entertainment's sake then that's fine. But I do think we should at least consider the impact our words, and the presentation of moral choices, characters from different backgrounds, and situations which have a real-world parallel, have upon our readers. That doesn't mean we should change what we write in order to present a desired situation, especially not if it could damage the story, but I think we do need to be aware of what conclusions might be drawn, and what circumstances are presented as normal or acceptable, in our works.

So no, we don't have a responsibility to fix all societal wrongs, but we do have a responsibility to be aware of what we have written and consider the impact it could have, even if that awareness results in no changes whatsoever.


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## BWFoster78

> So no, we don't have a responsibility to fix all societal wrongs, but we do have a responsibility to be aware of what we have written and consider the impact it could have, even if that awareness results in no changes whatsoever.



As I wrote in response to Steerpike, I don't ever disagree with the concept that analyzing our work is a good idea.

I think I've been pretty clear in addressing only those on this thread who seem to be calling for action and putting forth their agenda as so important that we all should work to address it.  I think that my question has consistently remained, "Why is this issue more important than others?"

EDIT: I state the above because the post from which I quoted seems to seek to remove my question from its specific context and take it back to the general.


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## Chilari

My answer, and I'm sure others would have different opinions, would be that this issue is not more important than other issues, but that doesn't mean it can't be addressed. We've got potentially millions of words to address issues over the course of our writing careers. If we want to use those words to address societal issues, we can address whatever societal issues we want. And we can address as many as we want. Addressing issues of gender representation doesn't mean you can't address anything else you also feel is important, whether that is representation of PoCs, LGBT people, mentally illness or whathaveyou. There's nothing stopping you having a clinically depressed Zoroastrian trans lesbian woman of Chinese and Haitian descent, who believes gun ownership is a right but also a responsibility, thinks abortions are an occasionally necessary evil that shouldn't be freely available for those who just want one, and is vocally opposed to the dismantling of state pension systems, as your protagonist, after all. It might get a bit cluttered if you're addressing all of those issues in one story, but if that's what you want, then fine.

So it's not more important than others, necessarily, but it can still be addressed if you want to address it.


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## Mindfire

I think the best method of encouraging diversity in writing is to simply encourage diversity in writers. Get more minority writers into the action and more minority characters will appear as a result. I think that's a far better solution than trying to thought police already existing writers, which as you see meets with resistance. And I don't think this resistance is motivated by a desire to maintain homogeneity. (At least, not here. At Super-Mega-Media-Conglomicon it might be a different story.) I think it's motivated by the natural human impulse against someone trying to alter your creation in a way you don't believe is warranted. And I think there is a danger in trying to push an idea through your writing. If the writer is not careful, he can end up creating one ugly beast of a soapbox that _nobody_ wants to read. I'm a Christian, and while my ideals do bleed through into my writing, I make an effort not to turn the story into a morality tale, because I think it has more to offer than just being a sermon. I say, if you want more diverse media, find more diverse media creators.


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## BWFoster78

> So it's not more important than others, necessarily, but it can still be addressed if you want to address it.



Again, though, this does not address the issue of speaking to those who seem to be implying that it is authors should address it...

I have no quarrel with anyone who says, "It's good to analyze your writing; address what you want to address."


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## BWFoster78

> If the writer is not careful, he can end up creating one ugly beast of a soapbox that nobody wants to read.



This sounds like someone who has read Sword of Truth.


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## Ankari

Chilari said:


> I don't think that's really what this is. The test isn't telling you that you must change male characters into female ones, or that scenes with men in them are worth less than scenes without. If you want a queen and a duke having a chat about resources, there's nothing wrong with that. The test, by my interpretation, is designed to provoke consideration about approach to women in fiction. There's no part of the test that says "if you fail this, you're a bad writer" or "if you fail this, you need to change your story". There's just the three questions. It's not an attack on stories that fail. It's an exercise to consider women's representation in fiction - and not even necessarily your own. It's fun to look at famous movies and books to see how they fare. Fight Club only has one named female character, for example. Lord of the Rings has two but they never meet, though they do present different types of women sympathetically.



We are all aspiring writers.  We understand the power of words and the power of perception.  To call something a "test" has a specific power.  To pass or fail a test has a specific meaning.  If the Bechdel Test wasn't meant to determine the success, or failure, of a fictional piece in the area it is testing, why would they use that word?  Why not _challenge_ or _survery_?See?  The connotation is different.

Further, why is it considered misrepresenation if a cast of women are never seperate from men?  I think to the Malazan series and how women are soldiering just like the men.  They camp in the same area, share the same food, and talk to each other _all the time_.


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## Chilari

Mindfire said:


> I think the best method of encouraging diversity in writing is to simply encourage diversity in writers. Get more minority writers into the action and more minority characters will appear as a result.



There's the crux of it, I think. Writing is often seen as quite a middle class thing to do; it is seen as requiring a certain amount and quality of education and because it is unreliable as a source of income it is not seen as a viable or useful pursuit as a profession. And because in general in western society, middle class people are on balance more likely to be white, there's also a racial bias too.

But I don't think it's the whole situation. Because entertainment media relies on building on what has gone before, I think there is still a tendency to write more and better male characters than female characters, and I think there's a male protagonist bias. This is far more prevalent in other media - blockbuster films probably have a 90/10 split for male/female protagonists. Computer games, too, tend towards male player characters where this isn't chosable by the player.


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## Jabrosky

Mindfire said:


> I think the best method of encouraging diversity in writing is to simply encourage diversity in writers. Get more minority writers into the action and more minority characters will appear as a result. I think that's a far better solution than trying to thought police already existing writers, which as you see meets with resistance. And I don't think this resistance is motivated by a desire to maintain homogeneity. (At least, not here. At Super-Mega-Media-Conglomicon it might be a different story.) I think it's motivated by the natural human impulse against someone trying to alter your creation in a way you don't believe is warranted. And I think there is a danger in trying to push an idea through your writing. If the writer is not careful, he can end up creating one ugly beast of a soapbox that _nobody_ wants to read. I'm a Christian, and while my ideals do bleed through into my writing, I make an effort not to turn the story into a morality tale, because I think it has more to offer than just being a sermon. I say, if you want more diverse media, find more diverse media creators.


I don't know if the issue is entirely due to a lack of literature by minorities. There's actually an abundance of that if you look in certain places. In fact African fantasy has blossomed into an entire subgenre in its own right called Sword & Soul. For me, the real issue is less one of minority disinterest than one of publisher disinterest. I'm sure black people write speculative fiction all the time, but mainstream publishers would prefer to distribute books with white main characters to major bookstores (that is, unless the black characters somehow conformed to racial stereotypes such as the pitiful victim or ghetto villain).


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## Chilari

Ankari said:


> We are all aspiring writers.  We understand the power of words and the power of perception.  To call something a "test" has a specific power.  To pass or fail a test has a specific meaning.  If the Bechdel Test wasn't meant to determine the success, or failure, of a fictional piece in the area it is testing, why would they use that word?  Why not _challenge_ or _survery_?See?  The connotation is different.
> 
> Further, why is it considered misrepresenation if a cast of women are never seperate from men?  I think to the Malazan series and how women are soldiering just like the men.  They camp in the same area, share the same food, and talk to each other _all the time_.



Once again, it's not saying you can't have men and women chatting with one another. It's not saying these scenes are less valuable. Indeed, it was never actually intended as a test for writers - it was simply a means by which a comic book character decided on whether to watch a movie, inspired by what someone in real life said. It wasn't presented as a test to writers, it was a test by which a feminist character decided whether she thought she would enjoy a film. That's why it's called a test, because of the context it comes from, not because it was intended as a means to rate writers.

And it's not the be-all and end-all. It's a blunt tool and doesn't account for nuance such as your example from the Malazan series. Basically, it's nothing more than a vague indication, a consideration. It can be used however you want.


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## Chime85

The thing is, although the test is a bit clumsy, it still highlights the issue that some demographics are represented much less than others in media (in this case, writing). I’m not saying that anyone should set their writing in the rules of that test (be it for women, or any other demographic you care to replace women with), but instead, to take to mind what the test is trying to highlight.

The issue surrounding this isn’t a case of throwing in group X and people Y just to satisfy a number of people. It is giving whoever you place in your story the character development and traits you think they deserve. 

The issues are more apparent to the group highlighted at the time. While in the opening test, it was women and the representation of them in media, this discussion has (and rightly so) taken a much more holistic view of the original point. Women do notice the trends much more than men do when it comes to media. It is these trends that go a little less noticed in the male population of the audience. Of course, as I stated above, you can swap these demographics around to fit many of the highlights in this thread. Replace the word women with black and men with white and still get the same trend of who notices what in media. Strangely enough, it is the group who feels under/unfairly represented who wish for change. The other group often tends to feel more comfortable with the status quo.

I think one of the shocking statistics from that video was the 11% female protagonist in the top 100 movies of that year. The thing is, there are people from every demographic who would like to see that change (for this example, I mean an increase!). So, why is this less apparent when it comes to a wider audience? Who is it who said “no, 11% female protagonists is fine. Don’t fix what’s not broken”?

I think Chilari is right when she stated there are many issues to write about, but there are also these ones. Of course, I still stand by an individual’s right to write about whatever he or she wishes. It is their work, and nobody else should have a say on what they ultimately decide. Of course, that does put you in the crosshairs of anyone you may upset with your works


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## Mindfire

Chilari said:


> But I don't think it's the whole situation. Because entertainment media relies on building on what has gone before, I think there is still a tendency to write more and better male characters than female characters, and I think there's a male protagonist bias. This is far more prevalent in other media - blockbuster films probably have a 90/10 split for male/female protagonists. Computer games, too, tend towards male player characters where this isn't chosable by the player.



Likewise, I would attribute this to a lack of women in the industry. More female creators will translate to more and better female characters. So if you want that to happen, your best bet is to encourage female filmmakers, game designers, etc. The logical corollary is, of course, that urging men to write about female protagonists will, speaking from a strategic standpoint, have limited success.



Jabrosky said:


> I don't know if the issue is entirely due to a lack of literature by minorities. There's actually an abundance of that if you look in certain places. In fact African fantasy has blossomed into an entire subgenre in its own right called Sword & Soul. For me, the real issue is less one of minority disinterest than one of publisher disinterest. I'm sure black people write speculative fiction all the time, but mainstream publishers would prefer to distribute books with white main characters to major bookstores (that is, unless the black characters somehow conformed to racial stereotypes such as the pitiful victim or ghetto villain).



And if that's the major obstacle, then I don't see how criticizing _authors_ will help. If the publishers are the problem and you feel strongly about this, I would advise you to take the fight to _them_. (Using "you" in the general sense here.)


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## saellys

My original post came to 26,000 words, so this will be multi-part. 



Jabrosky said:


> If one story lacks two women talking about something other than a man, that won't bother me. It's when you have a large proportion of fiction that lacks the same thing when you notice a problem.



When one story lacks two women talking about something other than a man, it bothers me _because_ I've read a large proportion of fantasy fiction that lacks the same thing. The author of that story could have gone in a different direction, but chose--perhaps consciously, but more likely in a knee-jerk by-default situation--not to do so. 



			
				Jabrosky said:
			
		

> That said, I have no problem with gay people writing their own gay romances, because everyone has different tastes.



The extension here is that only gay people should write gay romances, only asexuals should write about asexuality, only polyamorists should write about polyamory, and so on. If you* choose to limit yourself only to heterosexual relationships in your writing, that is entirely your choice, and does not make your work homophobic by any degree. You should, however, be aware that the sentiment that gay people should write their own gay romances could be read that way.



Ankari said:


> So, the way to balance antiquated beliefs of male dominance is to force male characters from a scene, or create scenes that feature only women, to be considered as a modern thinking writer.



Think inclusion, not exclusion.



Ankari said:


> The problem I have with anything labelled a "test" is the inferred meaning that whatever is tested is either right or wrong. That the purpose behind the test is right and those that fail the test are wrong.  The people who feel that such requirements are mandatory should create content on their own rather than force every writer out there into a mold.



As most of us who advocate the Bechdel Test have already stated numerous times in this thread, it's not a test of rightness or wrongness, but simply how you handle female characters. 

The "write it yourself" argument is common and fallacious. The extension is that only women should write about women and only men should write about men--see the thread about writing the opposite sex for more on that. I'm not trying to force anyone into a mold; I'm making an appeal for greater diversity in the fantasy genre. That's all. 



Ankari said:


> What is wrong with the stories of knights saving the damsel in distress from her dark fate?  Are you saying that this isn't a story worthy of teaching males?  That males shouldn't read such neandertholic stories because it features a somewhat outdated representation of a male saving a somewhat outdated representation of a female?  Why are they considered outdated?  Sure, a majority of the western women wouldn't sit around waiting for a man to show up and save her.  _A majority of western women._



Okay... You pretty much just made my point for me. I'm not saying it isn't a story worthy of teaching males. The virtues of chivalric knights were pretty awesome for the most part and a perpetuation of those qualities in modern times would be swell. But when the only story archetype males see, time and again, is about men rescuing helpless women, they will on some level come to regard women as helpless victims. This gets internalized for women too, which is why the two paragons of desire for women of my generation are creepy controlling stalker Edward Cullen, and his fanfic clone, Christian Grey. 



Ankari said:


> What's so incredibly odd about this test is that is attempts to wipe out cultures and histories from our arsenal of things to build upon.  There are posts I've read that lament the lack of diversity in fantasy settings.  They ask why there isn't a story based on ancient Meso-Americans, or Africa, or the Far East.  Are we to use these cultures only as clothing?  The characters _look_ the part, but don't deal with the problems faced found in the original culture.  (The fact that we would even label these aspects as problems is a whole other post.)  We can't incorporate the complete culture because they would fail some contrived "test".



I don't know how you're getting this from "two women with names talking to each other about something other than a man". I can guarantee you that happened in every culture ever. All of that culture and history is still there to build upon. The key term is "build upon culture and history," not "use the predominantly patriarchal nature of culture and history as an excuse to exclude women from fantasy stories". 



Ankari said:


> Whenever a post hits the World Building Forums asking if this is right, or that can be done, the predominant answer is "Yes.  It's you're world, do whatever you want."  This rule applies to everything except gender (and other socially sensitive subjects) because it may infuriate a small population, or even a significant one?  What is the saying?  You can't please everyone so stop trying to or your writing will suffer.  At the end of the day, isn't up to your wallets/purses/money clips/plastic to voice your opinions?



It _is_ your world. You _can_ do whatever you want. Just be aware that if you choose to present a female-excluding story, or a story that normalizes some harmful stereotype, you are likely to hear the opinions of your audience, and how you respond to those opinions will determine whether they remain your audience. (A real-world, names-naming example will be included at the end of this post.) 



Ankari said:


> Another problem I have with this "test" is that a man and woman talking to each other about any subject matter isn't considered a proper representation of women.  Why?  Because a male is in the scene?  So I can't have a queen address a duke in private about a need for resources.  I have to think, before writing the scene, that it should be a duchess instead?  Or, if I stay with that scene I have to comb over my outline to make sure another scene has two females talking about anything else except men......



You don't need to change a thing about that scene. In fact, two female characters can talk to each other about something other than a man while a man is in the same scene. It's actually painfully easy to pull off, and does not require adding an entire new scene. _Tremors 3_ passed by virtue of two lines in a one-minute-long scene (a man showed up toward the end of said scene); _Thor_ passed thanks to some funny dialogue between Jane and Darcy while Dr. Selvig stood by. Seriously, having two women talk to each other is not a big deal. It's not unnatural. It happens all the time in the real world, throughout history. 



Ankari said:


> No.  Let me tell my story and I'll let you tell your story.  I'll judge it for it's entertainment value.  Whether you feature a whole cast of butt-kicking women or not, won't have any influence on my enjoyment.  After all, the ultimate goal is to create something that we, and others, _enjoy_.



More on how a lack of representation diminishes enjoyment in that real-world example two posts down. 

* Again, all instances of "you" and "your" are purely hypothetical.


----------



## saellys

SineNomine said:


> I think this entire line of discussion points to why things like racial inequality are so damn persistent and hard to kill:  It THRIVES on the shared responsibility of many where any individual can be slippery enough to not feel that same responsibility.  I think there is something to be said for the fact, considering how ineffable most of our creative processes can be, no one should feel forced to include a character they otherwise wouldn't solely for the sake of diversity.  That benefits no one, especially since if all your characters are white and you are feeling "forced" to include at least one PoC as a character, lets be frank, you may not do it very well.
> 
> That being said though, I do think there is a shared responsibility that authors of SFF have, as a whole, to diversify their stories.  SFF has long, long suffered from being incredibly white-centric, and, to a lesser extent, male-centric.  The goal isn't to create some sort of artificial tally of all characters making sure that they line up with real world demographics personally, it's to try and avoid alienating potential readers.  PoC absolutely don't need every book filled with PoC characters to relate to, that's silly, but it is great to have heroes here and there that don't conform to the exact same body specifications (And this is about more than just PoC of course, this is the same with genders, sexual identites, etc).
> 
> Ultimately, it shouldn't be an issue.  You shouldn't have to feel put upon to diversify because your stories just end up diverse naturally.  Not ALL stories need to be, but the attitude should mostly be "Why SHOULDN'T I have non-white/non-male/non-straight characters?".  If there is a good enough reason within the context of the story, that's fine.  You only need to worry when you look back at everything you've written and it is CONSISTENTLY lacking in diversity.  In that case, why not start slow?  Take random, interesting characters and just choose to make them slightly different.  In most stories, it's not going to be that big a deal.  Just take extra special care to avoid negative stereotyping.  Do it enough times and you will very naturally start producing more diverse stories.
> 
> It's just really sad to see so many people fall into the pit of "this is just the way fantasy is".  THAT'S the real painful thing to hear, because it is a terrible reason, and more than that, it's just a shrug and acceptance of the fact that it will always be that way, as if it just can't be changed.  Being based on medieval Europe doesn't mean that only white people exist.  That wasn't even true in medieval Europe, it's mostly just a construct of, you guessed it, past trends in fantasy.



A great big plus one to all of this. 



BWFoster78 said:


> Do we have a responsibility to fix all societal wrongs?



Let me clarify something: your story is not going to fix anything. Sexism will not magically disappear because you wrote a story full of butt-kicking ladies in sensible armor. If you make a decision to write strong, realistic characters of various descriptions beyond "lily-white straight dude with a beard," you have contributed in a very small way to making the fantasy genre a little more welcoming to people who aren't white straight dudes. We'll read your story and see ourselves as something other than a victim, a prize, the first one to die when entering the dungeon, or the butt of a joke. It's not about being Civil Rights In a Box; it's about being a drop in the ocean, but it's still important. The alternative is to maintain the boys-only-with-a-few-minor-exceptions status quo. 



Chime85 said:


> Eg:
> 
> Aragorn: (from the film) _Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you *stand, Men of the West!* *Btw, my love for Arwen is a sham, I loved Boromir *_
> 
> As you can see (from this very crude and slapped together example) it would serve no purpose.  Which brings to my final point, why should (or should not) an author have the final say on who to include or how they should portray them? At the end of the day, any author worth his or her salt would consider the setting and situation before drawing upon a conclusion on how the characters in the scene would act. If a reader finds offense to that, that is their right to do so. As authors we cannot control or demand the reaction to our stories. However, as a reader, it is their responsibility to ask why did the story include (or not include) this person or that? Would that have changed the story for better or worse? Finally, the reader should understand that views within a story does not particularly reflect the views of the author.



I think I read that fanfic once.  

Everyone who reads _Heart of Darkness_ in high school or college comes to understand that the racism was intended as social commentary, and probably didn't reflect the views of Joseph Conrad. Generally, readers understand the views expressed by characters or establishments in a fictional world are not the views of the person who wrote them. But if an author includes a harmful stereotype and presents nothing elsewhere in the story to combat or contradict it, whether or not the author agrees with that view, they have just perpetuated it. That's what perpetuation is. 



			
				Mindfire said:
			
		

> I think the best method of encouraging diversity in writing is to simply encourage diversity in writers. Get more minority writers into the action and more minority characters will appear as a result.



There's that Someone Else's Job thing again. I as a writer can't personally do anything about how many minority writers are out there (let alone how many minority writers manage to get past the societal obstacles that keep them from telling their stories, like the female screenwriter who was told by a professor that people don't want to watch movies about female protagonists). I _can_ do something about my own work. 



BWFoster78 said:


> I just didn't feel that the subtext from some of the posts truly advocated such a measured approach.  What I'm getting from this discussion is that some people think that an author has some kind of moral or ethical obligation to put forth a particular agenda through stories.



It's not an agenda. It's treating male and female characters equally. 



BWFoster78 said:


> The creative process, at least for me, is a mystical, mysterious thing.  Unlike technique where I analyze everything and try to codify all that I can, I have no idea from where my ideas come.  There are many times when I think, "I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen next."  After a little bit of floundering, the words just start flowing and, all of a sudden, I have this really cool plot twist that I never saw coming.  Cool.
> 
> I feel that a lot of my plot and character decisions come from instinct rather than analysis, and I'm wary of trying to inorganically insert anything at any stage of the process.  I simply feel that such modifications, no matter the societal benefit, hurt the writing.  Anything that hurts the writing is going to hurt my chances of success.  If I don't succeed, nothing I write to "help" society is going to do much anyway.



Do you change things in your second draft? Add a line that wasn't there when the words were flowing in the first place? What exactly is the difference between that and noticing that a given character's gender is relatively inconsequential to the story and changing it might add something interesting, in addition to increasing the diversity of your cast? How is that any harder or less genuine than saying, "I need to set up plot point X by inserting another line here"?



BWFoster78 said:


> On another note: Each person's moral and ethical compass is theirs to determine, and, quite frankly, I don't feel bad in the least if I don't take up an issue just because someone else feels that it's the most important thing in the world.  There are a lot of issues out there, and there are some that I feel passionate about (for instance, not wasting words by using unnecessary speech tags  )  I don't ask anyone else to take up the standard of my causes and don't feel that anyone is justified in expecting me to take up theirs.



Moral compasses are private; ethics concern how you interact with society, and that is where personal codes become a dialogue. Human beings are always changing in relation to one another, learning and growing. Our ethics are continually developing. An issue doesn't have to be the most important one in the world, or the most important one to you personally, for you to include it in your ethics and adopt it in your writing. 

I can't wait to say this a dozen more times: I'm not asking you to take up the standard of a cause. I'm asking you to treat your male and female characters equally. 



			
				Ankari said:
			
		

> If the Bechdel Test wasn't meant to determine the success, or failure, of a fictional piece in the area it is testing, why would they use that word?



It's a test of whether you succeed or fail at including two women with names who talk to each other about something other than a man.


----------



## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Although I recognize & agree that these problems exist, they aren't as important to everyone. Some of the sentiments expressed here imply that because they are so important to some, they should be of great concern to all. I just can't buy into that.
> 
> I'm certainly not trying to say that people should avoid these issues. Thats up to each writer to decide for themselves. I'm merely trying to state that they don't HAVE to inspect their characters with this level of scrutiny & still be able to tell a good story.
> 
> If your goal is to highlight societal ills or draw attention to what you perceive as problems, more power to you.



My goal is not to highlight societal ills or draw attention to what I perceive as problems. My goal is to write the stories I would want to read and stories I can be proud of writing. Those stories naturally involve equality and representation. I realize this is not going to be of great concern to you, but equality and representation should be of _some_ concern to everyone, since treating everyone equally is literally the baseline minimum standard for being a decent human being. 

Here's a real-world, (big-)names-naming example of how refusing to acknowledge the importance of these issues damages your reputation as a writer and diminishes the enjoyment of your story.

I used to watch the show _Sherlock_. It's a Sherlock Holmes modernization on BBC, a network which can usually be counted on to uphold certain standards of diversity in its shows. The first episode, "A Study In Pink," includes three women among its characters (aside from the corpse): Molly Hooper, a coroner; Sally Donovan, a high-ranking detective at Scotland Yard; and Mrs. Hudson, Holmes' landlord. None of them speak to each other once in the entire series--it's a total Bechdel Test fail. In this instant, that is only the first indicator of co-creator, episode writer, and show-runner Steven Moffat's ineptitude at handling female characters. People who watched Moffat's earlier original series, _Jekyll_, and his run on _Doctor Who_ had already guessed this, but Sherlock truly drove it home for me.

Coroner Hooper is infatuated with Sherlock; he is oblivious, and belittles her in offhand conversation. She keeps coming back for more, and is generally presented as a pitiable creature whose professional life (she gets him access to corpses for examination and experiments, and at the end of series two she saves his life) is secondary to her romantic aspirations. 

During Sergeant Donovan's introduction on the show, her antagonistic relationship with Holmes is established. Sherlock responds to her general hostility by pointing out, through his powers of deduction, that she spent the night with the head of forensics. He could say anything barbed and witty, but instead he slut-shames her. Literary Holmes' attitude toward women was often dismissive and at best ambivalent (see also: literary Holmes' attitude toward almost everyone), so this very direct insult, based not on Sally's capabilities as a detective but on her off-duty activity, feels very out of character given that the goal of _Sherlock_ was to bring Doyle's creation into the modern era. I would argue that it tells us more about the writer than the character.

Mrs. Hudson is largely ancillary to the plot. Like her incarnation in Doyle's original stories, she owns 221 Baker Street and cleans up after Holmes and Watson. In series two, however, she becomes a helpless victim who requires rescuing in two out of three episodes. 

So as I subconsciously looked for representations of the most basic classification of myself--a woman--in _Sherlock_, I found the Mother, Maiden, and Whore archetypes, with almost nothing painted over them. Though I was somewhat disappointed, I kept watching because Benedict Cumberbatch is just so very pretty. Call me shallow. 

The next five episodes gave us some Yellow Peril ("The Blind Banker"--the goal of _Sherlock_ was stated as transporting Holmes into the modern era, but this episode brought some good old Victorian values with him), calling out a gay man for being gay ("The Great Game"--again, it told us more about the writer than Sherlock Holmes), a gross mishandling of Irene Adler ("A Scandal in Belgravia"--more below), and endless queer-baiting (every single episode). Only two out of six _Sherlock_ episodes were written by Moffat, but he is the show-runner and has ultimate control over what ends up in each episode, and ideally, ultimate accountability. 

I'm not the only one who saw these problems. Until a few months ago, Steven Moffat had a Twitter account, and somehow he found time in his day to respond when people mentioned him in tweets. Often this was in the context of pointing out something problematic in his work. He demonstrated, time and again, a complete inability to tolerate the views of his audience. His responses ranged from dismissive to sarcastic to overly defensive; shortly before he deleted his Twitter account, he resorted to calling people rude if they were anything short of obsequious in their tweets to him. 

He even contradicted things he'd established himself on his shows. Notably, a viewer pointed out the lack of non-heterosexual characters in his work, and he cited River Song (_Doctor Who_) and Captain Jack Harkness (_Doctor Who_ and _Torchwood_) as bisexual. River Song's bisexuality was never addressed on the show (how would we ever know? She married the Doctor and was never shown in a relationship with a woman), and Moffat himself wrote in "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" that Harkness was omnisexual, the far-future equivalent of pan for those times when other species are an option. Here Moffat demonstrated a lack of understanding of the term bisexual (he said in another tweet that bisexual people aren't represented on television much because "you're too busy having FUN!" and in so doing implied that bisexuality means having sex all the time, and that bisexuals are solely responsible for their own representation), and many fans were disappointed to see these misconceptions reflected by someone who seemed to think he was doing a great job of representing every walk of life. 

In an interview shortly after the second series aired, Moffat discussed the episode he wrote, "A Scandal in Belgravia." Regarding his interpretation of Irene Adler, he declared that Adler's triumphant getaway in Doyle's original "A Scandal in Bohemia" was "not a feminist victory". In Moffat's version, Adler is defeated by Holmes and flees London in fear of her life; Holmes later shows up to rescue her from an execution in Pakistan (tossing in some Islamophobia just for good measure). Adler goes from being a canny, self-reliant woman who outsmarts Holmes to a helpless victim, tail between her legs as she texts Sherlock one last time. That's Moffat's idea of a "feminist victory," another term he clearly doesn't understand. 

Over the course of witnessing all these things, Moffat lost me as a fan and viewer. I could no longer enjoy his work when I knew the sentiments behind it and found, with each new episode, something that perpetuated a harmful attitude with no acknowledgment--in the writing or from the writer--that it was a problem. The attitudes Moffat portrayed in his creation hurt his story, and hurt his viewership.

Enough people pointed out his mishandling of female characters that Moffat and his friends felt compelled to respond more publicly. Caitlin Moran defends him whenever possible, and her reputation as a feminist has led Moffat's fans to declare that he can't possibly be misogynist in any way, because a feminist thinks he's great. During the presentation of Moffat's achievement award at the BAFTAs, Benedict Cumberbatch felt compelled to shoehorn a mention of Moffat being "non-misogynist" into his speech... during the only mention of Moffat's wife, television producer Sue Vertue. And there's a very vocal set of fans on the Internet who rip apart anyone who mentions something problematic in any of Moffat's shows. The fact remains that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and you've got a bunch of viewers telling you it's a duck, it might behoove you to sit down for a second and see if you pass the Duckdel--er, Bechdel--Test as a first step in improving your future work. 

_Sherlock_ is still hugely popular, of course, and Moffat interprets the majority's love of his work as confirmation that he doesn't need to change anything. It's a shame, because when it's at its best, _Sherlock_ is the cleverest and most gripping thing on television. The cost of sitting through misogyny, racefail, and queer baiting, along with Moffat's conduct as an extremely public figure in response to criticism of his work, has resulted in me no longer being able to enjoy _Sherlock_ as pure entertainment. 

The lesson here is that being able to think critically about your own work and acknowledge the shortcomings your readers find, without caveat or sarcasm or protest that "you just don't get it my creative vision!" is an important skill, and may save you from a pretty serious backlash someday. I'm sorry if that comes off as PC or oppressive or whatever else--that's the state of the world right now. Diversifying your story is totally your prerogative, but if someone tells you your story disappointed them due to a lack of diversity/sensitivity toward issues/women talking to other women about something other than men, please take the time to listen to them and don't dismiss them out of hand.


----------



## Mindfire

Saellys, I don't think you've given my post a fair shake. First off, labeling my post as "someone else's job" is inaccurate because, need I remind you, I myself am a minority and am necessarily writing from a minority perspective. The way you _ought_ to have read it is *not* "you minorities need to do it for yourselves", but rather "_we_ minorities need to do something about it for ourselves." That slight perspective change makes a world of difference in interpreting my message. And that very sentiment played a role in starting me on the creative path. I lacked for black superheroes, so I started drawing my own. Eventually I dropped drawing and moved to writing and transitioned from superhero/sci-fi to fantasy. What I wanted wasn't available, so I decided to create it. I stand by my statement that, pragmatically speaking, you're going to get more mileage from encouraging minorities to create fiction than by encouraging non-minorities to tell our stories for us.

It's worth noting that different people have different sensibilities. At the risk of being pigeonholed as a derailer, I have female friends who LOVE Sherlock. You see misogyny because you've trained yourself to look for it. And that's not a bad thing. But I don't see enough evidence to call Moffat a misogynist. There is a difference between bigotry and mere unfortunate implications. Having an Asian villain =/= "OMG TEH YELLOW PERIL!". Having a Muslim extremist execution =/= Islamaphobia. Otherwise, we could never have Asian villains or show Muslim terrorists EVAR, which is, I think, a silly rule. And while you're coming to the defense of that one detective and the other gay man, you seem to have forgotten that the former was an extremely unpleasant person with a hate-on for Sherlock who (I thought) deserved the dressing down she got and the latter _payed to have someone killed_. These things should be taken into account. The creator is not obliged to handle bad people with kid gloves just because they belong to a minority group. (As an aside, two of the most annoying tropes in existence are this and this.) I thought Donovan deserved what she got. Dishing and taking, etc. Besides, if you saw the show to it's conclusion, you know that Sherlock's treatment of Donovan and the other detectives actually backfires on him, with a little help from Moriarty.


----------



## Ireth

Mindfire said:


> Saellys, I don't think you've given my post a fair shake. First off, labeling my post as "someone else's job" is inaccurate because, need I remind you, I myself am a minority and am necessarily writing from a minority perspective. The way you _ought_ to have read it is *not* "you minorities need to do it for yourselves", but rather "_we_ minorities need to do something about it for ourselves." That slight perspective change makes a world of difference in interpreting my message. And that very sentiment played a role in starting me on the creative path. I lacked for black superheroes, so I started drawing my own. Eventually I dropped drawing and moved to writing and transitioned from superhero/sci-fi to fantasy. What I wanted wasn't available, so I decided to create it. I stand by my statement that, pragmatically speaking, you're going to get more mileage from encouraging minorities to create fiction than by encouraging non-minorities to tell our stories for us.
> 
> It's worth noting that different people have different sensibilities. At the risk of being pigeonholed as a derailer, I have female friends who LOVE Sherlock. You see misogyny because you've trained yourself to look for it. And that's not a bad thing. But I don't see enough evidence to call Moffat a misogynist. There is a difference between bigotry and mere unfortunate implications. Having an Asian villain =/= "OMG TEH YELLOW PERIL!". Having a Muslim extremist execution =/= Islamaphobia. Otherwise, we could never have Asian villains or show Muslim terrorists EVAR, which is, I think, a silly rule. And while you're coming to the defense of that one detective and the other gay man, you seem to have forgotten that the former was an extremely unpleasant person with a hate-on for Sherlock who (I thought) deserved the dressing down she got and the latter _payed to have someone killed_. These things should be taken into account. The creator is not obliged to handle bad people with kid gloves just because they belong to a minority group. (As an aside, two of the most annoying tropes in existence are this and this.) I thought Donovan deserved what she got. Dishing and taking, etc. Besides, if you saw the show to it's conclusion, you know that Sherlock's treatment of Donovan and the other detectives actually backfires on him, with a little help from Moriarty.



Well said, Mindfire. ^^ As a Sherlock fangirl, I very much agree with your second paragraph.


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> Saellys, I don't think you've given my post a fair shake. First off, labeling my post as "someone else's job" is inaccurate because, need I remind you, I myself am a minority and am necessarily writing from a minority perspective. The way you _ought_ to have read it is *not* "you minorities need to do it for yourselves", but rather "_we_ minorities need to do something about it for ourselves." That slight perspective change makes a world of difference in interpreting my message. And that very sentiment played a role in starting me on the creative path. I lacked for black superheroes, so I started drawing my own. Eventually I dropped drawing and moved to writing and transitioned from superhero/sci-fi to fantasy. What I wanted wasn't available, so I decided to create it. I stand by my statement that, pragmatically speaking, you're going to get more mileage from encouraging minorities to create fiction than by encouraging non-minorities to tell our stories for us.



Fair enough. I agree with your statement insofar as you'll get more mileage out of encouraging minorities to create fiction _if_ you're in a position to help them get that fiction out there. Being an enthusiastic reader is also super important, but as Jabrosky mentioned, there are more obstacles than that. Since encouragement is only worth so much, it is absolutely no burden to us writers to contribute to the effort by diversifying our stories as well. I'm not trying to project a "white people have to do this to help the poor maligned minorities" thing--just a "we can, so why don't we" attitude. 



Mindfire said:


> It's worth noting that different people have different sensibilities. At the risk of being pigeonholed as a derailer, I have female friends who LOVE Sherlock.



And I see the "women like it, so it can't be that bad!" argument all the time. Just because someone likes something doesn't mean it isn't also problematic (pardon the double negative). I adored _Sherlock_ in spite of all the problems I saw for a long time, but finally it was just too much for me.



Mindfire said:


> You see misogyny because you've trained yourself to look for it. And that's not a bad thing. But I don't see enough evidence to call Moffat a misogynist.



I see it when it's there. Trust me, I'm not making this up, and I'm not the only one who's noticed. I've seen more than enough of Moffat's work and read enough interviews to label his statements and his work problematic and misogynist. 



Mindfire said:


> There is a difference between bigotry and mere unfortunate implications. Having an Asian villain =/= "OMG TEH YELLOW PERIL!". Having a Muslim extremist execution =/= Islamaphobia. Otherwise, we could never have Asian villains or show Muslim terrorists EVAR, which is, I think, a silly rule.



Are you actually trying to tell me that "The Blind Banker" wasn't a gross mishandling of Asian characters? The Karachi execution was more silly than anything, but coupled with the weird "fighting a guy in a turban" scene at the beginning of "The Blind Banker," it left a pretty sour taste in my mouth and was just one more thing on a pile of bad decisions by the show's writers. 



Mindfire said:


> And while you're coming to the defense of that one detective and the other gay man, you seem to have forgotten that the former was an extremely unpleasant person with a hate-on for Sherlock who (I thought) deserved the dressing down she got and the latter _payed to have someone killed_.
> 
> These things should be taken into account. The creator is not obliged to handle bad people with kid gloves just because they belong to a minority group. (As an aside, two of the most annoying tropes in existence are this and this.) I thought Donovan deserved what she got. Dishing and taking, etc. Besides, if you saw the show to it's conclusion, you know that Sherlock's treatment of Donovan and the other detectives actually backfires on him, with a little help from Moriarty.



The gay man I was referring to was Moriarty's "Jim" persona; Sherlock called him out primarily to mess with Molly. A snappy exchange between Donovan and Sherlock would have been a nice way to establish her hate-on; the slut-shaming was unnecessary.


----------



## BWFoster78

> When one story lacks two women talking about something other than a man, it bothers me because I've read a large proportion of fantasy fiction that lacks the same thing. The author of that story could have gone in a different direction, but chose--perhaps consciously, but more likely in a knee-jerk by-default situation--not to do so.



You see, we have two different valuations of stories.  You seem to place values on stories that meet some kind of social criteria of inclusion.  (I deduce this statement from your use of the word "lack," which strongly indicates that something needs to be included for it to be "whole" in your view.)

Me, I don't care about that at all.  I judge a story's value based on (1) it's ability to engage me and (2) it's ability to evoke an emotional response.  That's all.  (Not saying that anyone else has to follow, or even should follow, my valuation system.  It's a pretty subjective kinda thing.)



> As most of us who advocate the Bechdel Test have already stated numerous times in this thread, it's not a test of rightness or wrongness, but simply how you handle female characters.



And I would state that it completely pointless in that it has nothing to do with (1) the ability to engage or (2) the ability to evoke an emotional response.



> Let me clarify something: your story is not going to fix anything.



Even more reason for me not to worry about this "test."



> If you make a decision to write strong, realistic characters of various descriptions beyond "lily-white straight dude with a beard," you have contributed in a very small way to making the fantasy genre a little more welcoming to people who aren't white straight dudes. *We'll read your story and see ourselves as something other than a victim, a prize, the first one to die when entering the dungeon, or the butt of a joke. *It's not about being Civil Rights In a Box; it's about being a drop in the ocean, but it's still important. The alternative is to maintain the boys-only-with-a-few-minor-exceptions status quo.



Truthfully, I despise this kind of thing.  How I interpret this is, "My cause is the All Important Cause.  Everyone must write their stories and do whatever they have to do to make me feel better."

The truth is: I am not responsible for how you feel.  You are responsible for how you feel.  If you feel a certain way, change it.  Don't tell me to write something different.



> It's not an agenda. It's treating male and female characters equally.



I literally laughed at this.  If that's not an agenda, what is?  I'm confused.



> Do you change things in your second draft? Add a line that wasn't there when the words were flowing in the first place? What exactly is the difference between that and noticing that a given character's gender is relatively inconsequential to the story and changing it might add something interesting, in addition to increasing the diversity of your cast? How is that any harder or less genuine than saying, "I need to set up plot point X by inserting another line here"?



It's different because you're artifically introducing an element that has nothing to do with the story.  Introducing such elements can cause harm untold.



> I can't wait to say this a dozen more times: I'm not asking you to take up the standard of a cause. I'm asking you to treat your male and female characters equally.



Which is your cause.

Maybe the confusion here, on my part, is that you see a distinction between not asking me to believe in your cause and promote it as long as I fall in lockstep with what your cause demands?



> ethics concern how you interact with society, and that is where personal codes become a dialogue. Human beings are always changing in relation to one another, learning and growing. Our ethics are continually developing. An issue doesn't have to be the most important one in the world, or the most important one to you personally, for you to include it in your ethics and adopt it in your writing.



And I've still yet to see any cogent argument as to why I should include this particular issue in my own ethics over any one of a hundred other issues.  Personally, I feel that advocating for not including excess speech tags is far more important.  I should introduce a character who is a writer who espouses that viewpoint at length.  Except that that character would have no real purpose in the story, so, even though I'm passionate about the topic, I think I shall have to leave said character out.

I'm aware that this post probably came off as a bit snippy, and I do apologize if it's taken as me being too harsh.  It really is hard for me to properly convey just how much I do not care for the arguments expressed in the quoted sections.  I do hope it doesn't come across as a personal attack as I meant it to be a pointed attack on the arguments and not on any person.

EDIT: Tried to remove some of the stuff that might make this sound too harsh...


----------



## Jabrosky

saellys said:


> The extension here is that only gay people should write gay romances, only asexuals should write about asexuality, only polyamorists should write about polyamory, and so on. If you* choose to limit yourself only to heterosexual relationships in your writing, that is entirely your choice, and does not make your work homophobic by any degree. You should, however, be aware that the sentiment that gay people should write their own gay romances could be read that way.


Realistically speaking, most writers write about the kind of romances they personally find attractive. Since most people are born heterosexual, of course most writers will write heterosexual romances. That includes yours truly. That doesn't mean a straight writer _can't_ or _shouldn't_ write a gay romance if they so desire, but odds are they won't enjoy it as much as a gay writer would (assuming the gay couple is the same sex as the writer in question of course).

Look, I don't have any problem with writing female characters who talk to each other about non-sexual or non-romantic subjects. I've done it before and will doubtless continue to do so, and the same could be said for almost everyone in this thread. The problem is that the position you are apparently taking is symptomatic of a larger mindset that writers are obligated to bend over to external social pressures instead of writing whatever they please. Writing female or minority characters is inoffensive by itself, but demanding political correctness isn't.


----------



## Feo Takahari

If there's one thing I hope everyone gets out of this thread, it's "what do I write when I write at whim?" I know I have certain tendencies that could be viewed as problematic (for instance, my tendency to romantically pair witches, demonesses, and other fantastical constructs with ordinary men.) I haven't stopped doing this since I recognized it--I've just put more effort into building the relationships from both directions, showing what each partner likes or admires in the other. I think this has made my writing a lot better.

PS: At risk of totally discrediting myself, part of why I reacted badly to some of the arguments made in this thread was because I've heard them made before, and the people who make them often make other arguments I disagree with much more. I've been unfair, assuming ill faith where there was none. (I read the comments on Kotaku, and a lot of the commenters are pretty much this.)

P.P.S. Posted this before I saw the last few posts. That is a LOT of vitriol. Maybe we should all take a break and calm down.


----------



## Ireth

Jabrosky said:


> Realistically speaking, most writers write about the kind of romances they personally find attractive. Since most people are born heterosexual, of course most writers will write heterosexual romances. That includes yours truly. That doesn't mean a straight writer _can't_ or _shouldn't_ write a gay romance if they so desire, but odds are they won't enjoy it as much as a gay writer would (assuming the gay couple is the same sex as the writer in question of course).



Exactly. I started out _Low Road_ with a deliberate choice to make the hero asexual, or at least not interested in romance. I wanted to add a heterosexual romance between the MC's sister and his best friend, but that didn't work out. Instead, the best friend wound up falling for the hero. I didn't even consider trying to force a hetero romance back onto the characters, but took what I had and ran with it. And I think the story is (or will be, as it's not yet finished) better for it. For the record, I'm a female, and the gay couple in question are male. I also have gay and bi characters of both genders in other works of fiction.


----------



## Jabrosky

Feo Takahari said:


> P.P.S. Posted this before I saw the last post. That is a LOT of vitriol. Maybe we should all take a break and calm down.


If this is referring to my post, I don't see the vitriol. It is disagreeing with saellys and your position to be sure, but I've seen much uncivil. Notice the absence of insults, cursing, or threats.


----------



## Feo Takahari

Jabrosky said:


> If this is referring to my post, I don't see the vitriol. It is disagreeing with saellys and your position to be sure, but I've seen much uncivil. Notice the absence of insults, cursing, or threats.



Edited to say "the last few posts. Sorry. Yours was fine.

(I can't keep up with this thread anymore . . .)


----------



## Jabrosky

Feo Takahari said:


> Edited to say "the last few posts. Sorry. Yours was fine.


I understand, and you are right, we all need to relax before continuing this discussion. There is a clear lack of communication here.


----------



## Feo Takahari

I'd also like to clear up that I'm not Saellys, although judging from her thanks, Saellys might be me. I don't want her blamed for everything I've been saying. (Similarly, BWFoster seems to be making different arguments than T Allen Smith.)


----------



## saellys

BWFoster78 said:


> You see, we have two different valuations of stories.  You seem to place values on stories that meet some kind of social criteria of inclusion.  (I deduce this statement from your use of the word "lack," which strongly indicates that something needs to be included for it to be "whole" in your view.)
> 
> Me, I don't care about that at all.  I judge a story's value based on (1) it's ability to engage me and (2) it's ability to evoke an emotional response.  That's all.  (Not saying that anyone else has to follow, or even should follow, my valuation system.  It's a pretty subjective kinda thing.)



We have the same values regarding a story's quality, with the difference that a lack of female characters talking to each other about something other than men makes an otherwise high-quality story less enjoyable for me. 



BWFoster78 said:


> And I would state that it completely pointless in that it has nothing to do with (1) the ability to engage or (2) the ability to evoke an emotional response.



Of course it has to do with the ability to engage. If your characters act realistically, people are more likely to engage with them. Depending on the content of a conversation, an emotional response can be invoked. These are all linked. 



BWFoster78 said:


> Even more reason for me not to worry about this "test."



Sure, whatever you say.



BWFoster78 said:


> Truthfully, I despise this kind of thing.  How I interpret this is, "My cause is the All Important Cause.  Everyone must write their stories and do whatever they have to do to make me feel better."
> 
> The truth is: I am not responsible for how you feel.  You are responsible for how you feel.  If you feel a certain way, change it.  Don't tell me to write something different.



I've sang this song a lot, so you probably know the words by now. Join in: _you are responsible for what your story perpetuates_. 



BWFoster78 said:


> I literally laughed at this.  If that's not an agenda, what is?  I'm confused.



Equality? The baseline factor in being a decent human being to other human beings? 



BWFoster78 said:


> It's different because you're artifically introducing an element that has nothing to do with the story.  Introducing such elements can cause harm untold.



Increased diversity is harmful. Gotcha. 

Seriously, if you're even a remotely decent writer, adding something new to your story _is not a problem_. 



BWFoster78 said:


> Which is your cause.
> 
> Maybe the confusion here, on my part, is that you see a distinction between not asking me to believe in your cause and promote it as long as I fall in lockstep with what your cause demands?



Another refrain now: equality. The baseline factor in being a decent human beings to other human beings. Not a cause. Not a beat to march to. I'm not oppressing you by asking to treat people equally.



BWFoster78 said:


> And I've still yet to see any cogent argument as to why I should include this particular issue in my own ethics over any one of a hundred other issues.  Personally, I feel that advocating for not including excess speech tags is far more important.  I should introduce a character who is a writer who espouses that viewpoint at length.  Except that that character would have no real purpose in the story, so, even though I'm passionate about the topic, I think I shall have to leave said character out.



It's not an either/or prospect. Your personal code of ethics can and probably does include a whole lot of issues: grammatical, social, and beyond. It's not hard to care about more than one thing at once. I do it every day. I have yet to see a cogent argument for _not_ including this particular issue in a broad and well-considered code of ethics, and we've been doing this for ten pages now. 



BWFoster78 said:


> I'm aware that this post probably came off as a bit snippy, and I do apologize if it's taken as me being too harsh.  It really is hard for me to properly convey just how much I do not care for the arguments expressed in the quoted sections.  I do hope it doesn't come across as a personal attack as I meant it to be a pointed attack on the arguments and not on any person.
> 
> EDIT: Tried to remove some of the stuff that might make this sound too harsh...



At this point I'm just tired of repeating myself in response to the same statements over and over, and I'm running out of means to convey my frustration at apathy for what is, in every possible way, a really simple thing to implement in your writing. It doesn't hurt you or your writing or anyone else. Your creative process can proceed apace. Just stop and think, at some point, about what you're putting out in the world. Seriously. Please. Okay?

EDIT: I guess I jumped in too late to see the vitriol, but if this was less harsh, I can't imagine what it looked like before.


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> Fair enough. I agree with your statement insofar as you'll get more mileage out of encouraging minorities to create fiction if you're in a position to help them get that fiction out there. Being an enthusiastic reader is also super important, but as Jabrosky mentioned, there are more obstacles than that. Since encouragement is only worth so much, it is absolutely no burden to us writers to contribute to the effort by diversifying our stories as well. I'm not trying to project a "white people have to do this to help the poor maligned minorities" thing--just a "we can, so why don't we" attitude.



Your idealism is commendable. And believe it or not, I'm a sucker for idealism. But I think in this case, the more useful approach is the DIY approach. 



saellys said:


> And I see the "women like it, so it can't be that bad!" argument all the time. Just because someone likes something doesn't mean it isn't also problematic (pardon the double negative). I adored Sherlock in spite of all the problems I saw for a long time, but finally it was just too much for me.



Okay, I asked for that rebuttal. Calculated risk. But my point is this: you were offended, other women weren't. Why? Taste and perception. How do you know that your opinion is the right one? 



saellys said:


> I see it when it's there. Trust me, I'm not making this up, and I'm not the only one who's noticed. I've seen more than enough of Moffat's work and read enough interviews to label his statements and his work problematic and misogynist.



I am not accusing you of inventing anything. And I have read other feminist critique of Moffat's work. I remain unconvinced. 



saellys said:


> Are you actually trying to tell me that "The Blind Banker" wasn't a gross mishandling of Asian characters? The Karachi execution was more silly than anything, but coupled with the weird "fighting a guy in a turban" scene at the beginning of "The Blind Banker," it left a pretty sour taste in my mouth and was just one more thing on a pile of bad decisions by the show's writers.



I do not think the Asian characters were mishandled. They weren't portrayed as bad just because they were Asian. They were members of organized crime!  Are you saying that admitting Asian crime families exist is somehow tantamount to racism? And I liked the fight with the masked guy. He was essentially a re-skinned ninja.  



saellys said:


> The gay man I was referring to was Moriarty's "Jim" persona; Sherlock called him out primarily to mess with Molly. A snappy exchange between Donovan and Sherlock would have been a nice way to establish her hate-on; the slut-shaming was unnecessary.



Well Jim is different. First, he's not actually gay, so there's that. Second, that exchange wasn't about him. It was about Molly. In short, it was Sherlock's way of saying "You're dating this guy in a pathetic attempt to rattle my cage, but you couldn't even pick someone of the right orientation." And as for Donovan, are you saying that a woman should never be criticized for unethical sexual behavior? I think the point of that was to out her as a hypocrite, condemning Sherlock for being a deviant while violating anti-fraternation policy.


----------



## BWFoster78

Saellys,

Truthfully, it's difficult to continue a conversation with someone who says, "I want you to do things my way in order to promote the way that I think things ought to be" and, then, in the next breath says, "This isn't an agenda.  It's about promoting equality."

I'm pretty sure that we'll never get past that concept.

I'm positive that you honestly don't see what you're doing as "promoting an agenda."  I can't see it as anything but.

Sorry, but I absolutely refuse to "stop and think, at some point, about what" I'm "putting out in the world" in response to the kind of arguments you're putting forth.

Really, and I'm being completely serious here, as much as the lack of positive female respresentation in fantasy offends you, the arguments you're putting forth offend me just as much.  I'm pretty positive that we'll never reach an understanding where you understand just why this is the case.

Sorry if I've caused stress to your day.

I, in no way, form, or fashion, think of you as a bad person or think poorly of you in any way; we just happen to disagree strenuously on a subject about which we both feel strongly.

Thanks.

Brian


----------



## Feo Takahari

Let's approach this from another direction: 

Suppose a story involves a group of adventurers. Early in writing the story, the writer realizes that two of the characters haven't spoken to each other at all. He then decides to write a conversation between them, showing how they interact with each other. Even if this conversation doesn't appear in the final draft, it's bound to help the writer figure out those characters' personalities, and ultimately make for a better story.

Now, we realize that those two are probably the two women, and from there the Bechdel Test sees part of its purpose.

Yes, two lines about mutual enjoyment of shoes won't solve anything--it takes actual effort from the author. And yes, the story will probably still be good even if these two women only talk to men. (In fact, you can build some great stories out of one woman being in a situation where she can ONLY interact with men.) But I still think the test can potentially serve a purpose in making a story even better.


----------



## saellys

BWFoster78 said:


> Saellys,
> 
> Truthfully, it's difficult to continue a conversation with someone who says, "I want you to do things my way in order to promote the way that I think things ought to be" and, then, in the next breath says, "This isn't an agenda.  It's about promoting equality."



If you actually think I've said anything remotely like the first quote, I sincerely doubt you've bothered to read anything I've posted. 



BWFoster78 said:


> I'm pretty sure that we'll never get past that concept.
> 
> I'm positive that you honestly don't see what you're doing as "promoting an agenda."  I can't see it as anything but.
> 
> Sorry, but I absolutely refuse to "stop and think, at some point, about what" I'm "putting out in the world" in response to the kind of arguments you're putting forth.
> 
> Really, and I'm being completely serious here, as much as the lack of positive female respresentation in fantasy offends you, the arguments you're putting forth offend me just as much.  I'm pretty positive that we'll never reach an understanding where you understand just why this is the case.



What I've gleaned from your posts thus far is that stopping and thinking about what you're putting out in the world would compromise the integrity of your creative vision. I don't understand how those two things are connected in any way, and thus far I've seen nothing but the most general descriptions of how it would happen ("harm untold"). Sorry if I missed something concrete in there. Like I said, you're a great writer--I promise you can create something that passes the Bechdel test (on purpose, no less!) and still meets your standards for good storytelling and creative vision. The only argument I've seen to the contrary in this whole thread is "You can't tell me what to do!" Okay. I can't. Can we move on now?



BWFoster78 said:


> Sorry if I've caused stress to your day.



Well, I had to go hug my kid and brew some tea to calm down, but I'm also ill and haven't slept in three days, and you know, we women get so emotional anyway. 

(Winking smiley. WINKING SMILEY. Not implying that anyone has said anything like this last phrase anywhere in this thread.)

Mindfire, I'll be back to talk more _Sherlock_ with you soon. It's snack time.


----------



## BWFoster78

Feo Takahari said:


> Let's approach this from another direction:
> 
> Suppose a story involves a group of adventurers. Early in writing the story, the writer realizes that two of the characters haven't spoken to each other at all. He then decides to write a conversation between them, showing how they interact with each other. Even if this conversation doesn't appear in the final draft, it's bound to help the writer figure out those characters' personalities, and ultimately make for a better story.
> 
> Now, we realize that those two are probably the two women, and from there the Bechdel Test sees part of its purpose.
> 
> Yes, two lines about mutual enjoyment of shoes won't solve anything--it takes actual effort from the author. And yes, the story will probably still be good even if these two women only talk to men. (In fact, you can build some great stories out of one woman being in a situation where she can ONLY interact with men.) But I still think the test can potentially serve a purpose in making a story even better.



I don't typically write scenes just to learn about the characters, and I rarely write scenes that don't end up in the book.

I also don't typically write scenes that don't advance the plot.

If I have a plot reason for two females to discuss something that advances the plot, I have no problem doing so.  I would never, however, seek to include such a conversation to fulfill some kind of (trying to avoid the word "agenda" but I can't think of an adequate synonym).

I'm sorry; I just cannot see what good adding that conversation would be from my perspective.  The only reason I would be doing it would be to try to please a certain segment of the population, and I just don't see that as a valid reason to change my writing.


----------



## BWFoster78

> If you actually think I've said anything remotely like the first quote, I sincerely doubt you've bothered to read anything I've posted.



But that's exactly the problem.  I am interpreting what you're saying exactly as I wrote, and, believe me, I've read your posts.

Again, I see you as promoting an agenda while steadfastly refusing even to acknowledge that it is an agenda.

On the other hand, I firmly understand that you do not believe it is an agenda.  Doesn't change my perception in the least.



> The only argument I've seen to the contrary in this whole thread is "You can't tell me what to do!" Okay. I can't. Can we move on now?



Once I encountered the above stated obstacle, I figured it was kinda pointless to try to express rational arguments.  Really, if we can't agree on whether or not you are promoting an agenda...



> Well, I had to go hug my kid and brew some tea to calm down,



Yeah, sorry about that.  I can be kinda intense with my arguments. 

Sorry we couldn't come to an understanding.

Thanks.

Brian


----------



## Feo Takahari

@BWFoster: Maybe I'd need to read some of your stories to see where you're coming from. For me, the characters _are_ the story, so I try all sorts of exercises to develop them. I don't understand where you're coming from when you say that you wouldn't try such exercises, and that means I'm probably missing something fundamental about your writing style.

(I have school and then work, so I'll be gone for a while. Hopefully, I won't come back to five pages of unread posts.)


----------



## Ankari

I think the resistance you see in this thread is the inclusion of the Bechdel yest.  Had it only been about creating strong women in stories, you would find a more receptive audience.


----------



## saellys

BWFoster78 said:


> But that's exactly the problem.  I am interpreting what you're saying exactly as I wrote, and, believe me, I've read your posts.
> 
> Again, I see you as promoting an agenda while steadfastly refusing even to acknowledge that it is an agenda.
> 
> On the other hand, I firmly understand that you do not believe it is an agenda.  Doesn't change my perception in the least.



So if I were to change my mind and say that equality of every human being on the planet is an agenda, that would change what, exactly? Just curious.


----------



## saellys

Ankari said:


> I think the resistance you see in this thread is the inclusion of the Bechdel yest.  Had it only been about creating strong women in stories, you would find a more receptive audience.



Yes, because everyone can agree with abstractions ("strong female characters" can mean and gets used in reference to anything and everything), but concrete things like "do your female characters talk to each other?" is apparently a lot stickier.


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> Your idealism is commendable. And believe it or not, I'm a sucker for idealism. But I think in this case, the more useful approach is the DIY approach.



Even if one is the more useful approach, what prevents us from doing both?



Mindfire said:


> Okay, I asked for that rebuttal. Calculated risk. But my point is this: you were offended, other women weren't. Why? Taste and perception. How do you know that your opinion is the right one?



"Right" and "opinion" don't go together. If people don't choose to acknowledge that harmful representation in media is a problem, there isn't anything I can do to convince them. (See also: this entire thread.)



Mindfire said:


> I am not accusing you of inventing anything. And I have read other feminist critique of Moffat's work. I remain unconvinced.



Okay. My husband reported that there was nothing misogynist in _Skyfall_. In both situations, I think it's a matter of blind spots. That's not a bad thing. It is what it is. 



Mindfire said:


> I do not think the Asian characters were mishandled. They weren't portrayed as bad just because they were Asian. They were members of organized crime!  Are you saying that admitting Asian crime families exist is somehow tantamount to racism? And I liked the fight with the masked guy. He was essentially a re-skinned ninja.



I feel unqualified to get into the nitty gritty details of this, so I'm going to sum up by saying that the adaptation felt to me like less of a modernization of the bare bones of a story the way other _Sherlock_ episodes were and more of a presentation of Victorian ideals somehow transplanted into the modern world. 



Mindfire said:


> Well Jim is different. First, he's not actually gay, so there's that.



How do you know?



Mindfire said:


> Second, that exchange wasn't about him. It was about Molly. In short, it was Sherlock's way of saying "You're dating this guy in a pathetic attempt to rattle my cage, but you couldn't even pick someone of the right orientation."



I still don't see why it was necessary, particularly after two episodes where being mistaken for a gay man was the basis of several jokes about Holmes and Watson.



Mindfire said:


> And as for Donovan, are you saying that a woman should never be criticized for unethical sexual behavior? I think the point of that was to out her as a hypocrite, condemning Sherlock for being a deviant while violating anti-fraternation policy.



Fine. The problem was that it was the first introduction (apart from the very short press conference) to Sergeant Donovan, and for the next five episodes it was _all we knew about her_. Her entire character development amounted to "haha, she's an antagonistic slut!" That was all we got with regard to one of only three recurring female characters on the show, up until "The Reichenbach Fall" when she finally developed some agency (which was unfortunately Moriarty-directed, just like Irene Adler's agency). Her antagonism with Holmes was never explored, even though that would have been super interesting. Her professional relationship with Lestrade is nothing more than tantalizing glimpses. For half a second it looked like she might have ended up being friends with Watson, but that didn't pan out either. The only thing we knew about Donovan was that she slept with Anderson. That's not a well-developed character.


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> Yes, because everyone can agree with abstractions ("strong female characters" can mean and gets used in reference to anything and everything), but concrete things like "do your female characters talk to each other?" is apparently a lot stickier.



Actually, I think you were a lot closer to the mark with the "people don't like being told what to do" thing.


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> Actually, I think you were a lot closer to the mark with the "people don't like being told what to do" thing.



Well, yeah, the Bechdel Test implies taking some kind of action (ideally) if your story doesn't pass it. But again, it's predicated on the basis that someone who fails the Bechdel Test actually gives half a crap about this being a problem and wants to contribute to the solution in their own work. If you* don't give a crap, that's one thing and I can at least respect your honesty. If you're covering up not giving a crap by saying your creative process or sacred vision is being damaged by the Bechdel Test, that's something else.

* Hypothetical.


----------



## BWFoster78

saellys said:


> So if I were to change my mind and say that equality of every human being on the planet is an agenda, that would change what, exactly? Just curious.



It would at least give us a starting point for understanding.

EDIT: Though, honestly, since you are the one who is trying to get others to change their behavior, you should be offering rational arguments as to why we should do so.  My pursuit of such is what started my participation in this discussion.

I've heard that you want us to change our behavior because equality of all is the All Important Good Thing We Should All Strive Toward, but, to me, that is a personally held strong belief of yours, not a rational argument.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Feo Takahari said:


> If there's one thing I hope everyone gets out of this thread, it's "what do I write when I write at whim?"


I can accept that. I don't think I'd want to scrutinize character inclusion to the level that some suggest. However, I'm definitely in favor of making choices in writing. For me, choices geared to story are more important than other considerations. That will not be the same for everyone.



Feo Takahari said:


> That is a LOT of vitriol. Maybe we should all take a break and calm down.


Passionate arguments & beliefs are wonderful when they are delivered with tact and civility. I've seen nothing out of bounds up to this point, just a few barbs & passionate arguments. These are the types of threads I learn the most from, where dissenting opinions can shed new light. 

You don't have to agree with opposing viewpoints to understand them. Understanding doesn't mean you have to accept another's perspective and fall in line.



Feo Takahari said:


> I'd also like to clear up that I'm not Saellys, although judging from her thanks, Saellys might be me. I don't want her blamed for everything I've been saying. (Similarly, BWFoster seems to be making different arguments than T Allen Smith.)


Actually, I feel that my perceptions & thinking fall close in line with BWF & Ankari here. 

Perhaps I inferred an incorrect meaning, but I too felt as if we were being told that to be considered quality writing, our characters/stories needed to support another's agenda or vision, specifically when it comes to character selection. This was the main point of contention for me (and I think some others). 

On another related note, consider plausibility. This is an important concept for my writing. As such, I have several strong female characters that do not concern themselves much with men, nor are their goals & motivations defined romantically. Out of the other minority groups mentioned in the thread, race & orientation, I have only a couple of differing races and currently none of differing sexual orientation (at least at this point). The orientation issue hasn't come up as needed in the story yet. I don't know if it ever will. Unless the story takes a direction that would require the inclusion of a gay or bi character, then I'm not going to search for that spot. If it arises organically then it'd certainly be considered. Distinctions and differences can be a marvelous thing as long as they fit the story. 
Plausibility, for me, comes into play when considering representative populations. Orientations other than hetero compose a small percentage of our real world population (something I think Jabrosky touched on earlier). In light of this, I choose to keep that in mind when writing a fantasy story. In my view, writing extreme diversity without cause developed by story demands, can reduce plausibility or believability. Although, you may not feel this way, I do. That everyone should at least be able to understand.


----------



## saellys

BWFoster78 said:


> It would at least give us a starting point for understanding.



Sweet! Let's start this over, then. 

A hypothetical premise: the equality of the human race is an agenda about which some people feel more strongly than others. The Bechdel Test is the first, surface-level, way to determine whether you treat your male and female characters equally (when adjusted for various criteria that could render your story a single-sex environment). Some writers may not need to run their work through the test because they naturally create stories that pass, but a modicum of awareness is generally a positive thing.


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> Even if one is the more useful approach, what prevents us from doing both?



Nothing prevents you, sure. But is it a profitable use of your time and energy? I personally don't think convincing T. Allen or Brian to write about POC protagonists is nearly as important or interesting as writing about my own and I've made a value judgment that it's a better use of my time to focus on one than on the other. You may (and clearly do) see the matter differently. 



saellys said:


> "Right" and "opinion" don't go together. If people don't choose to acknowledge that harmful representation in media is a problem, there isn't anything I can do to convince them. (See also: this entire thread.)



Hold on, this is a potential semantics train wreck waiting to happen. What do you mean by that? As I see it, what's the point of having an opinion if you don't think it's correct? And if an opinion can be correct or incorrect, it stands to reason that in a situation where two opinions conflict, there are three possibilities: one is right and the other is wrong, they are both right, or they are both wrong. The third option generally only takes place when there exists a third, unconsidered opinion, so it can be neglected if the situation is assumed to be a binary. The second is only possible if there is some paradox inherent in the situation or if the conflicting opinions have been formed in some degree of ignorance. Assuming that is not the case, we can neglect that as well. Therefore, it becomes evident that in a situation where two opinions conflict, one must be correct and the other must be incorrect, provided that the assumptions I have named are valid. In that sense, an opinion can be "right" or "wrong". I think we should draw a line between "opinions", which have some degree of subjectivity, and "preferences", which are completely subjective. 



saellys said:


> Okay. My husband reported that there was nothing misogynist in _Skyfall_. In both situations, I think it's a matter of blind spots. That's not a bad thing. It is what it is.



Haven't seen Skyfall yet. No spoilers, please. 



saellys said:


> I feel unqualified to get into the nitty gritty details of this, so I'm going to sum up by saying that the adaptation felt to me like less of a modernization of the bare bones of a story the way other _Sherlock_ episodes were and more of a presentation of Victorian ideals somehow transplanted into the modern world.



I didn't pick up on that, sorry. *shrug*



saellys said:


> How do you know?



Well, he said he was pretending. But then again, Moriarty does lie a lot. I guess the best answer is that when you're dealing with their version of Moriarty, "gay" and "straight" and other such alignments don't really apply. He doesn't love anyone obviously, and I don't think he feels sexual attraction at all either. The only attraction he feels is the intellectual challenge Sherlock represents. To him, "gay" is just another mask to put on and take off at will. 



saellys said:


> I still don't see why it was necessary, particularly after two episodes where being mistaken for a gay man was the basis of several jokes about Holmes and Watson.



It was necessary because it furthered the dynamic between Sherlock and Molly, and also developed Moriarty. It established him as a person who has no boundaries, who will do absolutely anything.



saellys said:


> Fine. The problem was that it was the first introduction (apart from the very short press conference) to Sergeant Donovan, and for the next five episodes it was _all we knew about her_. Her entire character development amounted to "haha, she's an antagonistic slut!" That was all we got with regard to one of only three recurring female characters on the show, up until "The Reichenbach Fall" when she finally developed some agency (which was unfortunately Moriarty-directed, just like Irene Adler's agency). Her antagonism with Holmes was never explored, even though that would have been super interesting. Her professional relationship with Lestrade is nothing more than tantalizing glimpses. For half a second it looked like she might have ended up being friends with Watson, but that didn't pan out either. The only thing we knew about Donovan was that she slept with Anderson. That's not a well-developed character.



Did you really want to know more about her? If so, I'm sorry that interest wasn't served. Personally, I disliked her near immediately. Also, she's a background character. Of course she's not going to get much development. That guy she slept with got even less development than she did and had just about as many appearances. That's not a function of gender, it's a function of being a minor character. As for her agency being Moriarty-directed, Moriarty manipulates _everyone_. It's what he does. If you're going to say a character is poor just because Moriarty manipulated them into doing something, then no one on the show is well written except Sherlock and John. _Maybe_. And her professional relationship with Lestrade and maybe friendship with Watson weren't developed because she's not the focus of the show, Sherlock is. Everything else either serves the plot, or serves to contrast with/complement him. That's what it means when you have a show that centers on a single character. It is as if you are calling Batman: The Animated Series misogynist because they didn't develop Renee Montoya more.


----------



## saellys

I'm not Feo, but I'm responding anyway! 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> However, I'm definitely in favor of making choices in writing.



Another hypothetical premise: writers constantly make choices, conscious and otherwise. The unconscious exclusion of, for instance, female characters who talk to each other is a choice, as is the conscious choice choice to keep that as-is in later drafts of the same story. The author can justify that choice to themselves with "The story didn't grow that way naturally" or "I'm not going to change it just to be PC" or any other reason, but it was still a choice. 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> Passionate arguments & beliefs are wonderful when they are delivered with tact and civility. I've seen nothing out of bounds up to this point, just a few barbs & passionate arguments. These are the types of threads I learn the most from, where dissenting opinions can shed new light.
> 
> You don't have to agree with opposing viewpoints to understand them. Understanding doesn't mean you have to accept another's perspective and fall in line.



A great big plus one to this as well. 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> Perhaps I inferred an incorrect meaning, but I too felt as if we were being told that to be considered quality writing, our characters/stories needed to support another's agenda or vision, specifically when it comes to character selection. This was the main point of contention for me (and I think some others).



I clarified this a little and said I can recognize the quality of a given piece of writing, but my enjoyment and entertainment (the end goal for you and for BWF, as I recall) will be diminished if I don't see some diverse representation, most generally in the form of passing the Bechdel Test, but in other ways as well. I loved the poo out of _The Lies of Locke Lamora_, but didn't really dig its "men are the cons and women are the marks or end up getting fridged" undertones. I enjoyed _The Lions of Al-Rassan_, but Jehane being a plot point really bugged me. I thought _The Name of the Wind_ was pretty cool, but would have thought it was a lot cooler if Kvothe didn't relate to every female around him like they needed him to rescue them. 

When you consistently see representations of women in roles like these, it starts to get old. You start to wish for something else, and actively seek out the things that are different, which is where applying the Bechdel Test to pre-existing media, to see if it has a chance of being different at the surface level, becomes really useful.



T.Allen.Smith said:


> On another related note, consider plausibility. This is an important concept for my writing. As such, I have several strong female characters that do not concern themselves much with men, nor are there goals & motivations defined romantically. Out of the other minority groups mentioned in the thread, race & orientation, I have only a couple of differing races and currently none of differing sexual orientation (at least at this point). The orientation issue hasn't come up as needed in the story yet. I don't know if it ever will. Unless the story takes a direction that would require the inclusion of a gay or bi character, then I'm not going to search for that spot. If it arises organically then it'd certainly be considered. Distinctions and differences can be a marvelous thing as long as they fit the story.
> Plausibility, for me, comes into play when considering representative populations. Orientations other than hetero compose a small percentage of our real world population (something I think Jabrosky touched on earlier). In light of this, I choose to keep that in mind when writing a fantasy story. In my view, writing extreme diversity without cause developed by story demands, can reduce plausibility or believability. Although, you may not feel this way, I do. That everyone should at least be able to understand.



Fair enough, though I maintain that grounding any decisions about a fantasy world firmly in statistics from the real world is limiting. I absolutely agree that decisions should fit the story, but I mentioned briefly earlier that it can be really interesting to start with the premise of "under-represented character A" and see what kind of story you can develop around that character.


----------



## Mindfire

And about the jokes. I think the gay-jokes about Sherlock and Watson are Moffat's way of mocking those certain kinds of fans who take any close same-gender friendship and immediately try to ship it into a gay couple, canon be damned. Sherlock and Watson are not the only ones to have been treated this way. Kirk and Spock, Frodo and Sam, Naruto and Sasuke, Batman and Robin, etc. The jokes are Moffat's way of telling these people to kindly sit down and shut up. And in that sense, I agree with him.


----------



## saellys

BWFoster78 said:


> EDIT: Though, honestly, since you are the one who is trying to get others to change their behavior, you should be offering rational arguments as to why we should do so.  My pursuit of such is what started my participation in this discussion.
> 
> I've heard that you want us to change our behavior because equality of all is the All Important Good Thing We Should All Strive Toward, but, to me, that is a personally held strong belief of yours, not a rational argument.



One rational argument I've offered concerns increasing the breadth of your readership and not alienating particular groups who are tired of not seeing themselves represented favorably in a genre they otherwise really enjoy. If you write it, they will come. You may insist that you're not responsible for people's feelings when they read your book, but if you gave them that much more to relate to, they might come back and read your next book, which translates to money in your pocket.

Another rational argument I've been meaning to throw in here, but haven't found the opportune moment, is challenging yourself as a writer. That happens when you get out of your comfort zone and write things you normally wouldn't (hypothetical "you" once again).


----------



## Ireth

Mindfire said:


> And about the jokes. I think the gay-jokes about Sherlock and Watson are Moffat's way of mocking those certain kinds of fans who take any close same-gender friendship and immediately try to ship it into a gay couple, canon be damned. Sherlock and Watson are not the only ones to have been treated this way. Kirk and Spock, Frodo and Sam, Naruto and Sasuke, Batman and Robin, etc. The jokes are Moffat's way of telling these people to kindly sit down and shut up. And in that sense, I agree with him.



Unfortunately, at least in the case of Sherlock, from what I've seen that plan has backfired. Even Sherlock's own statements that he is asexual haven't stopped the fans from shipping them.


----------



## Mindfire

Ireth said:


> Unfortunately, at least in the case of Sherlock, from what I've seen that plan has backfired. Even Sherlock's own statements that he is asexual haven't stopped the fans from shipping them.



Fan Dumb - TV Tropes

Pity. I thought Watson's plea might have been enough to make them see sense.

"And in case anyone still cares, I'm not actually gay."


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> Nothing prevents you, sure. But is it a profitable use of your time and energy? I personally don't think convincing T. Allen or Brian to write about POC protagonists is nearly as important or interesting as writing about my own and I've made a value judgment that it's a better use of my time to focus on one than on the other. You may (and clearly do) see the matter differently.



Oh, I have no illusions of convincing T. Allen or Brian to include more diversity in their stories--primarily because they've both said they already do, naturally and organically. And believe it or not, I've spent more time writing than discussing this issue. It is, to use a clichÃ©, a matter of principle now. I don't think anybody in this thread disagrees that diversity is good, but there's an awful lot of resistance to the notion that action is necessary to make that happen, and that's why I'm still here talking about it. 



Mindfire said:


> Hold on, this is a potential semantics train wreck waiting to happen. What do you mean by that? As I see it, what's the point of having an opinion if you don't think it's correct? And if an opinion can be correct or incorrect, it stands to reason that in a situation where two opinions conflict, there are three possibilities: one is right and the other is wrong, they are both right, or they are both wrong. The third option generally only takes place when there exists a third, unconsidered opinion, so it can be neglected if the situation is assumed to be a binary. The second is only possible if there is some paradox inherent in the situation or if the conflicting opinions have been formed in some degree of ignorance. Assuming that is not the case, we can neglect that as well. Therefore, it becomes evident that in a situation where two opinions conflict, one must be correct and the other must be incorrect, provided that the assumptions I have named are valid. In that sense, an opinion can be "right" or "wrong". I think we should draw a line between "opinions", which have some degree of subjectivity, and "preferences", which are completely subjective.



I meant that arguing about the rightness or wrongness of opinions is a zero-sum game because someone can (and always does) end the discussion with "Well, that's just _your opinion_!" Which in this case means that no further examination of the media we enjoy or challenging thought about our own work is necessary. Convenient. 



Mindfire said:


> Haven't seen Skyfall yet. No spoilers, please.



I haven't either, so don't worry.  



Mindfire said:


> Well, he said he was pretending. But then again, Moriarty does lie a lot. I guess the best answer is that when you're dealing with their version of Moriarty, "gay" and "straight" and other such alignments don't really apply. He doesn't love anyone obviously, and I don't think he feels sexual attraction at all either. The only attraction he feels is the intellectual challenge Sherlock represents. To him, "gay" is just another mask to put on and take off at will.



I like that analysis a lot, actually. Headcanon accepted. (And I just remembered the "Being Jim? Being gay?" line.) 



Mindfire said:


> It was necessary because it furthered the dynamic between Sherlock and Molly, and also developed Moriarty. It established him as a person who has no boundaries, who will do absolutely anything.



Okay, much like Donovan's slut-shaming, this comes down to a matter of whether the writer could have accomplished it any other way. In this case, it was Mark Gatiss, so I can't pin it on Moffat's queer-baiting, but the fact remains that there are loads of ways to show a person has no boundaries without basing it on sexuality or using it against a long-suffering woman whose entire character revolves around getting casually insulted by Sherlock. As far as choices the writers made, I think they could have done better. 



Mindfire said:


> Did you really want to know more about her? If so, I'm sorry that interest wasn't served. Personally, I disliked her near immediately. Also, she's a background character. Of course she's not going to get much development. That guy she slept with got even less development than she did and had just about as many appearances. That's not a function of gender, it's a function of being a minor character. As for her agency being Moriarty-directed, Moriarty manipulates _everyone_. It's what he does. If you're going to say a character is poor just because Moriarty manipulated them into doing something, then no one on the show is well written except Sherlock and John. _Maybe_. And her professional relationship with Lestrade and maybe friendship with Watson weren't developed because she's not the focus of the show, Sherlock is. Everything else either serves the plot, or serves to contrast with/complement him. That's what it means when you have a show that centers on a single character. It is as if you are calling Batman: The Animated Series misogynist because they didn't develop Renee Montoya more.



Let's go a different direction: Kitty Riley. One episode. She stalks Sherlock in a bathroom and essentially propositions him as pretense for getting an interview. Blah di blah, shows her cleavage, sex sells, whatever. She ended up getting manipulated by Moriarty too, but the difference is that we learned more about her in one episode than we did about Donovan in six. Most of what we learned was through Sherlock's deductions, too. She's a background character, too. Yet I actually have some notion of her personality and goals in life and what she'll do to accomplish them, whereas all I know about Donovan is that she slept with Anderson and she was smart enough to follow Moriarty's trail of breadcrumbs. 

I liked Kitty a lot. I wanted to like Donovan, but Moffat never let me, and that felt forced.



Mindfire said:


> And about the jokes. I think the gay-jokes about Sherlock and Watson are Moffat's way of mocking those certain kinds of fans who take any close same-gender friendship and immediately try to ship it into a gay couple, canon be damned. Sherlock and Watson are not the only ones to have been treated this way. Kirk and Spock, Frodo and Sam, Naruto and Sasuke, Batman and Robin, etc. The jokes are Moffat's way of telling these people to kindly sit down and shut up. And in that sense, I agree with him.



The problem is, the way Moffat handled it (poorly), it became queer-baiting, and later fan-service. Neither accomplishes what you think it was meant to accomplish. It backfired completely and ended up being a harmful stereotype.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> Another hypothetical premise: writers constantly make choices, conscious and otherwise. The unconscious exclusion of, for instance, female characters who talk to each other is a choice, as is the conscious choice choice to keep that as-is in later drafts of the same story. The author can justify that choice to themselves with "The story didn't grow that way naturally" or "I'm not going to change it just to be PC" or any other reason, but it was still a choice.


I was referring only to conscious choices not unconscious actions. Just as I would consciously choose a strong, active verb over a modifying adverb, I choose characters based on what fits the story best (my vision of the story). 

In your process, would you make that conscious choice based on what you think a story is lacking in terms of minority representation?


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> Oh, I have no illusions of convincing T. Allen or Brian to include more diversity in their stories--primarily because they've both said they already do, naturally and organically. And believe it or not, I've spent more time writing than discussing this issue. It is, to use a clichÃ©, a matter of principle now. I don't think anybody in this thread disagrees that diversity is good, but there's an awful lot of resistance to the notion that action is necessary to make that happen, and that's why I'm still here talking about it.



So you're telling people about the merits of doing something they already do? I'm sorry, I think I've lost track of your goal.



saellys said:


> I meant that arguing about the rightness or wrongness of opinions is a zero-sum game because someone can (and always does) end the discussion with "Well, that's just _your opinion_!" Which in this case means that no further examination of the media we enjoy or challenging thought about our own work is necessary. Convenient.



Ah, so like I said, semantics. Let's just neatly sidestep that bit and move on.  





saellys said:


> I like that analysis a lot, actually. Headcanon accepted. (And I just remembered the "Being Jim? Being gay?" line.)



Until now, I didn't realize there was any other way to read it. 



saellys said:


> Okay, much like Donovan's slut-shaming, this comes down to a matter of whether the writer could have accomplished it any other way. In this case, it was Mark Gatiss, so I can't pin it on Moffat's queer-baiting, but the fact remains that there are loads of ways to show a person has no boundaries without basing it on sexuality or using it against a long-suffering woman whose entire character revolves around getting casually insulted by Sherlock. As far as choices the writers made, I think they could have done better.



Perhaps they could have done better. What exactly would you have suggested?



saellys said:


> Let's go a different direction: Kitty Riley. One episode. She stalks Sherlock in a bathroom and essentially propositions him as pretense for getting an interview. Blah di blah, shows her cleavage, sex sells, whatever. She ended up getting manipulated by Moriarty too, but the difference is that we learned more about her in one episode than we did about Donovan in six. Most of what we learned was through Sherlock's deductions, too. She's a background character, too. Yet I actually have some notion of her personality and goals in life and what she'll do to accomplish them, whereas all I know about Donovan is that she slept with Anderson and she was smart enough to follow Moriarty's trail of breadcrumbs.
> 
> I liked Kitty a lot. I wanted to like Donovan, but Moffat never let me, and that felt forced.



Smart enough to follow a trail Moriarty hand-fed her? But as for the Kitty/Donovan comparison, that's an interesting point. I think the difference is the needs of the plot. Kitty is meant to be sympathetic, Donovan is not. When Sherlock dissects Donovan, it's meant to show off feel like a triumph, like she deserved it. His dismissal of Kitty is meant to show that his coldness and arrogance are catching up with him. And what's more, Kitty is a more important character than Donovan is as far as the plot is concerned, so she gets more development because the plot requires her to have that development. Donovan not so much because she's kind of an extra. And as I said, that forensic fellow got even less development than she did.



saellys said:


> The problem is, the way Moffat handled it (poorly), it became queer-baiting, and later fan-service. Neither accomplishes what you think it was meant to accomplish. It backfired completely and ended up being a harmful stereotype.



I don't know what you mean by queer-baiting. As for it backfiring, see the link in my above post. As for a stereotype, what was stereotyped? That two non-gay men resent being mistaken for a gay couple? How is that a harmful stereotype? If I was hanging out with my best friend and someone made comments like that, I'd resent it too.


----------



## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> I was referring only to conscious choices not unconscious actions. Just as I would consciously choose a strong, active verb over a modifying adverb, I choose characters based on what fits the story best (my vision of the story).
> 
> In your process, would you make that conscious choice based on what you think a story is lacking in terms of minority representation?



In the second draft of _The Stone Front_ my co-writers and I made this one of our goals. It's going really well so far. We made a lot of unconscious choices in the first draft that we came to question, and they're proving to be surprisingly easy to fix. Our world is broader and our story is richer now.



Mindfire said:


> So you're telling people about the merits of doing something they already do? I'm sorry, I think I've lost track of your goal.



That seems to be the case, since they keep insisting writers shouldn't bother with doing it on purpose. 



Mindfire said:


> Until now, I didn't realize there was any other way to read it.



I didn't give much consideration to Moriarty's actual sexuality or lack thereof, and I don't think I bothered interpreting that line at all at the time. 



Mindfire said:


> Perhaps they could have done better. What exactly would you have suggested?



Let me state first of all that I think it's a bit unreasonable to demand that anyone who points out potentially problematic elements of a story provide some alternative. The implication is if that person can't come up with something, there must not have been anything wrong in the first place. A brewery in my town recently posted a very old, very sexist beer joke on their Facebook page, and when some folks pointed out just how old and sexist the joke was, others demanded to know what they would have posted instead. Er, something that's not sexist? 

Anyway, for the sake of hypotheticals once more, Sherlock could have deduced anything at all about Jim and revealed it to Molly in a socially tactless way, and it did not have to be boiling down his sexual orientation to his underwear and bloodshot eyes. Maybe he was pilfering formaldehyde behind Molly's back and going into the closet to huff it. Molly probably would have gotten just as irked at Sherlock, particularly if he delivered the news in the same thoughtless way he did in the original version. Just one example. It could have gone in all kinds of directions. 



Mindfire said:


> Smart enough to follow a trail Moriarty hand-fed her?



Which no one else saw or wanted to see. And motivated enough to follow through. 



Mindfire said:


> But as for the Kitty/Donovan comparison, that's an interesting point. I think the difference is the needs of the plot. Kitty is meant to be sympathetic, Donovan is not. When Sherlock dissects Donovan, it's meant to show off feel like a triumph, like she deserved it. His dismissal of Kitty is meant to show that his coldness and arrogance are catching up with him.



That's the thing though--it didn't feel like a triumph to me. It felt like Sherlock couldn't come up with any other way to shut Donovan down, so he resorted to point out her affair with Anderson. 



Mindfire said:


> And what's more, Kitty is a more important character than Donovan is as far as the plot is concerned, so she gets more development because the plot requires her to have that development. Donovan not so much because she's kind of an extra. And as I said, that forensic fellow got even less development than she did.



I would argue that Donovan and Kitty did equal amounts of work to bring Sherlock down (no pun intended). 



Mindfire said:


> I don't know what you mean by queer-baiting.



This handy post aligns pretty closely with my definition. 



Mindfire said:


> As for it backfiring, see the link in my above post. As for a stereotype, what was stereotyped? That two non-gay men resent being mistaken for a gay couple? How is that a harmful stereotype? If I was hanging out with my best friend and someone made comments like that, I'd resent it too.



See the aforementioned handy post.


----------



## Zero Angel

saellys said:


> This handy post aligns pretty closely with my definition.
> 
> 
> 
> See the aforementioned handy post.



I couldn't follow this post at all, but I looked up "queer-baiting" and saw that this is when heterosexual cast members are shown to have chemistry. Are you against this, or just when it is done, as you see it, poorly?


----------



## saellys

Zero Angel said:


> I couldn't follow this post at all, but I looked up "queer-baiting" and saw that this is when heterosexual cast members are shown to have chemistry. Are you against this, or just when it is done, as you see it, poorly?



My definition of queer-baiting is when two same-gender characters who will never be in a canonical relationship are put in situations where other characters ask whether or imply that they're a couple (in the case of _Sherlock_, sharing a flat is apparently reason enough for everyone around them to make such implications), to which the characters in question consistently respond, "We're not a couple!" or "We're not gay!" It's a cheap joke, but in Sherlock's case it can also be considered harmful because Holmes is generally accepted to be canonically asexual, and obscuring that fact (or in the case of "Scandal," covering it with "He's a virgin, ZOMG!") functions as erasure of an orientation that already receives precious little attention in the media.


----------



## Penpilot

I've been keeping out of this, but after reading a few things, I've decided to cherry pick something to point out.



Chime85 said:


> The thing is, although the test is a bit clumsy, it still highlights the issue that some demographics are represented much less than others in media (in this case, writing). I’m not saying that anyone should set their writing in the rules of that test (be it for women, or any other demographic you care to replace women with), but instead, to take to mind what the test is trying to highlight.



I'd like to point out this lack of representation, specifically in ethnicity, is referencing Western media, not media in general. If I wanted to say watch a movie or read a book with an all Asian cast, I can just watch or read something from Hong Kong, China, Korea, etc.


----------



## Zero Angel

Wow! So I read all the posts the first day this thread was posted and a few days later we're up to ~14 pages of posts! I finally caught up, reading EVERY FREAKING post. I think that I would argue somewhere in the middle, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say people will identify me with one side or another.



Steerpike said:


> Actually, the Bechdel Test is so basic that you'll pass it so long as you have more than one female character and they behave as realistic, developed characters. I don't recommend writing to conform to a "test," either, but if you don't pass the Bechdel test then it's at least worthwhile to look at your work again. If you don't pass because the work, by its nature, has no female characters (maybe the whole thing takes place in a fox hole in WWI, I don't know), then that's one thing. If you have female characters and fail the test, you may have a problem.



What I question is this idea that "realistic" female characters are somehow enlightened, or that the reader cares about a particular conversation that the female characters have. 

In my real-life experience, girls can be guy-crazy and want to talk or think about nothing else but them. I'm not saying all girls are like this, but I don't think anyone will disagree that there are superficial, guy-crazy girls in the same way that there are superficial, girl-crazy guys.

In terms of speaking to the people saying they shouldn't have to write to fit this agenda, I whole-heartedly agree. I'm not saying multiracial, multi-gender, multi-sexual groups don't exist naturally, but I doubt they exist in such levels as they do in stock photos and Disney programs. Those types of inclusions seem fake to someone living in the world. Should we present these relationships as an ideal or are we writing in some sort of Utopia-world where everyone is accepted for who they are instead of what they are?

Also speaking to this idea, I think there are a few different types of writers. I feel that many fantasy writers are of the sort that have a story that calls to them and that story begs to be written. It develops relatively organically without much force, and the writer (for example, Brian) is responsible primarily for choosing the appropriate words and making that story as effective as possible. I don't see anything wrong with this, and I thought it was especially emphasized by Brian's surprise over the idea of throwaway scenes and Feo's even more surprise over the idea of NOT doing experimental scenes. 

I also don't see anything wrong with using writing as a platform or emphasizing agendas and other stuff. I'm just saying that it doesn't have to exist in every stories. It is possible that the stories can be "pure" in the sense that they are stories and not arthouse stories. 

Does anyone find it sexist that the example we keep throwing around of what women can talk about that is not men is shoes? But then, the question becomes, what can they talk about that isn't sexist? If they talk about their menstrual cycles is that sexist? If they talk about blah blah blah is that sexist? To some people, everything will be sexist. I don't see the point of them talking about something that isn't related to the story, and if the story involves one or more of the woman's romance to a character, then that's what they should talk about.

There's always the question of why have a break-out conversation between the women in the first place (not because it's unnatural, but because it takes ink and may not further the story), but if we are going to have them break-out on their own, then it is going to be because we want them to talk about something they wouldn't talk about in front of the other character(s). What could that be? If it's anything that ISN'T sexist (or at least having to do with the fact that they are both women), then they should be talking about it with the other group (again, I'm thinking of fantasy so I'm thinking of adventuring groups in my head as I'm writing this, but if you write political fantasies or whatever then that's great, there still needs to be a reason for every grouping).


----------



## Steerpike

Zero Angel said:


> In my real-life experience, girls can be guy-crazy and want to talk or think about nothing else but them. I'm not saying all girls are like this, but I don't think anyone will disagree that there are superficial, guy-crazy girls in the same way that there are superficial, girl-crazy guys.



Having a teenage daughter who has friends over, I've seen the guy-crazy phases. I've seen them in others as well, particularly when I was younger - teens, early 20s and so on. I've never in all my years known a girl who talks exclusively about what guy she is after and never ventures into any other territory beyond the 'guy.' 

The idea that a realistic portrayal is interpreted as having to somehow show the characters as "enlightened" seems to me to say something in and of itself. Men can be complex and multifaceted and it's normal. If a female character is complex and multifaceted, it's an artificial attempt to portray them as "enlightened?"


----------



## Feo Takahari

I'd like to propose a distinction:

Campaigning for more minority characters is a cause, or a goal, or what have you. (I dislike the connotations of the word "agenda", but I'll use it if I have to.)

Writing a story that has minority characters in it is not, in and of itself, directly connected to any agenda.

I feel compelled to make the distinction because there seems to be a recurrent assumption that just having minority characters means saying something political. It's true that some people will read in political assumptions, but if you'd tell people to take a hike for criticizing your white male characters, you could just as easily tell them to take a hike for not letting your albino lesbian Eskimo or whatnot slay dragons in peace.

@Zero Angel: you have no idea how much you've just swelled my head. I stretch and change my stories because they aren't really mine to begin with--I can't create half so well as I imitate. If your assessment is true, I have more freedom to write stories that are unusual and different than actual "creative" writers!


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Now I'm beginning to wonder whether this _thread_ would pass the Bechdel test.


----------



## Zero Angel

Steerpike said:


> Having a teenage daughter who has friends over, I've seen the guy-crazy phases. I've seen them in others as well, particularly when I was younger - teens, early 20s and so on. I've never in all my years known a girl who talks exclusively about what guy she is after and never ventures into any other territory beyond the 'guy.'
> 
> The idea that a realistic portrayal is interpreted as having to somehow show the characters as "enlightened" seems to me to say something in and of itself. Men can be complex and multifaceted and it's normal. If a female character is complex and multifaceted, it's an artificial attempt to portray them as "enlightened?"



haha, so I was trying to avoid saying the other way around because in a different thread saellys had taken umbrage. It's not that a female character being complex is necessarily "enlightened", but that no one cares if a male character isn't (but as saellys would say, even though guys (maybe I'm generalizing too much, even though *I*) don't care if males are objectified or stupid or unenlightened, when a girl isn't it is cited as being sexist. Where as, in order for a female character to be considered OK by (insert group here), they MUST be enlightened.



Feo Takahari said:


> I'd like to propose a distinction:
> 
> Campaigning for more minority characters is a cause, or a goal, or what have you. (I dislike the connotations of the word "agenda", but I'll use it if I have to.)
> 
> Writing a story that has minority characters in it is not, in and of itself, directly connected to any agenda.
> 
> I feel compelled to make the distinction because there seems to be a recurrent assumption that just having minority characters means saying something political. It's true that some people will read in political assumptions, but if you'd tell people to take a hike for criticizing your white male characters, you could just as easily tell them to take a hike for not letting your albino lesbian Eskimo or whatnot slay dragons in peace.
> 
> @Zero Angel: you have no idea how much you've just swelled my head. I stretch and change my stories because they aren't really mine to begin with--I can't create half so well as I imitate. If your assessment is true, I have more freedom to write stories that are unusual and different than actual "creative" writers!



I think everyone here that I've read snippets/blurbs of are creative. Give yourself credit for what you do, even if you (being anyone, not necessarily YOU Feo) don't have the goal of being a professional writer, writing anything is a creative process. Writing experiments are recommended by a lot of writing workshops and professors and whatnot and not because they are easy to do. What's the phrase? Any sufficiently analyzed creative endeavor is indistinguishable from a derivative work? ...or something like that 

Personally, I think of strange situations, but I never do it just to do it. If there's a situation I want to explore, then I am going to turn it into at least a scene designed to make it past the cutting room floor, and probably a short story or novella. I don't have the luxury of writing for fun anymore. 

I don't see a problem with including characters, but I disagree that we should need to include GOOD characters. I think there's just as much to say for equality that we have BAD characters of different races, sexual orientation and gender. White heterosexual males have been allowed to be petty, shallow creatures for generations, isn't it about time that we extended this to everyone? 

Counterargument: while white men have been actively bad, others are passively (not necessarily actually passive, but inherently) bad. I don't see a problem with others being bad so long as the writing supports it. If they are bad to promote an agenda, then I find that immoral. If they are bad to support the story or rather, the story supports them being bad, then that is storytelling and above claims of sexism, orientation-ism (don't know the word there), and racism.


----------



## Feo Takahari

Zero Angel said:


> I don't see a problem with including characters, but I disagree that we should need to include GOOD characters. I think there's just as much to say for equality that we have BAD characters of different races, sexual orientation and gender. White heterosexual males have been allowed to be petty, shallow creatures for generations, isn't it about time that we extended this to everyone?



While I think you might be misunderstanding what "good" means in this context, you bring up an important point. Complex characters don't necessarily need to be heroes.


----------



## Mindfire

Zero Angel said:


> haha, so I was trying to avoid saying the other way around because in a different thread saellys had taken umbrage. It's not that a female character being complex is necessarily "enlightened", but that no one cares if a male character isn't (but as saellys would say, even though guys (maybe I'm generalizing too much, even though *I*) don't care if males are objectified or stupid or unenlightened, when a girl isn't it is cited as being sexist. Where as, in order for a female character to be considered OK by (insert group here), they MUST be enlightened.



I think I get what you're trying to say, but I think you should rephrase this to make it more clear.


----------



## Zero Angel

Feo Takahari said:


> While I think you might be misunderstanding what "good" means in this context, you bring up an important point. Complex characters don't necessarily need to be heroes.



Hmm, I completely agree, but also, characters shouldn't *need* to be complex. Sometimes, even if they are complex behind-the-scenes, it doesn't need to be shown to the reader unless it adds to the story.



Mindfire said:


> I think I get what you're trying to say, but I think you should rephrase this to make it more clear.



I am saying we are OK with one-dimensional white heterosexual male characters of dubious role-model-shipness (probably not for a main character, but not every background character needs to have a, well, a background), but the same is immediately labeled as bigotry or prejudice if the character is a non-white or non-heterosexual or non-male character. In fact, as Feo pointed out, even if it is a complex character, if the character is of dubious role-model-shipness, then it will be labeled as a form of bigotry or prejudice.

Now, I understand the argument that there is this prejudice out there in society for non-white, non-heterosexual or non-male people and not so much for white & heterosexual & male, but the holding non-white, non-heterosexual or non-male characters to higher standards on the basis of their non-white, non-heterosexual, or non-male-ness is itself a form of prejudice. 

Instead of decrying what I am describing as a "bad" character (read "bad" as morally-dubious or one-dimensional or both), I do agree we need more positive examples. I do not think everyone needs to be represented. At the end of book 2 in my series, the one dragon finds out that the main character is NOT a dragon, and this is a major issue for him because he felt that he needed someone of his race to believe in. I hope he figures out that he is able to look to other "kinds" for role models. Much like in the example cited early on in this discussion in that TED video. The little girl did not look up to Princess Leia (or at least, not the most), she looked up to Obi-Wan, because Obi-Wan was who she identified with the most, and the dad was thrilled because he viewed Obi-Wan as a leader. She didn't look up to Princess Leia because she was a girl or beautiful or a princess, which are rather superficial ways of looking at a person.

Disclaimer: In all these examples of one-dimensionality, I am assuming that this representation is the author's choice of presenting the story the best it can be.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Feo Takahari said:


> ... there seems to be a recurrent assumption that just having minority characters means saying something political.


I don't think anyone is saying that. I haven't read anyone saying that a minority character equates to a political message just by being in the story. The idea that writers NEED to include them, because society needs awareness, is what many spoke out against.


----------



## Feo Takahari

Unless I missed something Saellys said, no one here has said that writers need to include minority characters in order to have a good story. As best I can tell, Saellys has said that including minority characters makes a story better whether it was previously good or bad (a statement I don't agree with), and I've said that minority characters don't change the quality of most stories (and potentially earn a few brownie points.)


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Feo Takahari said:


> I feel compelled to make the distinction because there seems to be a recurrent assumption that just having minority characters means saying something political. It's true that some people will read in political assumptions, but if you'd tell people to take a hike for criticizing your white male characters, you could just as easily tell them to take a hike for not letting your albino lesbian Eskimo or whatnot slay dragons in peace.


I wasn't talking about what Saellys wrote. I fully understand her views. I am questioning your claim of an assumption stating that some responders think "just having minority characters means saying something political". 

I haven't seen anyone making this claim.

Edit: I want to make clear this is not intended as an attack on your statement. It is a request for clarification. Up until this assumption was stated, I felt that the involved parties were nearing an understanding. However, your stated assumption made me pause, thinking that a lot of misunderstanding remained.


----------



## Feo Takahari

Then I'll drop that avenue of discussion.

Anyway, I think we're talking past each other. Let me try another tack:

There's supposedly a cliche of good guys in Westerns riding white horses. I don't read enough Westerns to be sure of that. But if I read a hundred Westerns, and the good guy rode a white horse in every single one, I'd kind of wonder at it. I wouldn't get offended or anything, but if I wrote a Western, I'd probably put the good guy on a brown horse, just to make things a little different for a change.

I keep talking about representation, because that's the hot-button issue, and I do care about to some degree. (As I said before, an entire shelf full of books about white men merits a tiny little "hrm?") But if I'm honest, for me it's just mostly a matter of wanting a few brown horses.

(That came out more racially charged than I intended.)


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Yes, I understand where you're coming from. I do. Although I don't think the analogy is a good one... Don't worry, I'm not judging ....it's awfully late.

The color of horses doesn't change reader impression. The color of a cast member might. If I am telling a story about a culture that mirrors medieval Europe and there is an African or an Asian involved...that requires explanation. The color of a horse does not. Therefore, if I am to include an African or an Asian, it needs to make story sense.

Yes, I do realize in fantasy, we have more cart-blanch than other genres. However, there are limits set in place within the world the author deems appropriate. Perhaps the story requires warring parties that pray to the same god, that look the same on the surface. Maybe there is no room in a close tale where outside races aren't needed. "Women are everywhere!" you might say (a fact that I am truly grateful for). Still though, their role, as well as a man's, entirely depends on the author's vision of world culture. 

I believe that generalizations have lead to some misunderstandings on this topic. Therefore, it's time for specifics.

Allow me to offer an example from my current WIP. The only reason I do this is because the comments here, in this thread, have caused me some reflection. I'm interested in how the involved parties might view characters in my current story... This is one of 5 POVs.

An adolescent girl has a gift for magic in a world where magic has been relegated to myth and legend. Her mentor is a woman from another realm that would resemble our real-world east-Indians. This woman comes from a land where women are treated as chattel (similar to the adolescent's culture, where women are subservient, but not as zealously enforced). Her ruling father has sent her away because of an affair with a commoner that she loved (not seen in the story, only spoken).

This foreigner is a rare magic user. So is the adolescent girl who lives in a culture similar to medieval Europe. The chances of two such individuals ever coming into contact are infinitesimal. Their goals, as characters in the story, are at first to survive when they are made destitute. Later their goals change to gaining an understanding of magic together (because it is so exceedingly rare - low magic story). Eventually this takes them down a very dark road as they discover that the nature of magic is not what they expected. The adolescent eventually becomes the most powerful character in the story, inciting a rebirth in magic but also reigniting a costly price for power. Neither are ever romantically involved with other characters. Their combined storyline is the basis for the entire tale (even though this is hidden for awhile).

I'm not interested in any comments referring to a magical savage/native stereotype.... I feel strongly that the writing shows the mentor character as surpassingly refined among other things. She is a mentor in manner, presentation, education, being a lady, etc.

There was a time, during Act 1, that I considered a blossoming lesbian relationship between these two. I chose against it, only because I didn't want to detract from the importance of the magic... It is the start of a magic reawakening in my story (Story first ideal).

How would this be perceived by the proponents of this test?


----------



## saellys

Zero Angel said:


> What I question is this idea that "realistic" female characters are somehow enlightened, or that the reader cares about a particular conversation that the female characters have.



Wow. I had to read this five or six times to make sure I hadn't missed something that would make this less outright offensive.

The short answer (and I'm going to try real hard to stick to short answers from now on) is that if you don't care, your readers won't. That goes for every part of your story, but if you really don't care about what your female characters say to each other in an otherwise well-written story full of developed characters, your readers will know. 

As for enlightened, I don't know where that came from. Realistic characters are just realistic. You want your characters to seem like real people, yes? You don't need to make your female or minority or transgender or whatever characters more across-the-board morally "good" or smart or magical or skilled in battle than your male characters. You do need to make them as developed as your male characters (adjusting for such things as hero vs. background character, of course). Again, if you don't care enough to make that happen, your readers will notice.



T.Allen.Smith said:


> How would this be perceived by the proponents of this test?



It sounds like a great story. As I said way back in this thread, it's totally possible to have a patriarchal/misogynistic setting and still project an impression of female empowerment. I love seeing examples of girls with female mentors, too. Was that what you were asking?


----------



## Mindfire

T.Allen.Smith said:


> If I am telling a story about a culture that mirrors medieval Europe and there is an African or an Asian involved...that requires explanation.



Not necessarily.








Black Queen Guinevere from _Merlin_ says hi.  And she was an awesome character, too.


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> Black Queen Guinevere from _Merlin_ says hi.  And she was an awesome character, too.



I never watched much _Merlin_, but I absolutely loved that neither the show nor its fans made a big deal out of this. Everyone rolled with it. As opposed to, say, some of the reactions I saw to casting Lucy Liu as Joan Watson on _Elementary_, which included such whoppers as, "Genderswap I can understand, but Asian?!" and, "Watson is A MAN." Actual comments there. Often from _Sherlock_ fans who were righteously indignant that someone else was adapting a public domain character to the modern era. 

There was a similar reaction a few years back when Katee Sackhoff got cast as Starbuck in the _Battlestar Galactica_ reboot.


----------



## Mindfire

Btw, this is the photo that was _supposed_ to show up. If a mod can do a little edit to fix that, I'd be grateful.


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> I never watched much _Merlin_, but I absolutely loved that neither the show nor its fans made a big deal out of this. Everyone rolled with it. As opposed to, say, some of the reactions I saw to casting Lucy Liu as Joan Watson on _Elementary_, which included such whoppers as, "Genderswap I can understand, but Asian?!" and, "Watson is A MAN." Actual comments there. Often from _Sherlock_ fans who were righteously indignant that someone else was adapting a public domain character to the modern era.



I'd say _Merlin_ is a great example of diversity done well. It doesn't feel forced or contrived and the female and minority characters all get appropriate character development. Plus it was politics-free. This is how it ought to be done. As for Elementary, people were trying to find anything to nitpick about it because they feared it would copycat Sherlock. But the show is actually moving in a different direction and is good in its own right.


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> As for Elementary, people were trying to find anything to nitpick about it because they feared it would copycat Sherlock. But the show is actually moving in a different direction and is good in its own right.



Definitely--it's more of a police procedural that happens to have Sherlock Holmes in it than a straight adaptation of Doyle's stories. I prefer it to _Sherlock_ now because _Elementary_ handles topics like fluid sexuality (Sherlock identifies as asexual, but his body's got needs), mental health ("You loaded him like a weapon"), and addiction (all of Sherlock's time in recovery and his whole relationship with Joan) tenfold more gracefully than _Sherlock_. And it passes Deggans and Bechdel! Frosting.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> As I said way back in this thread, it's totally possible to have a patriarchal/misogynistic setting and still project an impression of female empowerment. I love seeing examples of girls with female mentors, too. Was that what you were asking?



Yes thank you. I must have missed that before.




Mindfire said:


> Not necessarily.
> 
> Black Queen Guinevere from Merlin says hi.  And she was an awesome character, too.


Interesting...though I've never watched this show. I wonder if the difference in visual media vs. written matters here.

I still feel as if I'm going to include a PoC character then that requires some explanation in an otherwise Nordic looking world.


----------



## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> I still feel as if I'm going to include a PoC character then that requires some explanation in an otherwise Nordic looking world.



I sympathize with this. Like I said, my _The Stone Front_ co-writers and I are adding more diversity to our world in the second draft, and we're trying to back that up with family trees and histories of migration that are internally consistent. Very few of those details will end up in the book as anything more than a passing mention in dialogue or description here and there, but we still want the structure in place. It's part of our continued worldbuilding process. 

I get that you weren't necessarily saying this, but the implication I'm seeing from that statement and others like it in this thread is "It would require explanation, so I might as well keep my Nordic-looking world Nordic-looking." I don't see this as valid when said by anyone who actually enjoys writing. It smacks of a lazy excuse for upholding the status quo.


----------



## Zero Angel

T.Allen.Smith said:


> I wasn't talking about what Saellys wrote. I fully understand her views. I am questioning your claim of an assumption stating that some responders think "just having minority characters means saying something political".
> 
> I haven't seen anyone making this claim.



I don't think anyone is making this claim outright, but do we agree that purposefully including minority characters is saying something political?



saellys said:


> Wow. I had to read this five or six times to make sure I hadn't missed something that would make this less outright offensive.
> 
> The short answer (and I'm going to try real hard to stick to short answers from now on) is that if you don't care, your readers won't. That goes for every part of your story, but if you really don't care about what your female characters say to each other in an otherwise well-written story full of developed characters, your readers will know.
> 
> As for enlightened, I don't know where that came from. Realistic characters are just realistic. You want your characters to seem like real people, yes? You don't need to make your female or minority or transgender or whatever characters more across-the-board morally "good" or smart or magical or skilled in battle than your male characters. You do need to make them as developed as your male characters (adjusting for such things as hero vs. background character, of course). Again, if you don't care enough to make that happen, your readers will notice.


If it was offensive then please report it, I'm not sure what was offensive, but I will edit the post if moderators ask me to. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. 

If their conversations don't matter for the plot, then why show them? I am more concerned with the overarching plot of the story and conversations between characters that do not advance the plot or the relationships/development of characters do not matter and should not be shown. 

Saying that I should make an effort to have conversations that do matter between "minority" characters is (1) ignoring that the story has a life of its own, (2) that artificially doing this should be unnecessary, and (3) that consciously choosing to do this IS a form of *-ism.

My novel does not pass the Bechdel Test. Was I offended? No. Was I surprised? Yes. Did I care after realizing that it doesn't? No. Because those conversations happen behind the scenes and aren't necessary to show for the story itself, which is predominantly a buddy-coming-of-age-action-adventure. Will future novels in the series pass the Bechdel test? Yes, but not because I artificially forced them to, but because the focus in the coming novels shifts from the development of the protagonist in Book 1 to the development of the world in Book 2. 



Mindfire said:


> Not necessarily.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Black Queen Guinevere from _Merlin_ says hi.  And she was an awesome character, too.



To be fair, they also removed her position in the legend from noblewoman and changed her to a serf or thrall (they call it a servant, but this is a feudal society we are talking about here...). 



saellys said:


> I get that you weren't necessarily saying this, but the implication I'm seeing from that statement and others like it in this thread is "It would require explanation, so I might as well keep my Nordic-looking world Nordic-looking." I don't see this as valid when said by anyone who actually enjoys writing. It smacks of a lazy excuse for upholding the status quo.



It smacks to me of being true to the vision of the setting and remaining honest to the work. I feel that bending to societal pressure to include these things would be no different than bending to the societal pressure to NOT include them. If you're doing something like that deliberately, then I find it distasteful.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> I get that you weren't necessarily saying this, but the implication I'm seeing from that statement and others like it in this thread is "It would require explanation, so I might as well keep my Nordic-looking world Nordic-looking." I don't see this as valid when said by anyone who actually enjoys writing. It smacks of a lazy excuse for upholding the status quo.



Not what I meant. I'm saying that in the cases where I have PoC characters in an otherwise white world, I've felt the need to explain that presence. 

It doesn't take a massive amount of explanation, I'd agree with that point. But, depending on the world, it may take more than in another.


----------



## Mindfire

Zero Angel said:


> I don't think anyone is making this claim outright, but do we agree that purposefully including minority characters is saying something political?



I don't agree. Just having minority characters does not make a political statement. It's a bit more nuanced than that. Now whether people will _infer_ a political statement on their own is another matter.



Zero Angel said:


> To be fair, they also removed her position in the legend from noblewoman and changed her to a serf.



Honestly, I think that change improved the story, so I'm fine with it. 


Spoiler: reasons



However, if we _did_ want to start dipping into political implications, I'd say the Arthur/Gwen romance is a subtle criticism of parents who don't want their children to date across class/ethnic lines.





Zero Angel said:


> It smacks to me of being true to the vision of the setting and remaining honest to the work. I feel that bending to societal pressure to include these things would be no different than bending to the societal pressure to NOT include them. If you're doing something like that deliberately, then I find it distasteful.



I think there's a difference between bending to societal pressure and doing something different because you want to. To put it another way, if you read a book where the author did include people of color in a Nordic-type setting with no explanation, would you be put off by it?


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Mindfire said:


> ...if you read a book where the author did include people of color in a Nordic-type setting with no explanation, would you be put off by it?


Put off by it? No

However, it may bring rise to certain questions. Why is this person in this setting? Where are they from (assuming only one or a few)? 

Further, I'd expect that presence, if there is only a small number of this minority in a land that seems foreign to them, to have some significance to the plot.


----------



## Mindfire

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Put off by it? No
> 
> However, it may bring rise to certain questions. Why is this person in this setting? Where are they from (assuming only one or a few)?
> 
> Further, I'd expect that presence, if there is only a small number of this minority in a land that seems foreign to them, to have some significance to the plot.



Makes sense. But what if there's not just a few of them and the story treats that as completely normal?


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Mindfire said:


> Makes sense. But what if there's not just a few of them and the story treats that as completely normal?



Then there'd be less need for explanation, if any at all. If the presence of what we (in reality) consider a minority is not a minority in our fantasy setting then why treat it as such? Even if that presence is less in number, but accepted as common in that setting, then it doesn't need explanation either...that's the way this world is...there's nothing exceptional about that presence.


----------



## Mindfire

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Then there'd be less need for explanation, if any at all. If the presence of what we (in reality) consider a minority is not a minority in our fantasy setting then why treat it as such? Even if that presence is less in number, but accepted as common in that setting, then it doesn't need explanation either...that's the way this world is...there's nothing exceptional about that presence.



Okay. I agree with that too. But you seem to think there is a situation where the presence of people of color in a story does require explanation. What situation would that be?


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Mindfire said:


> Okay. I agree with that too. But you seem to think there is a situation where the presence of people of color in a story does require explanation. What situation would that be?



Just speaking from my own writing...the young girl's mentor that I described previously. She is the only one of her race & nationality around...at least for some time. Her differences in culture & ways of thinking are integral to changes that occur in the young POV girl.


----------



## saellys

Zero Angel said:


> I don't think anyone is making this claim outright, but do we agree that purposefully including minority characters is saying something political?



No.



Zero Angel said:


> If it was offensive then please report it, I'm not sure what was offensive, but I will edit the post if moderators ask me to. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.



The offensive part was where you questioned whether your readers would care about what two female characters have to say to each other. 



Zero Angel said:


> If their conversations don't matter for the plot, then why show them? I am more concerned with the overarching plot of the story and conversations between characters that do not advance the plot or the relationships/development of characters do not matter and should not be shown.



Here's a fun idea: make their conversations advance the plot! That's something every character's conversation should do anyway.



Zero Angel said:


> Saying that I should make an effort to have conversations that do matter between "minority" characters is (1) ignoring that the story has a life of its own, (2) that artificially doing this should be unnecessary, and (3) that consciously choosing to do this IS a form of *-ism.



I'm trying hard to parse this. (1) The story has a life of its own, but do you make changes to it in your editing phase?  (2) If so (and I'm going to guess that, hypothetically of course, you would), you already artificially insert things that weren't there when the story grew organically in the first place. (3) That would be egalitarianism. 



Zero Angel said:


> My novel does not pass the Bechdel Test. Was I offended? No.



I wouldn't really expect you to be. 



Zero Angel said:


> Was I surprised? Yes. Did I care after realizing that it doesn't? No. Because those conversations happen behind the scenes and aren't necessary to show for the story itself, which is predominantly a buddy-coming-of-age-action-adventure. Will future novels in the series pass the Bechdel test? Yes, but not because I artificially forced them to, but because the focus in the coming novels shifts from the development of the protagonist in Book 1 to the development of the world in Book 2.



And best of luck to you. 



Zero Angel said:


> To be fair, they also removed her position in the legend from noblewoman and changed her to a serf or thrall (they call it a servant, but this is a feudal society we are talking about here...).



They changed Merlin to a servant, too, and he's as white (and powerful) as they come.



Zero Angel said:


> It smacks to me of being true to the vision of the setting and remaining honest to the work. I feel that bending to societal pressure to include these things would be no different than bending to the societal pressure to NOT include them. If you're doing something like that deliberately, then I find it distasteful.



Okay, so choosing not to introduce more diversity and take whatever steps necessary to explain (or not) why "minorities" are present is being true to the vision of the setting and honest to the work, but it's okay to introduce any number of other fantasy elements that were not present in the original setting? Gosh, you make this sound a lot harder than it really is.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> The offensive part was where you questioned whether your readers would care about what two female characters have to say to each other.


I took a different meaning away from ZA's statement. I thought he was talking about realistic characters covering a wide gambit of personality types and not solely featuring empowered women as the only female presence, if true realism was the goal.

Here it is again:


> What I question is this idea that "realistic" female characters are somehow enlightened, or that the reader cares about a particular conversation that the female characters have.


Perhaps I was wrong in my interpretation though.

This begs a question. 

If females were figured equally to men in a book, in terms of goals, motivations, and empowerment...would you then be more accepting of a female character that closely fits alongside the stereotypical fantasy females (the vaccuous, boy-crazy, "I love shoes" type) that you so passionately oppose? Meaning, if they coexisted within the same book would that be considered realism or would you still oppose their existence in the story?


----------



## saellys

The two women having a conversation don't _have_ to be empowered. That's not a stipulation. They can be slave girls or princesses betrothed to men they don't love or tavern wenches or anything else. That still passes the Bechdel Test and can even--gasp--influence the plot. 

Yes, if I saw more representations of varied types of human beings in fantasy novels, I would absolutely consider their coexistence in a book with stereotypical fantasy women (where did the shoes thing come from, anyway?) realistic.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> Yes, if I saw more representations of varied types of human beings in fantasy novels, I would absolutely consider their coexistence in a book with stereotypical fantasy women (where did the shoes thing come from, anyway?) realistic.



Fair enough.

The shoe bit comes from several shoe fascinated women I know (although I'd hardly call them vacuous) & a common presentation I see of young women in films & TV (no real specifics).


----------



## Mindfire

I think I've completely forgotten who's making what point.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Mindfire said:


> I think I've completely forgotten who's making what point.



I've never argued about minority presentation problems in media. Honestly, those understandings were hammered out in other threads months ago.

I argued against forced inclusion & for my ideal of story commanding decisions.


----------



## Feo Takahari

I'll approach this from another direction, because I have more angles than Lovecraft's bad dreams:

I just stopped reading Paul Auster's _The Book of Illusions_, about two hundred pages in. There were multiple reasons (for instance, I strongly suspect it's building towards an ending trope I dislike), but the one that's relevant to this thread is that all of the women in Hector's flashbacks feel somewhat artificial, like marionettes controlled by an unskilled hand. Hector himself is a fully realized person, but the women (save for one stupid, shallow, and manipulative prostitute, who occupies very little of the story) are defined almost entirely by the ways in which Hector affects them. It's hard to take them seriously, or at times even to tell them apart.

Now, a few caveats:

1): This is to some extent a subjective criticism. Human connections are at the core of the story, and most of the characters save Hector are defined more by who they care about than by who they are. I think the female characters are particularly ill-defined, but other people may read the story differently.

2): Some of the female characters are more complex than others. In particular, Alma, who tells Hector's story, clearly has depth to her outside of her connections to Hector and David (even if it's a bit hard to buy that she so easily falls in love with David.)

3): Although the chapters I read didn't pass the Bechdel test, I don't think passing it would have solved the problem. Having these constructs talk to each other about something other than Hector would have just revealed how hollow they are.

But with all of that in mind, I think the book would have been better had these women possessed more personality. They wouldn't even need to occupy more of the story, just to be better-defined in the time they appeared. The Bechdel test isn't the be-all and end-all of representation, but in this case, it points to a larger marginalization at work in the narrative.

(Though I might not have read all the way to the end anyways--I might just have kept reading longer . . .)


----------



## Mindfire

So in other words, just develop all your characters properly and all shall be well.


----------



## Jabrosky

Mindfire said:


> Btw, this is the photo that was _supposed_ to show up. If a mod can do a little edit to fix that, I'd be grateful.


Sorry, but she looks more biracial or otherwise heavily mixed than wholly African to me (as is the case with most "black" actresses held up as pretty on TV and in Hollywood). She could almost pass for Arabic or coastal North African Berber. If the casting agents had picked a darker-skinned black woman for the character, I imagine the fan base would flip out like hell.


----------



## Steerpike

Jabrosky said:


> Sorry, but she looks more biracial or otherwise heavily mixed than wholly African to me (as is the case with most "black" actresses held up as pretty on TV and in Hollywood). She could almost pass for Arabic or coastal North African Berber. If the casting agents had picked a darker-skinned black woman for the character, I imagine the fan base would flip out like hell.



I believe she is biracial. Not that it matters, in my view. Nor would it matter if they wanted to use an actress with very dark skin. From what I've read, some people questioned the choice of this actress, and those same people would question a darker-skinned actress. Most fans would probably just go with it if the actress was good.


----------



## Feo Takahari

Mindfire said:


> So in other words, just develop all your characters properly and all shall be well.



That's the only part of this thread about which I can say "you should do this." Everything else is "you could do this" or "I might enjoy it if more people did this."


----------



## Mindfire

Jabrosky said:


> Sorry, but she looks more biracial or otherwise heavily mixed than wholly African to me (as is the case with most "black" actresses held up as pretty on TV and in Hollywood). She could almost pass for Arabic or coastal North African Berber. If the casting agents had picked a darker-skinned black woman for the character, I imagine the fan base would flip out like hell.



No one outside of Africa is "wholly African", not even someone as dark as me. And I'm with Steerpike. Haters gonna hate. Lol

Trying to judge someone by an arbitrary "blackness" scale is also a form of racism btw.


----------



## Chime85

Jabrosky said:


> Sorry, but she looks more biracial or otherwise heavily mixed than wholly African to me (as is the case with most "black" actresses held up as pretty on TV and in Hollywood). She could almost pass for Arabic or coastal North African Berber. If the casting agents had picked a darker-skinned black woman for the character, I imagine the fan base would flip out like hell.



While I have not seen the series (I really should!) I cannot comment on the backround of this character. However, I can reply to your statement. From what you are saying, anybody who does not fit into a set group is not that particular group. In this case, black women. 

Now Jabrosky, I like you. Mainly brcause you have a vision for your masterpiece and damned to hell if you're going to change that. You have a lot of respect in my book because of that. However...
It is not up to you to decide who is what when it comes to ethnicity or colour. I will accept that you have your view on your own world. I have no say in that at all, as it should be. However. This woman, Angel Coulby, IS black, as she sees herself. By all means, she is not the African you (you meaning the wider audience) would associate with being black. However, does that not emphasize the point some are making in this thread? The fact that you are taking personal rule sets and implying that fashion to your works?!

x


----------



## Zero Angel

Mindfire said:


> I don't agree. Just having minority characters does not make a political statement. It's a bit more nuanced than that. Now whether people will _infer_ a political statement on their own is another matter
> 
> Honestly, I think that change improved the story, so I'm fine with it.
> 
> 
> Spoiler: reasons
> 
> 
> 
> However, if we _did_ want to start dipping into political implications, I'd say the Arthur/Gwen romance is a subtle criticism of parents who don't want their children to date across class/ethnic lines.
> 
> 
> 
> I think there's a difference between bending to societal pressure and doing something different because you want to. To put it another way, if you read a book where the author did include people of color in a Nordic-type setting with no explanation, would you be put off by it?



Hmm, I'm not saying that it is political to include them, I'm saying making a point to include them is political, especially if they otherwise wouldn't fit. 

I agree that it improved the story, and the fact that Uther was alive in this version can add to the Arthur-Gwen romance/tragedy and add the theme of dating across class. 

To answer your question, it would really depend on how it was handled. I don't have a problem at all in, for instance, a video game like Skyrim. In Skyrim you can get explanation of the migrations and cultures of the different races if you search for them though. I didn't find Gwen's race to be off-putting in Merlin, although I thought it was more amazing (and realistic) that she was not a beautiful girl. It drove home the setting wasn't England though. I think they used Logres for it and referred to it as such (which is basically a fantastical Britain, but removing the British qualities of the legend are what allows things like Gwen to be biracial). It was especially refreshing that everyone was color blind and the only concern was that she was poor and a servant. 

Here's how it applies to me. I rarely describe the color of someone's skin when I am describing the person. I am perfectly OK with different people imagining different races for any of the characters. It's completely outside known history (even a fantasized version) so I'm able to do whatever I want with it in terms of race. There is racism in my stories, in fact, overcoming it to work together is a central theme (although I guess we should call it speciesism). Anyway, since the world is so different in terms of where different ethnicities of humes live, I never bother describing this. 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> I took a different meaning away from ZA's statement. I thought he was talking about realistic characters covering a wide gambit of personality types and not solely featuring empowered women as the only female presence, if true realism was the goal.
> 
> Here it is again:
> 
> Perhaps I was wrong in my interpretation though.
> 
> This begs a question.
> 
> If females were figured equally to men in a book, in terms of goals, motivations, and empowerment...would you then be more accepting of a female character that closely fits alongside the stereotypical fantasy females (the vaccuous, boy-crazy, "I love shoes" type) that you so passionately oppose? Meaning, if they coexisted within the same book would that be considered realism or would you still oppose their existence in the story?



Sounds like you've interpreted me the way I intended. Sorry for the need to be interpreted, I thought I had laid everything out, but I understand emotions can run high in these topics and things that seem clear to one may appear vague or muddied to another.


----------



## Steerpike

Mindfire said:


> No one outside of Africa is "wholly African", not even someone as dark as me.



I'm getting a little far afield here, but in a place like the U.S. I think if you're going by skin tone alone, you find such a wide variation that I'm not sure what it means to say someone's skin is dark enough for them to be an accurate portrayal of a black person. I dated a girl from Sierra Leone once, and she had the very dark skin tone that Jabrosky is probably referring to, but there were plenty of people around who were from the U.S. whose skin was as dark. 

To take another actress - look at Gina Torres, from Firefly. She's darker than the Merlin actress depicted above, but she's also bi-racial (African and Cuban I think), so does she qualify as a representative of a black woman on television? Seems to me that she does, and that I'm hardly in any position to argue that she, or the actress above, aren't black enough.


----------



## saellys

Zero Angel said:


> Sounds like you've interpreted me the way I intended. Sorry for the need to be interpreted, I thought I had laid everything out, but I understand emotions can run high in these topics and things that seem clear to one may appear vague or muddied to another.



Seriously? It didn't appear vague to me at all. It was completely straightforward. You questioned whether readers would care about what your female characters had to say to each other. There was no emotional reaction necessary to read it that way, because those were the words you used. If you meant something else, you should have used different words. 

Also, Angel Coulby is not a beautiful girl? Dude, your standards must be astronomically high.


----------



## saellys

Oh, and one more thing. Steerpike already requested that we all avoid ad hominems, but I'm going to make one more humble request for respect: the "emotions running high and make things vague and muddled" thing comes up in discussions like this a lot, especially directed at women who happen to care a lot about the issue. Since you can't actually see me, unless I say otherwise, please do me the favor of assuming I am as calm and rational as you are. Thanks.

You, in this case, not hypothetical, but rather plural and general toward everyone participating in this thread.


----------



## Jabrosky

Chime85 said:


> While I have not seen the series (I really should!) I cannot comment on the backround of this character. However, I can reply to your statement. From what you are saying, anybody who does not fit into a set group is not that particular group. In this case, black women.
> 
> Now Jabrosky, I like you. Mainly brcause you have a vision for your masterpiece and damned to hell if you're going to change that. You have a lot of respect in my book because of that. However...
> It is not up to you to decide who is what when it comes to ethnicity or colour. I will accept that you have your view on your own world. I have no say in that at all, as it should be. However. This woman, Angel Coulby, IS black, as she sees herself. By all means, she is not the African you (you meaning the wider audience) would associate with being black. However, does that not emphasize the point some are making in this thread? The fact that you are taking personal rule sets and implying that fashion to your works?!


I understand where you're coming from, and technically what we call "black" is an imprecise, socially constructed taxon anyway. However, I perceive a certain danger in classifying biracial people as fully black in the same sense as most African people. If we do that, I'm worried that people might cite biracial individuals as their ideal "black people" while omitting darker-skinned African people. If we call Barack Obama black, for instance, we can brag about how post-racial and progressive our country is by electing a black man to President without, you know, electing an actual black man. The one-drop rule can be a double-edged sword.

That said, going too far the other direction also causes problems. I have observed genuinely dark-skinned Africans being thrown out of the "black" taxon simply because they had narrower noses than the "true Negro" stereotype (Africans who have impressive precolonial architecture lying around are particularly vulnerable to this trope). I would be lying if I said I had an easy answer to this whole predicament.


----------



## saellys

Jabrosky, I like how seriously you take the distinctions in relative skin color and the potential problems they cause. (The "fair and lovely" cosmetic enhancement movement among Indian women is a really distressing example of this.) I feel like the safest move for people like us who don't fall under any such category is to go with the terms a particular person uses to identify themselves, whenever possible. Unfortunately, a couple pages of Google results hasn't turned up an interview where Coulby self-identifies. When I can't find that sort of thing, I tend to go with "person of color" by default as it seems to be generally accepted.


----------



## Jabrosky

To further complicate the issue, even without varying degrees of Eurasian admixture, African populations have always varied in skin tone. It isn't always the case that an African with very dark brown skin has less European or Asian ancestry than one who's more of a caramel, coppery, or mahogany color. However, this might be running into a topic that I don't think anyone here wants to return to.


----------



## Zero Angel

Unless you're a geneticist or a Nazi-like individual, I don't think we need to classify everything to such a high degree. Mixing it up (when the story can sustain it) is nothing to shy away from, and being overly accurate in the description of a modern-day race in a fantasy would probably be considered racism by a fair amount of people, or at least off-putting and breaking the setting.

i.e. How do you talk about an Asian when there is no Asia?


----------



## saellys

So, in the interest of getting more or less back on track, something occurred to me this evening. I'm assuming (and if I'm wrong, by all means correct me) that those of you in this thread who have been most vocally opposed to the application of the Bechdel Test and any potential subsequent action regarding your writing are white men (excluding Mindfire). In this case, being white men is apropos of one thing only: there has never been a point in your life when you, the white man, could not turn to the media and see yourself portrayed positively. 

You _have always been the hero of a given story_. If the other varieties of human beings were present in the story at all, it was as sidekicks at best. From there the scale slides down the list I mentioned earlier: victims, prizes, the first to die, the butts of jokes. 

That's pretty common in every genre, but in fantasy the saturation is near-total. People who aren't white men and who love reading fantasy do so in spite of a dearth of positive representations of themselves. 

This is a problem you, the white male fantasy reader and writer, have never experienced. People who aren't you are made to feel unwelcome by the way they're portrayed in a genre they want to enjoy. When they ask writers of that genre to make small adjustments that would contribute to fixing that, they're made to feel even more unwelcome and told that it's their responsibility to actively fix, and not yours. 

Do you see how that comes off? The problem of representation was not caused by the people who are under- or misrepresented, so why should they shoulder the job of solving it themselves? I don't think anyone here has tried to deny that there is something broken in the genre that you and they and we all love. We can all fix it together, a little at a time.


----------



## Ankari

Well, in my case, I'm Arabic.  I'm always the villain.  But then, you could say my reaction isn't based on a hero-bubble, but on my barbaric upbringing.


----------



## saellys

Then by all means, disregard my entire post!


----------



## Ankari

saellys said:


> Then by all means, disregard my entire post!



LOL.  You're not bad, Sallys.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

I can sympathize with most everything you said, the way the argument above is presented. Everything except the assumptions about people's racial make up or living experiences & the idea that each of us is somehow individually responsible for how the media portrays minorities.

This issue is extremely important to you but other people won't have the same fire for change that you have. We need to accept this. I'm sure there are issues that concern me that, for you, would be a low priority.


----------



## Jamber

Coming in late, and relating to things said earlier rather than more recently, I quite like what Meaghan Morris (an Australian critic) said about 'political correctness': that despite its clunkiness, its artificiality, its stuck-on feeling, as policy it produces more diversely readable (i.e. richer) texts.

Of course, we don't all want to make richer texts out of our novels. Then again perhaps sometimes we don't mean to alienate certain kinds of readers, and we might alienate them unconsciously -- that's when the Bechdel test seems useful, as a sort of 'Hey, writer, did you know you seem to be saying _this_?'. Still, I can't help feeling the test is much better aimed at screenwriters/directors/producers than at novel writers. In novels there's no question but that it's a single mind at work, with a single mind's limitations and/or perception. By contrast, in film there are many layers of 'authorship' and I suspect it's a lot more justifiable to critique films according to culture-wide implications for that reason.

Incidentally, there was a thread somewhere in Brainstorming -- ah, here it is: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/brainstorming-planning/5719-fun-idea.html -- that set out to invent a character. Was it my imagination, or did it seem to presume a 'character' would naturally be male? It seemed to do this from my point of view, and I moved on, but I have to say it was no big deal -- I could easily have started a thread presuming 'main character' to mean 'female'. I attributed no blame to BW Foster for any presumption of malehood, but went my separate way as a female writer/reader to do other things.

Saellys, I have to say, I've loved your nous and your bravery even if I haven't agreed with every particle of what you've said. I don't feel the Bechdel or any other test matters in regard to novel writing, but I do like the goals you espouse.

cheers

Jennie


----------



## Chime85

saellys said:


> So, in the interest of getting more or less back on track, something occurred to me this evening. I'm assuming (and if I'm wrong, by all means correct me) that those of you in this thread who have been most vocally opposed to the application of the Bechdel Test and any potential subsequent action regarding your writing are white men (excluding Mindfire). In this case, being white men is apropos of one thing only: there has never been a point in your life when you, the white man, could not turn to the media and see yourself portrayed positively.
> 
> You _have always been the hero of a given story_. If the other varieties of human beings were present in the story at all, it was as sidekicks at best. From there the scale slides down the list I mentioned earlier: victims, prizes, the first to die, the butts of jokes.
> 
> That's pretty common in every genre, but in fantasy the saturation is near-total. People who aren't white men and who love reading fantasy do so in spite of a dearth of positive representations of themselves.
> 
> This is a problem you, the white male fantasy reader and writer, have never experienced. People who aren't you are made to feel unwelcome by the way they're portrayed in a genre they want to enjoy. When they ask writers of that genre to make small adjustments that would contribute to fixing that, they're made to feel even more unwelcome and told that it's their responsibility to actively fix, and not yours.
> 
> Do you see how that comes off? The problem of representation was not caused by the people who are under- or misrepresented, so why should they shoulder the job of solving it themselves? I don't think anyone here has tried to deny that there is something broken in the genre that you and they and we all love. We can all fix it together, a little at a time.



Oddly enough, the main characters in my works are female. The most prevalent criticism from most the male readers is that it apparently alienates the male audience. As you can imagine, most the female readers do not point this out. I have found it interesting that a piece of work can be accused of alienating one set of audience, simply on the basis of the who's who in the writing.


----------



## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> I can sympathize with most everything you said, the way the argument above is presented. Everything except the assumptions about people's racial make up or living experiences & the idea that each of us is somehow individually responsible for how the media portrays minorities.
> 
> This issue is extremely important to you but other people won't have the same fire for change that you have. We need to accept this. I'm sure there are issues that concern me that, for you, would be a low priority.



I hope you can pardon the assumptions about race and living experiences I made in order to frame a rhetorical "you". I wanted a bit more impact to that post than "one subset of humanity has always been portrayed positively in media". 

I'm not saying we're all responsible for how the media has handled minorities up to this point, any more than othered people are responsible for how media has excluded them throughout history. I'm saying we all have some measure of individual responsibility to contribute toward making the situation better. See the difference?

If you and others who don't share my "fire for change" and "priorities" use that as a reason to abdicate all responsibility for what their work perpetuates, how will anything ever change on a broad scale? Please don't answer with "This isn't an issue for me"--I really want to know how you envision that happening. If you've never thought about it because it's not an issue for you, take a minute to consider it for the sake of discussion. Who exactly is going to be changing things and how will those changes gain enough momentum to make the fantasy genre a welcoming place for all kinds of people?



Jamber said:


> Still, I can't help feeling the test is much better aimed at screenwriters/directors/producers than at novel writers. In novels there's no question but that it's a single mind at work, with a single mind's limitations and/or perception. By contrast, in film there are many layers of 'authorship' and I suspect it's a lot more justifiable to critique films according to culture-wide implications for that reason.



That's a very interesting distinction. The cultural impact of films, and therefore the power of what they perpetuate and normalize, is arguably much greater than novels, but I don't see that as a reason to limit analysis and critique, even those as simplified as the Bechdel Test, to films. A single mind can come up with some pretty messed up stuff on its own, and a single mind can also change a lot faster than a team of people who created a story with problematic elements in it. A single mind can pledge to do better next time, and not foist the blame onto someone else so they don't have to change anything. 



Chime85 said:


> Oddly enough, the main characters in my works are female. The most prevalent criticism from most the male readers is that it apparently alienates the male audience. As you can imagine, most the female readers do not point this out. I have found it interesting that a piece of work can be accused of alienating one set of audience, simply on the basis of the who's who in the writing.



I can understand alienation. I can't understand men complaining about feeling alienated by a story with female protagonists, and simultaneously expecting everyone else to shut up and enjoy a story where they're not represented at all.


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> Also, Angel Coulby is not a beautiful girl? Dude, your standards must be astronomically high.



I thought she was kinda hot...


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> I can understand alienation. I can't understand men complaining about feeling alienated by a story with female protagonists, and simultaneously expecting everyone else to shut up and enjoy a story where they're not represented at all.



I can totally understand it. It's a very simple empathy problem. They haven't made the mental connection between how they feel alienated by a story with a female protagonist and how female readers feel when most books have male protagonists. Growing up, I liked Kim Possible (for the action, of course), but it annoyed me that all the guys on the show were either evil or complete doofuses. Or both. Except for Wade and the Twins. They were cool. But it never occurred to me to make a connection between that and the lack of POC heroes, or the female/minority representation issue in general. My brain is full of boxes, and those particular boxes had been shelved separately from each other.

Also, the part about having a responsibility to improve the situation, that statement is easy to object to, as we've seen. I think you'll get more traction by arguing that writers have a responsibility to _themselves_ to make the best story possible. And I don't think anyone here will disagree that "not racist" is a good benchmark for that.


----------



## saellys

And since I've said multiple times in this thread that writing not-racist, not-sexist, not-homophobic stories is the way to improve the situation, I guess no one will have any objections to that! Right? *looks down; sees that we're on page 20* Oh, wait...


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> And since I've said multiple times in this thread that writing not-racist, not-sexist, not-homophobic stories is the way to improve the situation, I guess no one will have any objections to that! Right? *looks down; sees that we're on page 20* Oh, wait...



There's a slight difference between what you're saying and what I'm saying. You are (from an outsider perspective) foisting upon them a responsibility to other people that they don't really want the pressure of bearing, even if it's something they were going to do anyway. When you put it that way, it comes off as a burdensome intrusion, a demand that they "take up the standard" and all the other objections you've gotten. By contrast, my way of phrasing it makes it not a responsibility to others that the writer has to bear, but merely another facet of the responsibility to _themselves_ and _their creations_ which they've already accepted and should fulfill to the best of their ability since they consider themselves writers.

See, when you say "you have a responsibility to these people", the response is, "Leave me alone, I don't want to be drafted." But when you say, "you can produce better writing than this" or "your characterization is lacking, but here's a way to improve it", you're more likely to get engagement.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> I hope you can pardon the assumptions about race and living experiences I made in order to frame a rhetorical "you". I wanted a bit more impact to that post than "one subset of humanity has always been portrayed positively in media".
> 
> I'm not saying we're all responsible for how the media has handled minorities up to this point, any more than othered people are responsible for how media has excluded them throughout history. I'm saying we all have some measure of individual responsibility to contribute toward making the situation better. See the difference?
> 
> If you and others who don't share my "fire for change" and "priorities" use that as a reason to abdicate all responsibility for what their work perpetuates, how will anything ever change on a broad scale? Please don't answer with "This isn't an issue for me"--I really want to know how you envision that happening. If you've never thought about it because it's not an issue for you, take a minute to consider it for the sake of discussion. Who exactly is going to be changing things and how will those changes gain enough momentum to make the fantasy genre a welcoming place for all kinds of people?


I understood why you made the assumptions in the 1st read through. It would be far fetched at this point, considering what we know of your views, to claim any form of sexist bigotry. Don't concern yourself with that further. It illustrates the problem well. Although I do find it interesting that 2 of the 5 primary opposing arguments in this thread came from PoC writers.

My feeling on any type of social change is that it takes time. Unfortunately, it is unrealistic to expect action from those unaffected by the problem. Social attitudes changing seems to require champions from within the downtrodden that can bridge the divides between the people they champion and those they seek to alter in mindset. I'm no historian of civil rights. This is only my impression.



Mindfire said:


> See, when you say "you have a responsibility to these people", the response is, "Leave me alone, I don't want to be drafted." But when you say, "you can produce better writing than this" or "your characterization is lacking, but here's a way to improve it", you're more likely to get engagement.


I agree with Mindfire completely on this point.


----------



## Steerpike

It is interesting to me how early in life some of the things we've discussed here form in the human mind. A children's book editor once told me to change the sex of my main character from female to male, the reasoning being that little girls will read stories about boys, but little boys will not read stories about girls. I didn't make the change, but after she said that I did some looking around and found the same advice in many places.


----------



## Mindfire

Steerpike said:


> It is interesting to me how early in life some of the things we've discussed here form in the human mind. A children's book editor once told me to change the sex of my main character from female to male, the reasoning being that little girls will read stories about boys, but little boys will not read stories about girls. I didn't make the change, but after she said that I did some looking around and found the same advice in many places.



Having been a little boy once myself, I can say there is some truth to at least half of that statement.


----------



## Nihal

Mindfire said:


> Steerpike said:
> 
> 
> 
> It is interesting to me how early in life some of the things we've discussed here form in the human mind. A children's book editor once told me to change the sex of my main character from female to male, the reasoning being that little girls will read stories about boys, but little boys will not read stories about girls. I didn't make the change, but after she said that I did some looking around and found the same advice in many places.
> 
> 
> 
> Having been a little boy once myself, I can say there is some truth to at least half of that statement.
Click to expand...


Yes and no. Once upon a time I was a little girl. While I tolerated stories with male protagonists, it was more because I *had no choice*. The men got to do all the cool things in these stories and the female, when they even appeared, usually were dull or sounded fake.

It happened in games also. One of the games that "redeemed" this industry to me was _Kyrandia II: The Hand of Fate_, because I got to play a female. When I first played it I had a strong feeling of "At last!".

Because I tolerated those stories, it doesn't mean I was happy about it. I must admit I never got over it, even if the times are changing now.

I won't force you in a personal crusade to portray cool kickass females and ethnic diversity. However, I am selfish. I want to show the women I never got to see in my childhood, the MCs who do not have blond, straight hair and blue eyes. I don't care if some average male reader don't identify himself with the protagonist, he got a plenty of other stories - and they're good! - to read.

The other thing I want to do is to draw characters who wears more than one set of clothes (c'mon, their eternal clothes always bothered me!).


----------



## Jabrosky

Nihal said:


> I won't force you in a personal crusade to portray cool kickass females and ethnic diversity. However, I am selfish. I want to show the women I never got to see in my childhood, the MCs who do not have blond, straight hair and blue eyes. I don't care if some average male reader don't identify himself with the protagonist, he got a plenty of other stories - and they're good! - to read.


The fact that you're apparently writing the characters you want to see yourself rather than pressuring other people to write them gives me a lot of respect for you. I love your do-it-itself attitude, an attitude I share myself when it comes to things like this.


----------



## Ankari

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Mindfire said:
> 
> 
> 
> See, when you say "you have a responsibility to these people", the response is, "Leave me alone, I don't want to be drafted." *But when you say, "you can produce better writing than this" or "your characterization is lacking, but here's a way to improve it", *you're more likely to get engagement.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I agree with Mindfire completely on this point.
Click to expand...


I don't.  Not fully, anyway.  What does it mean we except the bolded line when it refers to the description of the character?  My writing is awesome, the story is outstanding, but because it involves a white (which I'm not) male, the writing is subpar?  Actually, the way that writing is done now, you really don't pick up a lot of the physical characteristics of your MC's.  The tight PoV and the minimalist approach guarantees this.

These conditions only exist because these manufactured demons haunt your mind.  Excerise them, then you can enjoy the story for what it is.


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> There's a slight difference between what you're saying and what I'm saying. You are (from an outsider perspective) foisting upon them a responsibility to other people that they don't really want the pressure of bearing, even if it's something they were going to do anyway. When you put it that way, it comes off as a burdensome intrusion, a demand that they "take up the standard" and all the other objections you've gotten. By contrast, my way of phrasing it makes it not a responsibility to others that the writer has to bear, but merely another facet of the responsibility to _themselves_ and _their creations_ which they've already accepted and should fulfill to the best of their ability since they consider themselves writers.
> 
> See, when you say "you have a responsibility to these people", the response is, "Leave me alone, I don't want to be drafted." But when you say, "you can produce better writing than this" or "your characterization is lacking, but here's a way to improve it", you're more likely to get engagement.



The problem with that extremely diplomatic and mitigated example is that it cannot be extended beyond one character in one story, and it gives no indication that a problem of characterization might be connected to a much larger trend. There is no opportunity for consciousness that continues beyond the story that person is working on at that moment, and might shape the way they portray a particular kind of person for the better later on. It leaves room to keep writing the same problematic things indefinitely, rather than encouraging awareness of a given issue that each writer, consciously or un-, may contribute to solving or perpetuating.

I have given exactly the kind of critique you recommend right here on this forum, but I have connected it to larger issues when I did, and both parties (Jabrosky, on "A Clash of Queens," and Xaysai, on "The Mancer Chronicles") were every bit as receptive as I could have hoped. In each case, I pinpointed some characterization issues--Hatshepsut and Boudicca both had better things to do than fight over a man and body-shame each other; Xaysai's MC has serious guilt issues based around the rape and murder of his wife and daughter, which falls under the "dead little sister" and "women in refrigerators" trope, and at that point in the story he had not provided anything else in the protagonist's back story that drove him. I'm naming names here not to shame people for what they wrote, but to highlight exemplary reactions when I drew their attention to these problems. 

In Jabrosky's case I offered a great big hypothetical post about how he could still keep his awesome time-bending deathmatch without the problematic elements, while I did not offer any alternatives to Xaysai, because ultimately he's the only one who can know what drives his MC--I just wanted him to be aware of the trope. Jabrosky explained that "Clash" was something he wrote for fun and was not intended as anything approaching serious historical fantasy, but he might change it at a later date. Xaysai said he hadn't realized it was a trope, and would work on it. 

I came away from both exchanges totally satisfied (and I hope Jabrosky and Xaysai did, too), because neither of them dismissed my views out of hand. They even both clicked Thanks on my posts--hooray for validation! I had, at some level, got them thinking about what they had presented and whether they would do anything different in the future. 

Now, T. Allen has said he sees a huge divide between taking such critique from a beta reader and taking it from someone in his audience after his story is finished, and I respect that to the extent that I, as a writer, would not want to go back and change something I'd already released for public consumption either, even if a reader did find something incredibly problematic and I recognized this. It's the future that's important here, and awareness of greater issues that we all play into whether we mean to or not. At any stage--first draft, beta reading, or post-publication--it is vitally important to not dismiss the things our audience points out, and to give them enough respect to actually think about it. That's what can make us better writers in the future. Not to mention keep our readers _our readers_, and not make them jump ship to a better Sherlock Holmes adapta--I mean, uh, fantasy novel. 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> I understood why you made the assumptions in the 1st read through. It would be far fetched at this point, considering what we know of your views, to claim any form of sexist bigotry. Don't concern yourself with that further.



Thanks for your understanding. 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> It illustrates the problem well. Although I do find it interesting that 2 of the 5 primary opposing arguments in this thread came from PoC writers.



I do too. Obviously Mindfire and Ankari tend to feel comfortable in this genre, and more power to them, if you'll pardon a very watered-down sentiment. I really don't believe that invalidates any of the issues I've brought up in this thread, though. 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> My feeling on any type of social change is that it takes time. Unfortunately, it is unrealistic to expect action from those unaffected by the problem.
> 
> Social attitudes changing seems to require champions from within the downtrodden that can bridge the divides between the people they champion and those they seek to alter in mindset. I'm no historian of civil rights. This is only my impression.



Here's the thing, though: you _are_ affected by the problem. If you were to make your work--that tiny little sliver of the fantasy genre as a whole--more welcoming to people who are overwhelmingly marginalized, more readily able to be accepted as the pure entertainment you want it to be, your readership could expand dramatically. That's money in your pocket, to put it callously. 

It might even add up to a bunch of your fellow writers gazing enviously at your success and analyzing your work to see how you got to be so incredibly popular, and then deciding to incorporate greater diversity in their own work. That's broad change that starts with you. 

Also, I consider waiting for a Messiah or a Medger Evars or whatever you want to rise up and bridge the divide far more impractical than what I'm proposing. I'm no historian of civil rights, either, but I think that analogy works against you because desegregation had to be enforced at an institutional level before many white people grudgingly accepted it. Enforcing an agenda is what you're against, right? Nobody wants government regulation of fantasy novels, least of all me. (Though I will say that the BBC, which is paid for by a public TV tax, embraces a commitment to diversity. Just an example of how that kind of thing can work out positively.)

For you, personally, what about this message would change if it came from someone other than a white woman (who gets marginalized in the fantasy genre enough, by the way)? 



Ankari said:


> These conditions only exist because these manufactured demons haunt your mind.  Excerise them, then you can enjoy the story for what it is.



These conditions exist because problems of representation are everywhere. (I think you meant exorcise, by the way.) If a story is sexist, either in undertones that never get contradicted in text, or active in-text misogyny which cannot be blamed solely on a setting that happens to be patriarchal, that _is_ what the story is. I can't enjoy it for what it is. It's not entertaining to see yourself marginalized.


----------



## Jabrosky

Ankari said:


> Actually, the way that writing is done now, you really don't pick up a lot of the physical characteristics of your MC's.  The tight PoV and the minimalist approach guarantees this.


I don't know how to put this in a politically correct way, but I almost always feel a strong need to mention at least a few of my protagonists' racial characteristics. This is true for both my white and PoC protagonists. Usually I don't give that treatment to _every_ character in the story though, just the protagonists or the first supporting character to represent a given race. For example, the first time a Middle Eastern person pops up in a story, I might describe his tawny skin color, dark hair, and arched nose, but I don't do the same to later characters of the same Middle Eastern background. I think describing one typical specimen of a given race is enough to describe the whole race.

Incidentally, the tight PoV issue is one reason I don't do First-Person PoV that often.


----------



## Androxine Vortex

Ankari said:


> I'm of like mind with BWFoster78 and TAS.
> 
> A few points I would like to point out.  From what I've read (about 90% of this thread) the general consensus is that a story lacking multiple female characters discussing other things besides men is outdated.  So, the way to balance antiquated beliefs of male dominance is to force male characters from a scene, or create scenes that feature only women, to be considered as a modern thinking writer.
> 
> The problem I have with anything labelled a "test" is the inferred meaning that whatever is tested is either right or wrong. That the purpose behind the test is right and those that fail the test are wrong.  The people who feel that such requirements are mandatory should create content on their own rather than force every writer out there into a mold.
> 
> What is wrong with the stories of knights saving the damsel in distress from her dark fate?  Are you saying that this isn't a story worthy of teaching males?  That males shouldn't read such neandertholic stories because it features a somewhat outdated representation of a male saving a somewhat outdated representation of a female?  Why are they considered outdated?  Sure, a majority of the western women wouldn't sit around waiting for a man to show up and save her.  _A majority of western women._
> 
> What's so incredibly odd about this test is that is attempts to wipe out cultures and histories from our arsenal of things to build upon.  There are posts I've read that lament the lack of diversity in fantasy settings.  They ask why there isn't a story based on ancient Meso-Americans, or Africa, or the Far East.  Are we to use these cultures only as clothing?  The characters _look_ the part, but don't deal with the problems faced found in the original culture.  (The fact that we would even label these aspects as problems is a whole other post.)  We can't incorporate the complete culture because they would fail some contrived "test".
> 
> Whenever a post hits the World Building Forums asking if this is right, or that can be done, the predominant answer is "Yes.  It's you're world, do whatever you want."  This rule applies to everything except gender (and other socially sensitive subjects) because it may infuriate a small population, or even a significant one?  What is the saying?  You can't please everyone so stop trying to or your writing will suffer.  At the end of the day, isn't up to your wallets/purses/money clips/plastic to voice your opinions?
> 
> Another problem I have with this "test" is that a man and woman talking to each other about any subject matter isn't considered a proper representation of women.  Why?  Because a male is in the scene?  So I can't have a queen address a duke in private about a need for resources.  I have to think, before writing the scene, that it should be a duchess instead?  Or, if I stay with that scene I have to comb over my outline to make sure another scene has two females talking about anything else except men......
> 
> No.  Let me tell my story and I'll let you tell your story.  I'll judge it for it's entertainment value.  Whether you feature a whole cast of butt-kicking women or not, won't have any influence on my enjoyment.  After all, the ultimate goal is to create something that we, and others, _enjoy_.



I agree with this. I haven't read the whole entire thread here but I have a good idea on what's been said. First ask ourselves, "why is it that women and men are typically portrayed this way? Where did we even get this inspiration?" Well, from human history. Countless cultures and customs generally put men above women, and in no way am I saying I agree with this, but it was a custom that dominated almost every culture for hundreds and hundreds of years. I believe that everyone is born equal, but just because I might have more men than women in my novel doesn't mean I think women are inferior. 

I don't think we should put our novels or stories into tests, per say. You can have guidlines you want to follow and that's great for structure but to look at a novel and compare it to a test and say, "sorry, doesn't cut it." isn't a good idea in my opinion. Because that is what determines what is and is not a good book, opinion. It's the reason why I might dislike something and someone else really enjoys it. If we try to appeal to every crowd out there that demands something then what's the point in that?

That's like when I share my opinion with someone and because they are upset and disagree they actually expect me to change it. That happened to me one time and I jsut said, "Look, you're one of my good friends but this is a disagreement we have. And I'm not going to change my opinion because it might offend you or someone else because if I had to change my opinion to satisy everyone so that no one would be offened, we would all be the same person. It's really sad that today you can't seem to say, think, or do anything without offending people and then have them demand you change yourself.

I try to have a good ratio of men/women in my novels but it's not something that I really think about. I might say ok this character can be a girl and this is an old man and so on. It's not on a list of requirments for me to write my story. I could even write a story that had only women in it or only men. Does it mean I am sexist? Of course not! Diversity is great in novels, I wont disagree there. It would be pretty boring if everyone was the same ethnicity, had same attitude, same personality, etc. So yeah, diversity is a good tool especially if you are showing different cultures or beliefs but when it comes down to making sure I have X amount of Y gender, I really couldn't care less about it honestly. It's just not a huge priority, if one at all. Granted I don't think I would ever write a story with just one gender appeaing in it because that would just be odd (unless the plot called for that)

So there's my two cents. If i somehow offend anybody, I'm sorry and I do mean that. So don't read my books then  you can't appeal to everyone. Write for what audience you know will accept your work, and good luck!


----------



## Guru Coyote

Just wanted to chime in here... as I dropped out of the flow of this thread somewhere on page 3 or 4... and it's now at 21 pages... Wow.


----------



## saellys

Wow indeed. Thanks for starting the thread, by the way!


----------



## saellys

Androxine Vortex said:


> I agree with this. I haven't read the whole entire thread here but I have a good idea on what's been said. First ask ourselves, "why is it that women and men are typically portrayed this way? Where did we even get this inspiration?" Well, from human history. Countless cultures and customs generally put men above women, and in no way am I saying I agree with this, but it was a custom that dominated almost every culture for hundreds and hundreds of years. I believe that everyone is born equal, but just because I might have more men than women in my novel doesn't mean I think women are inferior.



Since you haven't read the whole thread, I'm just going to quote myself on the relevant points; it's a lot easier than re-stating them for the umpteenth time.



saellys said:


> You can write a female-excluding, patriarchal, and/or even misogynist _world_ while still writing a female-positive _story_. No matter how your world treats women, women are part of your world and should be part of your story as well, barring the aforementioned extreme legitimate men-only examples.


-----


Androxine Vortex said:


> I don't think we should put our novels or stories into tests, per say. You can have guidlines you want to follow and that's great for structure but to look at a novel and compare it to a test and say, "sorry, doesn't cut it." isn't a good idea in my opinion. Because that is what determines what is and is not a good book, opinion. It's the reason why I might dislike something and someone else really enjoys it. If we try to appeal to every crowd out there that demands something then what's the point in that?





saellys said:


> It's a test of whether you succeed or fail at including two women with names who talk to each other about something other than a man.





saellys said:


> It _is_ your world. You _can_ do whatever you want. Just be aware that if you choose to present a female-excluding story, or a story that normalizes some harmful stereotype, you are likely to hear the opinions of your audience, and how you respond to those opinions will determine whether they remain your audience.


-----


Androxine Vortex said:


> That's like when I share my opinion with someone and because they are upset and disagree they actually expect me to change it. That happened to me one time and I jsut said, "Look, you're one of my good friends but this is a disagreement we have. And I'm not going to change my opinion because it might offend you or someone else because if I had to change my opinion to satisy everyone so that no one would be offened, we would all be the same person. It's really sad that today you can't seem to say, think, or do anything without offending people and then have them demand you change yourself.



Oh good, this is a new one! Fortunately, I get to reuse something from the sexist joke debacle I mentioned earlier in this thread: "Anyone who thinks it's impossible to make a joke [here, insert "state an opinion" or "write a good story" as the case may be] without offending someone needs to stay out of the comedy ["writing"] business while they work on growing an imagination." This may or may not be applicable to your relationship with your friends, but it is most definitely applicable, in my experience, to issues of representation in fantasy. 



Androxine Vortex said:


> I try to have a good ratio of men/women in my novels but it's not something that I really think about. I might say ok this character can be a girl and this is an old man and so on. It's not on a list of requirments for me to write my story. I could even write a story that had only women in it or only men. Does it mean I am sexist? Of course not! Diversity is great in novels, I wont disagree there. It would be pretty boring if everyone was the same ethnicity, had same attitude, same personality, etc. So yeah, diversity is a good tool especially if you are showing different cultures or beliefs but when it comes down to making sure I have X amount of Y gender, I really couldn't care less about it honestly. It's just not a huge priority, if one at all. Granted I don't think I would ever write a story with just one gender appeaing in it because that would just be odd (unless the plot called for that)





saellys said:


> My goal is not to highlight societal ills or draw attention to what I perceive as problems. My goal is to write the stories I would want to read and stories I can be proud of writing. Those stories naturally involve equality and representation. I realize this is not going to be of great concern to you, but equality and representation should be of some concern to everyone, since treating everyone equally is literally the baseline minimum standard for being a decent human being.


-----


Androxine Vortex said:


> So there's my two cents. If i somehow offend anybody, I'm sorry and I do mean that. So don't read my books then  you can't appeal to everyone. Write for what audience you know will accept your work, and good luck!





saellys said:


> There's that Someone Else's Job thing again. I as a writer can't personally do anything about how many minority writers are out there (let alone how many minority writers manage to get past the societal obstacles that keep them from telling their stories, like the female screenwriter who was told by a professor that people don't want to watch movies about female protagonists). I can do something about my own work.





saellys said:


> At any stage--first draft, beta reading, or post-publication--it is vitally important to not dismiss the things our audience points out, and to give them enough respect to actually think about it. That's what can make us better writers in the future. Not to mention keep our readers our readers, and not make them jump ship to a better Sherlock Holmes adapta--I mean, uh, fantasy novel.





saellys said:


> Since encouragement is only worth so much, it is absolutely no burden to us writers to contribute to the effort by diversifying our stories as well. I'm not trying to project a "white people have to do this to help the poor maligned minorities" thing--just a "we can, so why don't we" attitude.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> For you, personally, what about this message would change if it came from someone other than a white woman (who gets marginalized in the fantasy genre enough, by the way)?


Nothing. However, I still feel that asking people that aren't interested or passionate about a cause, to join your vision actively, is unrealistic. People require motivation to change (much like characters).

Until writers, embracing your cause, achieve the kind of renown and success needed for others to take notice & follow, that motivation will not exist. Those not inspired for this specific change will not be the champions you seek.


----------



## saellys

Jabrosky said:


> I don't know how to put this in a politically correct way, but I almost always feel a strong need to mention at least a few of my protagonists' racial characteristics. This is true for both my white and PoC protagonists. Usually I don't give that treatment to _every_ character in the story though, just the protagonists or the first supporting character to represent a given race. For example, the first time a Middle Eastern person pops up in a story, I might describe his tawny skin color, dark hair, and arched nose, but I don't do the same to later characters of the same Middle Eastern background. I think describing one typical specimen of a given race is enough to describe the whole race.
> 
> Incidentally, the tight PoV issue is one reason I don't do First-Person PoV that often.



This is important to _The Stone Front_'s writing team as well, and in part it's because ambiguously-described characters so often get automatically whitewashed in the reader's perceptions, publisher-commissioned cover art, and any potential film or television adaptations (may we all be so lucky). Katniss Everdeen had a very tight POV, but still managed to describe herself and most of the people in the Seam part of District 12 as olive-skinned, which promptly got ignored by basically everyone.


----------



## Addison

I read books based on the story that's told, not the lead role. Girl, guy, ogre, kitty, dust bunny whatever. As long as the story is interesting then I'll read it. The only times I find problems with girl or guy as lead role in stories is when I'm writing them. As I don't see any difference between what a boy or girl (man or woman) can do it's a challenge to find the best gender my character, by traits and how I see them acting in my head, fit into. I can close my eyes, watch a scene from a story and see them running down an alley or clobber a crook with a bat. I'll see what they're wearing, their height, but sometimes the face and physique are blurry. It takes a while to find the gender but I find it. 

But seriously, the gender of the lead role doesn't, or at least shouldn't, affect the story and/or who reads it.


----------



## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Nothing.



So the thing that might change your mind wouldn't... actually... change your mind? And if you were speaking about fantasy writers in general rather than yourself, if it wouldn't change your mind, what compels you to think it would change anyone else's?



T.Allen.Smith said:


> However, I still feel that asking people that aren't interested or passionate about a cause to join your vision actively is unrealistic. People require motivation to change (much like characters).



What other external motivation can there possibly be, beyond people asking them to do something about it? How can there be an internal motivation or change of heart if they're not first educated about the problem and the importance of fixing it? 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> Until writers, embracing your cause, achieve the kind of renown and success needed for others to take notice & follow, that motivation will not exist. Those not inspired for this specific change will not be the champions you seek.



I'm not asking for a champion; I'm asking for a little help.


----------



## saellys

Addison said:


> But seriously, the gender of the lead role doesn't, or at least shouldn't, affect the story and/or who reads it.



You are absolutely right--if the story exists in a vacuum. Fantasy stories have a long sad history of being predominantly about one type of person, to the exclusion and misrepresentation of everyone else. Anyone looking for something different stands to be turned off by seeing yet another story about the same kind of person, and may just skip it in favor of finding something that represents them for a change.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> So the thing that might change your mind wouldn't... actually... change your mind? And if you were speaking about fantasy writers in general rather than yourself, if it wouldn't change your mind, what compels you to think it would change anyone else's?


That makes my head spin...both of us I suppose. No, what I meant was the person delivering the message has no bearing on my acceptance. There needs to be other motivators involved. My example of a champion was meant to illustrate, and lead to, a writer who thinks as you do & achieving great success.



saellys said:


> I'm not asking for a champion; I'm asking for a little help.


I understand. You need to be realistic about who you expect to help. Internal motivations are yours. Most wont have the same passion to develop internal motivations for this issue. External motivations, such as examples of success, will garner more attention than preaching from a pulpit (that comment is not meant to offend, only illustrate that preaching is not your best avenue for success).


----------



## Addison

saellys said:


> ...Fantasy stories have a long sad history of being predominantly about one type of person, to the exclusion and misrepresentation of everyone else. Anyone looking for something different stands to be turned off by seeing yet another story about the same kind of person, and may just skip it in favor of finding something that represents them for a change.



Uh...correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't writing your own story mean you can write it your own way? If you want the bad guy to win, go ahead, it's your story. Want the hero to....I don't know...go through the whole story walking on his hands? Go ahead, it's _your_ story. Write it how you want to write it, not how hundreds before you have written. 

For a written point on this subject, look up the American poem "Shake the Dust".


----------



## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> That makes my head spin...both of us I suppose. No, what I meant was the person delivering the message has no bearing on my acceptance. There needs to be other motivators involved. My example of a champion was meant to illustrate, and lead to, a writer who thinks as you do & achieving great success.



I see. No champion (or change) without success then? I realize that was the basis of the money-motivated example I wrote earlier that starred a hypothetical you, but the difference I'm seeing is that I think change can start a lot earlier, and what I got from your post is that nothing will change until someone who already wants change gets famous. I'm working on the whole being a famous writer thing, but I guess I'm just a hopeless idealist for thinking that minds can change before I have an armful of Hugos. Should I come back in a few years and try this discussion again? 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> I understand. You need to be realistic about who you expect to help. Internal motivations are yours. Most wont have the same passion to develop internal motivations for this issue. External motivations, such as examples of success, will garner more attention than preaching from a pulpit (that comment is not meant to offend, only illustrate that preaching is not your best avenue for success).



Education is external motivation. I'll grant you that it's nowhere near as powerful as examples of success, but right now it's all I can do. You've acknowledged that these issues are issues, and that we're all capable of doing something about them, and I _think_ I've narrowed down everything that's actually stopping you, so that seems to be left is "I don't care enough." If you can't bring yourself to care enough to when the message comes from someone you "know" (inasmuch as we can know each other via this forum) and who shares many, if certainly not all, of your values about writing, what will the fame and success of the messenger change? Will it really change anything, or will the message just get dismissed some other way?

When I boil this down, it sounds suspiciously like you're admitting shallowness on the part of anyone who doesn't want to do something about the issue of representation in fantasy, but feel free to elaborate if I've got that wrong.



Addison said:


> Uh...correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't writing your own story mean you can write it your own way? If you want the bad guy to win, go ahead, it's your story. Want the hero to....I don't know...go through the whole story walking on his hands? Go ahead, it's _your_ story. Write it how you want to write it, not how hundreds before you have written.





saellys said:


> The "write it yourself" argument is common and fallacious. The extension is that only women should write about women and only men should write about men--see the thread about writing the opposite sex for more on that.
> 
> ... It is your world. You can do whatever you want. Just be aware that if you choose to present a female-excluding story, or a story that normalizes some harmful stereotype, you are likely to hear the opinions of your audience, and how you respond to those opinions will determine whether they remain your audience.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> I see. No champion (or change) without success then? I realize that was the basis of the money-motivated example I wrote earlier that starred a hypothetical you, but the difference I'm seeing is that I think change can start a lot earlier, and what I got from your post is that nothing will change until someone who already wants change gets famous. I'm working on the whole being a famous writer thing, but I guess I'm just a hopeless idealist for thinking that minds can change before I have an armful of Hugos. Should I come back in a few years and try this discussion again?
> 
> Education is external motivation. I'll grant you that it's nowhere near as powerful as examples of success, but right now it's all I can do. You've acknowledged that these issues are issues, and that we're all capable of doing something about them, and I think I've narrowed down everything that's actually stopping you, so that seems to be left is "I don't care enough." If you can't bring yourself to care enough to when the message comes from someone you "know" (inasmuch as we can know each other via this forum) and who shares many, if certainly not all, of your values about writing, what will the fame and success of the messenger change? Will it really change anything, or will the message just get dismissed some other way?
> 
> When I boil this down, it sounds suspiciously like you're admitting shallowness on the part of anyone who doesn't want to do something about the issue of representation in fantasy, but feel free to elaborate if I've got that wrong.



Yes. I don't feel a need to change my writing which is pretty much where we began, although, I have given it some reflection. In addition, my current project, also as we discussed, has a decent diversity already (as judged by your criteria).

I don't see how I'm admitting shallowness. Your issues and goals are simply not as important to me as my own. Is that shallow? If so, then every human on the face of earth would qualify as shallow, yourself included.

We've come full circle.

Further, I hope you do achieve the level of success that sparks change. I want nothing less for you.


----------



## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Yes. I don't feel a need to change my writing which is pretty much where we began, although, I have given it some reflection. In addition, my current project, also as we discussed, has a decent diversity already (as judged by your criteria).



I'm really glad to have inspired some measure of reflection through our discussion, and like I said way back, I'm glad your work is automatically diverse and I look forward to reading your current project. A whole host of writers, published and otherwise, don't naturally and organically create diverse and positive representations, and don't notice problems when they arise; hence the importance of education.



T.Allen.Smith said:


> I don't see how I'm admitting shallowness. Your issues and goals are simply not as important to me as my own. Is that shallow? If so, then every human on the face of earth would qualify as shallow, yourself included.



The shallow part is the idea that no one will care until someone who does care is famous. Like I said, I guess I'm an idealist in that I believe change can happen before then, but simultaneously a cynic because I believe people would find ways to dismiss the message anyway because they just don't care.



T.Allen.Smith said:


> We've come full circle.



With some very important distinctions made along the way, which I appreciate. 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> Further, I hope you do achieve the level of success that sparks change. I want nothing less for you.



Likewise, sir!


----------



## Jabrosky

saellys said:


> I'm really glad to have inspired some measure of reflection through our discussion, and like I said way back, I'm glad your work is automatically diverse and I look forward to reading your current project.


I'm working on a project you might call "diverse" too. One of my Facebook friends and I are collaborating on an adventure story, geared towards younger audiences, about a young man who travels back in time to ancient Egypt (or the fantastical equivalent thereof). I am still ironing out the plot, but I do know that our hero teams up with a native warrior princess on some kind of quest. Although I currently picture the protagonist as the standard straight white male, the princess is a beautiful and dark-skinned African woman who acts as a protector for him, and the setting in general is dominated by PoC.


----------



## Mindfire

Nihal said:


> Yes and no. Once upon a time I was a little girl. While I tolerated stories with male protagonists, it was more because I *had no choice*. The men got to do all the cool things in these stories and the female, when they even appeared, usually were dull or sounded fake.
> 
> It happened in games also. One of the games that "redeemed" this industry to me was _Kyrandia II: The Hand of Fate_, because I got to play a female. When I first played it I had a strong feeling of "At last!".
> 
> Because I tolerated those stories, it doesn't mean I was happy about it. I must admit I never got over it, even if the times are changing now.
> 
> I won't force you in a personal crusade to portray cool kickass females and ethnic diversity. However, I am selfish. I want to show the women I never got to see in my childhood, the MCs who do not have blond, straight hair and blue eyes. I don't care if some average male reader don't identify himself with the protagonist, he got a plenty of other stories - and they're good! - to read.
> 
> The other thing I want to do is to draw characters who wears more than one set of clothes (c'mon, their eternal clothes always bothered me!).



I can relate to that, being a minority. But did you ever watch Kim Possible? That show was quite aggressively "girl power!", to the point where all the male characters were evil, complete doofuses, or both. Except for Wade and the Twins, they were cool. That's the flaw with so many shows that try to be feminist. They don't make the male and female characters equal, they just make the females super-competent and make the males idiots.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm not slamming shows with a pro-girl message. My intent was to:

1. Suggest to Nihal a great show with a female protagonist that she might enjoy if she hadn't seen it already.

2. As an aside, mention an aspect of that show that kinda annoyed me and illustrate the dangers of overcompensating.

And as long as I'm editing this post, I'm also going to shamelessly shill for another satisfying show. (Yay alliteration!) Avatar: The Last Airbender and it's sequel Avatar: The Legend of Korra are both excellent shows with awesome male and female protagonists- and of color no less! Legend of Korra even took the jump and decided to have a female main character, and it worked! I cannot recommend these shows enough. (And as another aside, they make their female characters awesome _without_ making the male characters into idiots.)


----------



## Mindfire

Ankari said:


> I don't.  Not fully, anyway.  What does it mean we except the bolded line when it refers to the description of the character?  My writing is awesome, the story is outstanding, but because it involves a white (which I'm not) male, the writing is subpar?



Not what I was saying at all. But if your writing includes minority characters who are only shallow stereotypes, tokens, or otherwise flimsy characters, then there is something wrong.


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> The problem with that extremely diplomatic and mitigated example is that it cannot be extended beyond one character in one story, and it gives no indication that a problem of characterization might be connected to a much larger trend. There is no opportunity for consciousness that continues beyond the story that person is working on at that moment, and might shape the way they portray a particular kind of person for the better later on. It leaves room to keep writing the same problematic things indefinitely, rather than encouraging awareness of a given issue that each writer, consciously or un-, may contribute to solving or perpetuating.
> 
> I have given exactly the kind of critique you recommend right here on this forum, but I have connected it to larger issues when I did, and both parties were every bit as receptive as I could have hoped.
> 
> ...
> 
> I came away from both exchanges totally satisfied because neither of them dismissed my views out of hand. They even both clicked Thanks on my posts--hooray for validation! I had, at some level, got them thinking about what they had presented and whether they would do anything different in the future.



You've actually provided an example that supports my suggestion. You did it the "diplomatic" way and got results. But when you try to "soapbox" it, you're more likely to get resistance and less likely to get results. Better to go case-by-case. Path of least resistance and all that.


----------



## Nihal

Mindfire said:


> I can relate to that, being a minority. But did you ever watch Kim Possible? That show was quite aggressively "girl power!", to the point where all the male characters were evil, complete doofuses, or both. Except for Wade and the Twins, they were cool. That's the flaw with so many shows that try to be feminist. They don't make the male and female characters equal, they just make the females super-competent and make the males idiots.
> 
> EDIT: To clarify, I'm not slamming shows with a pro-girl message. My intent was to:
> 
> 1. Suggest to Nihal a great show with a female protagonist that she might enjoy if she hadn't seen it already.
> 
> 2. As an aside, mention an aspect of that show that kinda annoyed me and illustrate the dangers of overcompensating.
> 
> And as long as I'm editing this post, I'm also going to shamelessly shill for another satisfying show. (Yay alliteration!) Avatar: The Last Airbender and it's sequel Avatar: The Legend of Korra are both excellent shows with awesome male and female protagonists- and of color no less! Legend of Korra even took the jump and decided to have a female main character, and it worked! I cannot recommend these shows enough. (And as another aside, they make their female characters awesome _without_ making the male characters into idiots.)



Hey, hey, it's not like if I want to see pro-girl shows. 
I don't want to see something with a political message, I want diversity.

I just missed seeing more females in this kind of story. As a child we to try to identify ourselves with the characters, and I couldn't fully do this. It's not like if I'll turn around if I see a story _not_ about a woman, I just want to read the both and many more.

What I won't allow is someone trying to change something I created because the male readers aren't going to identify themselves with this, while women are mysteriously inclined to accept these stories.

In the past you hadn't too many stories about women, now they exist, being more and more common. I don't think men reject the stories with female MCs because they're genetically inclined to do so, or something like that. They're just not used to read these stories, you could even say they're "spoiled".

It's not impossible to a men to like these stories, you only need to look at anime/manga, there are a plenty of stories about female MCs, shounen stories (targeted to male teenagers). They have been around for a while now. They're not always about fanservice, yet the public accept these stories really well.

--
I've never seen Kim Possible, I can't stand this kind of animation, not my taste. I've watched the first Avatar, then Korra, and liked it (more or less, suddenly the story hurried the f* up). Not exactly because it's a woman now, I admit I liked to see one female Avatar now, but what I liked more was how the world changed.


----------



## Mindfire

Yeah, the way the world of Avatar was actually dynamic and changed because of the protagonists' actions is something I liked. They inspired me to do it in my WIP. It's an interesting alternative to "fantasy stasis lock" and provides interesting story ideas.


----------



## Ghost

I think the Bechdel test is a fun tool for criticism that can make people aware of issues they weren't aware of. I also think reflecting on the story and characters helps us grow as writers. It's cool to share these things like Guru Coyote did in the OP. But once people start talking social responsibility and mandatory equality, I head in the other direction. I do not like to be told what to do. I already have my own vision for each story, thank you very much. And no one has the right to expect my support for his or her cause.

Worrying about the Bechdel test, TVTropes, mythic journeys, and Mary Sue quizzes seems unproductive. Some writers seem to rely on these tests and systems to do the thinking for them. Focusing on theories and systems isn't natural for me. I work from the individual outward, from the specific to the abstract–not the other way around.



saellys said:


> If you're covering up not giving a crap by saying your creative process or sacred vision is being damaged by the Bechdel Test, that's something else.



I don't think anyone felt harmed by the Bechdel Test. The problem was the idea that we as writers have a duty to represent all people and/or worry about perpetuating this or that. We aren't Congress. We have no such duty. Not everyone needs equal representation from every author.

Inserting or adjusting characters to validate someone else's experience can easily dilute your own. Sure, feedback can make you aware of blind spots and lapses in characterization, but if you're sticking Micronesians into your fiction for fairness and diversity...ugh. Do it because it's interesting or it means something to you or it's part of the story's truth. Don't do it to fill a quota. That's not fair to the character or the reader because it’s not genuine.

Jabrosky mentioned how minorities in fantasy are put into niche markets (I'm paraphrasing badly here), and Mindfire mentioned encouraging diversity in writers. I think these are far more interesting angles. Exposure for the authors who feature minorities and desegregating fiction so we don't have sections like "urban" or LGBT would be a start. There are plenty of women writing fantasy, though. Perhaps a lack of interesting female characters in epic/high fantasy drove many women to YA and paranormal romance/urban fantasy because they didn't see themselves in the stories?



saellys said:


> Nevertheless, brushing off a minority opinion because "nothing would appeal to everyone" seems unwise where valid criticism is concerned. Obviously no one's goal is to appeal to everyone, as that would be fruitless and frustrating. However, somewhere in the list of goals we want to accomplish as writers, "not thoughtlessly perpetuating some harmful idea" and "acknowledging our mistakes without caveat when we do and trying to do better next time" should be line items.



My problem with this is that what some consider "valid criticism" others see as personal opinion. If the extent of the criticism is "Well, I found the story less enjoyable because this small segment of the population wasn’t represented," I wouldn't be bothered. Not everybody can be in every story unless I make it horribly abstract. Who would relate to that? The best a writer can do is touch on specific human emotions and concerns so readers can identify with those instead of the categories.

Surely, we can think less about labels and see people as individuals who do things differently. This would also keep folks from making condescending posts about how _decent_ writers will do this simple thing and follow their rules because they'd realize we don't all share the same goals or process. 

Fiction is subjective. Even though I write fantasy, my fictional world reflects what I see in the real world, and I don't write about people unless I relate to them. Anything else obscures the emotional truth, creating a faÃ§ade instead of a reflection.

It's not my job to make readers feel better about themselves. It's not my job to think for them.



saellys said:


> I'm assuming (and if I'm wrong, by all means correct me) that those of you in this thread who have been most vocally opposed to the application of the Bechdel Test and any potential subsequent action regarding your writing are white men (excluding Mindfire).


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> You've actually provided an example that supports my suggestion. You did it the "diplomatic" way and got results. But when you try to "soapbox" it, you're more likely to get resistance and less likely to get results. Better to go case-by-case. Path of least resistance and all that.



Except you recommended that I avoid mentioning the broader issues at all, lest someone think I was "soapboxing" it. 

What I've gotten from this thread can be loosely summed up as follows: don't be preachy, unless you're famous, in which case people _might_ listen to you, because nobody will do anything about the problem without some guarantee of reward, even if they recognize that it's a valid problem and in theory they could help solve it, but they care about something else more, and therefore can't be bothered to support any other cause.

So those of us who aren't famous yet, and who are doing exactly what we recommend with our own work without compromising the sanctity of our creative vision, should probably just quit because we'll end up being the lone voice in the wilderness and our peers won't throw in with any movement that doesn't directly affect them, and fantasy as a genre will remain as it has been (in terms of what gets represented and how) basically since its inception.

Kind of a downer.


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> Except you recommended that I avoid mentioning the broader issues at all, lest someone think I was "soapboxing" it.
> 
> What I've gotten from this thread can be loosely summed up as follows: don't be preachy, unless you're famous, in which case people _might_ listen to you, because nobody will do anything about the problem without some guarantee of reward, even if they recognize that it's a valid problem and in theory they could help solve it, but they care about something else more, and therefore can't be bothered to support any other cause.
> 
> So those of us who aren't famous yet, and who are doing exactly what we recommend with our own work without compromising the sanctity of our creative vision, should probably just quit because we'll end up being the lone voice in the wilderness and our peers won't throw in with any movement that doesn't directly affect them, and fantasy as a genre will remain as it has been (in terms of what gets represented and how) basically since its inception.
> 
> Kind of a downer.



I think you should have stopped with "don't be preachy." And as has been mentioned in this thread, if you want to make a difference in the larger picture, your best bet is to encourage people from more diverse backgrounds to pursue writing and/or try to convince those with power in the publishing industry to stop shoving books with minority leads or authors into a niche section where they never see the light of mainstream readership.


----------



## FatCat

I'm working on a project that will by no means pass this test, the MC doesn't have that great of an opinion of women and therefor the narrative is focused on men. I wonder, am I excluding a whole group of readers by going that route, even though it pertains to the story. Will women readers say, 'I can't relate to this, there's no women involved!' I hope this is not the case, because I really like the idea of what I'm working on and would hope that, just because of the lack of representation of a gender, the story can still be appealing.


----------



## saellys

Ghost said:


> Surely, we can think less about labels and see people as individuals who do things differently. This would also keep folks from making condescending posts about how _decent_ writers will do this simple thing and follow their rules because they'd realize we don't all share the same goals or process.



Just so you know, the instant where I used the word "decent" was in reference to treating everyone equally being one of the base minimum requirements for humanity. The instant where I referred to writing quality was to point out that any writer with skill would find no difficulty in implementing changes that lead to greater diversity in their work. Provided they want to, of course.


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> I think you should have stopped with "don't be preachy." And as has been mentioned in this thread, if you want to make a difference in the larger picture, your best bet is to encourage people from more diverse backgrounds to pursue writing and/or try to convince those with power in the publishing industry to stop shoving books with minority leads or authors into a niche section where they never see the light of mainstream readership.



You're free to think that, but "don't be preachy" is not the only thing people have told me in this thread. And as stated before, encouraging people from more diverse backgrounds to pursue writing and coaxing publishers to reach out to more diverse authors _is_ important, but it's far from the only possible course of action, and things will change much more quickly if we do that in addition to taking other measures of our own.


----------



## saellys

FatCat said:


> I'm working on a project that will by no means pass this test, the MC doesn't have that great of an opinion of women and therefor the narrative is focused on men. I wonder, am I excluding a whole group of readers by going that route, even though it pertains to the story. Will women readers say, 'I can't relate to this, there's no women involved!' I hope this is not the case, because I really like the idea of what I'm working on and would hope that, just because of the lack of representation of a gender, that the story can still be appealing.



I question the connection between your MC not having a great opinion of women and the narrative exclusively focusing on men. Surely your MC has chances to encounter some women somewhere? 

Knowing only what you've told me, I can't say it would be a dealbreaker--I "relate" to lots of different kinds of people in fiction as long as they're well-written, and I'm writing a male protagonist in my own work who has all kinds of crappy opinions of women. The narrative, however, supports the women around him, rather than his biases.


----------



## Mindfire

saellys said:


> You're free to think that, but "don't be preachy" is not the only thing people have told me in this thread.



Well, that is what it is, I suppose. I can't take responsibility for any opinion but my own. I just wanted to make sure I hadn't made a terribly bad impression with regard to my views on this issue.


----------



## Zero Angel

How entertaining is it?

That's my criteria for evaluating books. Now, that's not why I am writing. I actually am writing to inspire people to be better and promote good in the world, but the way I'm going to do that for my own books is through being entertaining and interesting. When I read, watch, or otherwise consume something of someone else's though, I don't care if there's a social message or not (if there is, it had better be organic), when I am reviewing it, the question I ask is, "How entertaining is it?"


----------



## saellys

Mindfire said:


> Well, that is what it is, I suppose. I can't take responsibility for any opinion but my own. I just wanted to make sure I hadn't made a terribly bad impression with regard to my views on this issue.



Not at all! I've consistently looked forward to your posts, actually. We most definitely agree that encouraging more minority writers is important, but if you maintain that it's more important than, or not compatible with, making changes in our own work as well, that's where we differ.


----------



## FatCat

Well what I'm saying is that this character would either 1: Not really care what two women are talking about, and then why would I write about it, and 2: relationships to him are not mutual, to him women are objects to be used and, in some way, more of a trophy than anything. And yes, he has encounters with women, but within the scope of the POV those biases will always be present. I guess what worries me about this, and many other 'tests', is that the meaning of the implementation of these tests are all well and good, but worrying about the outcome can be detrimental, especially to a new writer like myself. It's not that diversity in characters won't make the story more in-depth, it's the idea that the lack of diversity should be seen as something to be fixed, whether it fits the story or not. That's the danger with any type of writing test, as I see it, they're far to black and white.


----------



## Jabrosky

For the thousandth time, no one in this whole thread is opposed to representing PoC, women, or LGBT fairly in fantasy. It's the whole "representing something merely out of a social obligation" that we're taking issue with. To put it bluntly, we don't like being told what we should write. We want to write whatever we want to write.

As it happens, a _lot_ of the subject matter I truly love already is underrepresented in the fantasy genre anyway. It's not like we all want to reprint _Lord of the Rings_.


----------



## saellys

FatCat said:


> Well what I'm saying is that this character would either 1: Not really care what two women are talking about, and then why would I write about it, and 2: relationships to him are not mutual, to him women are objects to be used and, in some way, more of a trophy than anything. And yes, he has encounters with women, but within the scope of the POV those biases will always be present.



Yeah, I definitely see what your saying about POV, but the problem with point 1 is that in this case, two women talking to each other would be part of the world around your character. If you're capturing or describing anything at all beyond your MC's internal monologue, it's just as easy to add two lines of dialogue and then have your character interrupt them to demand which of them would like to sleep with him.  Or, if strictly passing Bechdel doesn't appeal, have a female character or two who actively works against his biases by not letting him use her. He can react to that however you want, but the point is to show that his biases are unsupported by the women around him.

Not trying to tell you what to write here--these are just two examples of how to show your reader in concrete ways that your character's views are not your own, and how to not perpetuate the same cycle of misrepresentation by omission. I know some dudes just like your character in the real world, but whatever they think about the women they know, they still interact with women who don't fit into their biases on a daily basis. Realistically, in the amount of time a novel can cover, your MC can meet at least one.



FatCat said:


> I guess what worries me about this, and many other 'tests', is that the meaning of the implementation of these tests are all well and good, but worrying about the outcome can be detrimental, especially to a new writer like myself. It's not that diversity in characters won't make the story more in-depth, it's the idea that the lack of diversity should be seen as something to be fixed, whether it fits the story or not. That's the danger with any type of writing test, as I see it, they're far to black and white.



I'm sorry this is a stumbling block for you, but I'm really glad it's making you think about your content. The great thing about Bechdel is that it is black & white, and kind of jarring. It's so simple that a writer will probably be able to recall, almost instantly, whether their work passes, and from there they can start to think about the greater implications, as you have done. It's not meant to cripple your writing process; it's just meant to get you thinking about what you're presenting. 



Jabrosky said:


> For the thousandth time, no one in this whole thread is opposed to representing PoC, women, or LGBT fairly in fantasy. It's the whole "representing something merely out of a social obligation" that we're taking issue with. To put it bluntly, we don't like being told what we should write. We want to write whatever we want to write.
> 
> As it happens, a _lot_ of the subject matter I truly love already is underrepresented in the fantasy genre anyway. It's not like we all want to reprint _Lord of the Rings_.



This point has been well and truly driven home. Everyone agrees that broader diversity in fantasy among both readers and characters is good, but no one feels like doing any purposeful work to get there. Check. Acknowledged. Moving on.


----------



## Mindfire

Well that was interesting.


----------



## Chime85

Disclaimer: In this instance, every time i mention "say" (or variation of), it is coupled with the remark (or didn't say)

I may not necessarily defend what someone says. However, I will shout from the rooftops for their right to say it.

xXx


----------



## Penpilot

saellys said:


> We most definitely agree that encouraging more minority writers is important, ...



saellys this isn't necessarily directed at you, but at that type of statement in general. As someone whose last name is Wong, statements like this tend to rankle me just a little. It implies that minorities need that little extra cuddle because they're not brave enough to step out into the big bad world. Speaking only for myself, because I'm sure others feel contrary, I don't want or need to be encouraged because I'm a minority. I'll do fine without specially consideration or treatment. I don't look up to a writer because of their gender or skin color. I look up to them because they write well. It's the same with my heroes. I don't need my heroes to be Chinese like me. I just need them to be heroes worthy to looked up to.

Maybe I'm more accepting of things in the western world because I grew up in it. But when I watch a show like say The Big Bang Theory, I don't wonder to myself why are there no Chinese in the show to represent me. Why? Because I'm already represented by the fact I'm a nerd/geek, and the whole show represents me regardless of race or gender. And I don't need it to pass some arbitrary test.


----------



## Feo Takahari

I tend to have more sympathy for the people who say "I feel underrepresented, and that hurts" than for the people who say "I feel fine with representation as it is." After all, the latter contains no implication that you'd feel different with more representation. (And some of the people who say "I feel underrepresented, and that hurts" do so in such an eloquent fashion that I'd feel like a horrible person if I told them to suck it up and be happy with what they've got.)


----------



## saellys

Penpilot said:


> saellys this isn't necessarily directed at you, but at that type of statement in general. As someone whose last name is Wong, statements like this tend to rankle me just a little. It implies that minorities need that little extra cuddle because they're not brave enough to step out into the big bad world. Speaking only for myself, because I'm sure others feel contrary, I don't want or need to be encouraged because I'm a minority. I'll do fine without specially consideration or treatment. I don't look up to a writer because of their gender or skin color. I look up to them because they write well. It's the same with my heroes. I don't need my heroes to be Chinese like me. I just need them to be heroes worthy to looked up to.
> 
> Maybe I'm more accepting of things in the western world because I grew up in it. But when I watch a show like say The Big Bang Theory, I don't wonder to myself why are there no Chinese in the show to represent me. Why? Because I'm already represented by the fact I'm a nerd/geek, and the whole show represents me regardless of race or gender. And I don't need it to pass some arbitrary test.



Thank you for pointing this out. I don't feel great about the term "encourage" either, but what I meant specifically was "assure people of non-status-quo backgrounds that if they write, I'll read it," regardless of whether their particular stories have any message behind them that is connected to their background. (But I believe in many cases this will be a natural result.) I want to tell as many kinds of stories about as many kinds of people as possible, but I'm gonna screw up sometime because I'm not those people and I have certain privileges that inevitably influence what I produce. Case in point: the connotations of the word "encourage". 

It rankled the crap out of me when my husband told me I should read a particular fantasy novel "because it has a woman as the protagonist". It's not that I think no one can enjoy a given story just because they're not represented in it; it's that I have found, and read the opinions of others who have also found, that being presented with an endless sea of not-even-close-to-me in the media is very wearying. 

To put it a little more generally, I agree with Mindfire's assertion that with more variety among writers, there will be more variety among stories. Getting there requires assuring writers that they'll have an audience, because plenty have been and can be turned off by the very attitudes expressed in this thread--if so many people don't care about representation in their own work, what guarantee is there that readers or publishers will care about diversity among authors? Obviously there are exceptions. I hope that makes sense and is less condescending than my previous sentiment.


----------



## Jabrosky

Under-representation may not affect all groups equally. Here in America, for instance, northern Asian peoples are if anything idealized as "model minorities" who are morally superior to everyone else, sometimes even whites. If white Americans must find any value in an "exotic" non-Western culture, more often than not they pick the Asians, most of all the Japanese. A few hippie types _may_ choose Native Americans as "noble savages", but by and large the darker-skinned races are written off as pathological savages. Furthermore, Asia by and large has withstood the onslaughts of Western imperialism far better than Africa or the Americas, so it has more power in the global hegemony than the rest of the non-Western world. Therefore, I'd argue that any under-representation of Asian people in Western media does them less damage than the equivalent to African and Native American peoples.


----------



## saellys

I don't even want to play a "who does underrepresentation hurt most/least?" game.


----------



## Feo Takahari

Jabrosky said:


> Under-representation may not affect all groups equally. Here in America, for instance, northern Asian peoples are if anything idealized as "model minorities" who are morally superior to everyone else, sometimes even whites. If white Americans must find any value in an "exotic" non-Western culture, more often than not they pick the Asians, most of all the Japanese. A few hippie types _may_ choose Native Americans as "noble savages", but by and large the darker-skinned races are written off as pathological savages. Furthermore, Asia by and large has withstood the onslaughts of Western imperialism far better than Africa or the Americas, so it has more power in the global hegemony than the rest of the non-Western world. Therefore, I'd argue that any under-representation of Asian people in Western media does them less damage than the equivalent to African and Native American peoples.



I've heard it said that the portrayal of non-villainous Asians in American popular culture started out with Suzie Wong and wound up with Connie Chung. I guess that's an improvement . . .


----------



## BWFoster78

Just got back from Vegas this afternoon and spent some downtime catching up on this thread.

My opinion has not changed.  I have seen no argument that in any way convinces me that a) universal equality is something that I should devote myself to striving toward (or, indeed, even make the smallest steps toward supporting) any more than any other possible cause or that b) meeting this "test" accomplishes anything other than to make a small, vocal group "feel" better.

If people reading books have a need to see their race/religion/gender better represented in order to gain enjoyment from a story, I truly feel sorry for those people.  I don't care if the story is about a man or a woman or a rabbit.  I don't care if the story supports my worldview or is told from the viewpoint of those who detest my worldview.  If a story is well told, I'll enjoy it.  I'm sorry some of you apparently can't.

I understand fully that I cannot please everyone, and I have no desire to try.  My objective is to tell the best stories that I can.  To me, that does not include - and I hope it never does include - artificially inserting scenes or characters to try to please certain groups.

I absolutely detest the concept.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Feo Takahari said:


> I tend to have more sympathy for the people who say "I feel underrepresented, and that hurts" than for the people who say "I feel fine with representation as it is." After all, the latter contains no implication that you'd feel different with more representation.


That viewpoint makes perfect sense for anyone that considers themselves underrepresented. 



Feo Takahari said:


> ...And some of the people who say "I feel underrepresented, and that hurts" do so in such an eloquent fashion that I'd feel like a horrible person if I told them to suck it up and be happy with what they've got.


Who said "suck it up and be happy with what you've got"?


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

BWFoster78 said:


> Just got back from Vegas this afternoon and spent some downtime catching up on this thread.
> 
> My opinion has not changed.  I have seen no argument that in any way convinces me that a) universal equality is something that I should devote myself to striving toward (or, indeed, even make the smallest steps toward supporting) any more than any other possible cause or that b) meeting this "test" accomplishes anything other than to make a small, vocal group "feel" better.
> 
> If people reading books have a need to see their race/religion/gender better represented in order to gain enjoyment from a story, I truly feel sorry for those people.  I don't care if the story is about a man or a woman or a rabbit.  I don't care if the story supports my worldview or is told from the viewpoint of those who detest my worldview.  If a story is well told, I'll enjoy it.  I'm sorry some of you apparently can't.
> 
> I understand fully that I cannot please everyone, and I have no desire to try.  My objective is to tell the best stories that I can.  To me, that does not include - and I hope it never does include - artificially inserting scenes or characters to try to please certain groups.
> 
> I absolutely detest the concept.



I think it's more about trying to raise awareness of the fact that a certain viewpoint (white male heteronormative) is severely overrepresented in fiction, in a pure statistical sense when compared to the populace. If you think that's an okay thing and that we shouldn't at least try to _encourage_ writers to expand their horizons, well, that's your view. I would encourage you to maybe consider that it's _not_ a healthy thing for our society to have one viewpoint so dominant.

I'm not asking you to insert things artificially to meet some kind of quota; I'm not asking you to devote your life to achieving universal equality. The only thing I (and most of the people in this thread, I suspect) are asking is that you at least acknowledge that there's a problem, and that it's something that benefits us all if we confront. That's all.


----------



## Steerpike

BWFoster78 said:


> Just got back from Vegas this afternoon and spent some downtime catching up on this thread.
> 
> My opinion has not changed.  I have seen no argument that in any way convinces me that a) universal equality is something that I should devote myself to striving toward (or, indeed, even make the smallest steps toward supporting) any more than any other possible cause or that b) meeting this "test" accomplishes anything other than to make a small, vocal group "feel" better.
> 
> If people reading books have a need to see their race/religion/gender better represented in order to gain enjoyment from a story, I truly feel sorry for those people.  I don't care if the story is about a man or a woman or a rabbit.  I don't care if the story supports my worldview or is told from the viewpoint of those who detest my worldview.  If a story is well told, I'll enjoy it.  I'm sorry some of you apparently can't.
> 
> I understand fully that I cannot please everyone, and I have no desire to try.  My objective is to tell the best stories that I can.  To me, that does not include - and I hope it never does include - artificially inserting scenes or characters to try to please certain groups.
> 
> I absolutely detest the concept.



This strikes me as overly defensive, and also as a failure to understand the argument being made. I wonder if we're even reading the same thread. 

Also, it is perhaps easier not to care about representation when your group is the one being favored disproportionately in representation. I don't think it is that hard to understand why others who aren't represented well might have a different viewpoint.


----------



## Feo Takahari

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Who said "suck it up and be happy with what you've got"?





BWFoster78 said:


> If people reading books have a need to see their race/religion/gender better represented in order to gain enjoyment from a story, I truly feel sorry for those people.  I don't care if the story is about a man or a woman or a rabbit.  I don't care if the story supports my worldview or is told from the viewpoint of those who detest my worldview.  If a story is well told, I'll enjoy it.  I'm sorry some of you apparently can't.



@BWFoster: that may fit with some of what Saellys is saying (I don't fully understand her point anymore), but I don't have a problem with any individual story not being about a minority. I'm approaching this entirely in the aggregate--when certain groups are grossly underrepresented even relative to their population, that's probably not a good sign as to how those groups are perceived. (My natural tendency would be to treat this as a symptom rather than an illness in and of itself--like I said earlier, I'm mostly irritated on the general grounds of "Why not do something different for once?"--but some people argue that representation itself can help to deal with prejudice, and they usually argue better than I do.)

P.S. Again, while Saellys might be approaching this as a "You ought to do this" thing, I'm approaching this as a "Why not try it once or twice?" thing. I don't think I particularly lost anything by writing a story set on a Polynesian island.*

*Granted, that story pretty much NEEDED some sort of island setting . . .


----------



## PaulineMRoss

I’ve followed this thread with interest (and stamina!). I’m not a writer, so I don’t have an axe to grind, but as a reader and reviewer I have some sympathy with both sides in this discussion.

On the one hand, the Bechdel Test may be simplistic and crude, but it is, nevertheless, an indicator of sorts. I agree with whoever it was who said upthread (way, way upthread) that it’s more applicable to movies, because the much bigger financial investment is bound to result in a product aimed at the widest possible audience. Diverging from the perceived norm is too big a risk. A writer of fiction, however, can take more chances with something seen as edgy and controversial. Even so, the test can still be informative applied to fiction, and if it causes people to evaluate their own work and view it in a different light, that is all to the good.

On the other hand, I totally understand why authors dislike being asked to change their work. Fiction is a creative art, and authors must surely be free to tell the story they want to tell. If that story happens to be about a group of white heterosexual males, an author should (surely) be free to explore the consequences of that. Adding one or several women to the mix would change the whole dynamic of the group (as would adding an elf or a priest or a lizard-man or a shapeshifter or a wizard), and thus would result in a different story, one the author was not planning on telling. Or perhaps I should say, not planning on telling at that time, because every book is a new start; the next one may be about a group of non-white lesbian women.

As a reader, it doesn’t bother me whether the story is about men or women, white or non-white, human or non-human, so long as it’s a good story, with characters I can believe in. I don’t need female characters in there to identify with. I’d far, far rather a book where women are peripheral than one which has a token woman or two as protagonists just so the author can say ‘Look, it’s got women in, that’s good, right?’ But I think a distinction should be made between main characters and minor ones. The main characters are integral to the author’s vision, and can’t change gender or colour or species without changing the story fundamentally, but minor characters are far more generic and interchangeable. There’s no reason why, when our group of heroes enters a tavern, there should be a man behind the bar pulling pints and a woman out front (let’s be really hackneyed, and call her a serving wench, shall we?), not to mention the female cook in the kitchen and the stable boy. Any of those roles can be either gender.

For those worried about the current imbalance, I’d say, firstly, that’s a reflection of current society; when society changes, so will fiction. Secondly, look how far we’ve already come. The defining work of fantasy for a generation or more was The Lord of the Rings, which had precisely three significant female roles, two of them almost entirely passive, the third (Eowyn) an awesome warrior babe, sure, but who nevertheless chose death in battle largely because she’d been rejected by a man, and whose recovery from sickness coincided with her accepting her true place in society as wife and mother. Not exactly a feminist treatise. 

But things have changed. It’s being discussed, for a start, not just here but all over the internet. People are thinking about it, questioning themselves and others, and that can only be good. And there are numerous authors out there now, male and female, who write wonderful women who are every bit as capable as the men, and I firmly believe that trend will continue. [Although I quail a little when I think of Twilight and Fifty Shades. Or Harry Potter, come to that: http://globalcomment.com/in-praise-of-hermione-granger-series/.]

If anyone’s interested, I wrote an essay on this subject on my blog: Pauline's Fantasy Reviews: Essay: On Women In Fantasy


----------



## saellys

BWFoster78 said:


> Just got back from Vegas this afternoon and spent some downtime catching up on this thread.



Welcome back! I hope it was a good trip and the slots treated you well. 



BWFoster78 said:


> My opinion has not changed.  I have seen no argument that in any way convinces me that a) universal equality is something that I should devote myself to striving toward (or, indeed, even make the smallest steps toward supporting) any more than any other possible cause or that b) meeting this "test" accomplishes anything other than to make a small, vocal group "feel" better.



I and others have made several rational arguments about why it benefits you directly to represent more in your work. I haven't seen any direct response to any of them; just a continued refrain of "I shouldn't have to care". If you don't know which arguments I'm referring to, go back and read them. I'm through with repeating myself.



BWFoster78 said:


> If people reading books have a need to see their race/religion/gender better represented in order to gain enjoyment from a story, I truly feel sorry for those people.  I don't care if the story is about a man or a woman or a rabbit.  I don't care if the story supports my worldview or is told from the viewpoint of those who detest my worldview.  If a story is well told, I'll enjoy it.  I'm sorry some of you apparently can't.



Already addressed this.



BWFoster78 said:


> I understand fully that I cannot please everyone, and I have no desire to try.  My objective is to tell the best stories that I can.  To me, that does not include - and I hope it never does include - artificially inserting scenes or characters to try to please certain groups.
> 
> I absolutely detest the concept.



Already addressed this.



T.Allen.Smith said:


> That viewpoint makes perfect sense for anyone that considers themselves underrepresented.



So anyone who doesn't consider themselves underrepresented can't hold this viewpoint? Sorry, I don't buy it.



T.Allen.Smith said:


> Who said "suck it up and be happy with what you've got"?



That's the end result of the "I shouldn't have to care" logic.



Feo Takahari said:


> @BWFoster: that may fit with some of what Saellys is saying (I don't fully understand her point anymore), but I don't have a problem with any individual story not being about a minority.



Sorry for being all over the map here. I'm trying to respond to as many posts as possible, at least where they don't just repeat what that poster and others have already said verbatim, which means I often make more than one point, or restate it lots of different ways to better express my ideas. My supreme point is that greater representation in the fantasy genre can only help us as writers, our work, our fellow human beings as readers and lovers of fantasy, and the genre as a whole, and that this is the case whether or not individuals place any priority on equality in the world or greater diversity in their own work. I feel like I've been pretty consistent, but I've definitely gone down some rabbit trails too. If anything is hazy, perhaps I can elaborate?



Feo Takahari said:


> I'm approaching this entirely in the aggregate--when certain groups are grossly underrepresented even relative to their population, that's probably not a good sign as to how those groups are perceived. (My natural tendency would be to treat this as a symptom rather than an illness in and of itself--like I said earlier, I'm mostly irritated on the general grounds of "Why not do something different for once?"--but some people argue that representation itself can help to deal with prejudice, and they usually argue better than I do.)



Bingo. As for representation helping to deal with prejudice, I would conservatively say that it can, in that the inverse--seeing only one viewpoint presented--definitely won't help deal with prejudice. More generally, I think it's every bit a important for people to read stories about people who aren't like them as it is for people to read stories about people who are like them. A healthy, balanced selection of both would be ideal, but that's not what's available right now.


----------



## saellys

PaulineMRoss said:


> On the one hand, the Bechdel Test may be simplistic and crude, but it is, nevertheless, an indicator of sorts. I agree with whoever it was who said upthread (way, way upthread) that it’s more applicable to movies, because the much bigger financial investment is bound to result in a product aimed at the widest possible audience. Diverging from the perceived norm is too big a risk. A writer of fiction, however, can take more chances with something seen as edgy and controversial. Even so, the test can still be informative applied to fiction, and if it causes people to evaluate their own work and view it in a different light, that is all to the good.



Absolutely.



PaulineMRoss said:


> On the other hand, I totally understand why authors dislike being asked to change their work. Fiction is a creative art, and authors must surely be free to tell the story they want to tell. If that story happens to be about a group of white heterosexual males, an author should (surely) be free to explore the consequences of that. Adding one or several women to the mix would change the whole dynamic of the group (as would adding an elf or a priest or a lizard-man or a shapeshifter or a wizard), and thus would result in a different story, one the author was not planning on telling. Or perhaps I should say, not planning on telling at that time, because every book is a new start; the next one may be about a group of non-white lesbian women.



I love that you used the term consequences. In sitting down to write about a group of white heterosexual males (that being all I know of your example), I would immediately ask myself what will make this a story anyone wants to read. The consequence of writing exclusively about white heterosexual males is that the story needs to be set apart in a big way from every other surface-level-same-looking story that came before, lest it be lost in a veritable sea of fantasy stories about white heterosexual males. 



PaulineMRoss said:


> As a reader, it doesn’t bother me whether the story is about men or women, white or non-white, human or non-human, so long as it’s a good story, with characters I can believe in. I don’t need female characters in there to identify with. I’d far, far rather a book where women are peripheral than one which has a token woman or two as protagonists just so the author can say ‘Look, it’s got women in, that’s good, right?’ But I think a distinction should be made between main characters and minor ones. The main characters are integral to the author’s vision, and can’t change gender or colour or species without changing the story fundamentally, but minor characters are far more generic and interchangeable. There’s no reason why, when our group of heroes enters a tavern, there should be a man behind the bar pulling pints and a woman out front (let’s be really hackneyed, and call her a serving wench, shall we?), not to mention the female cook in the kitchen and the stable boy. Any of those roles can be either gender.



While populating the broader world with diversity is vital too, I disagree with the distinction that major characters can't change from draft to draft, because my co-writers and I did exactly this on _The Stone Front_. A character that was white (like nearly everyone in the province where most of the story is set) in the first draft is mixed-race and significantly darker-skinned than the rest of the populace in the second. This character appears in nearly half the book and influences the plot in major ways. The change was prompted by noticing how whitewashed our first draft was (and also because we thought it would be fun); we've backed it up with a little extra worldbuilding that makes the character's heritage internally consistent. Almost none of that will make it into the book, and we don't feel compelled to shoehorn it in beyond a description of the character's physical traits and maybe at some point a line of dialogue about said heritage. We just really like making family trees and cultural histories and migration maps. 

Believe me, I wouldn't be telling anyone that this is a thing they can do in their own writing if I wasn't already doing it in mine.



PaulineMRoss said:


> For those worried about the current imbalance, I’d say, firstly, that’s a reflection of current society; when society changes, so will fiction.



And I would supplement that and turn it on its head by saying that where fiction changes, society can too. It's part of a cycle, and if we rely on one part of the cycle to change before anything else happens, the wheel will just keep on spinning the same direction it always has.



PaulineMRoss said:


> Secondly, look how far we’ve already come. The defining work of fantasy for a generation or more was The Lord of the Rings, which had precisely three significant female roles, two of them almost entirely passive, the third (Eowyn) an awesome warrior babe, sure, but who nevertheless chose death in battle largely because she’d been rejected by a man, and whose recovery from sickness coincided with her accepting her true place in society as wife and mother. Not exactly a feminist treatise.
> 
> But things have changed. It’s being discussed, for a start, not just here but all over the internet. People are thinking about it, questioning themselves and others, and that can only be good. And there are numerous authors out there now, male and female, who write wonderful women who are every bit as capable as the men, and I firmly believe that trend will continue. [Although I quail a little when I think of Twilight and Fifty Shades. Or Harry Potter, come to that: http://globalcomment.com/in-praise-of-hermione-granger-series/.]
> 
> If anyone’s interested, I wrote an essay on this subject on my blog: Pauline's Fantasy Reviews: Essay: On Women In Fantasy



I definitely celebrate all the progress we've made (just like I cheered with the rest of my theater audience during Eowyn's spotlight moment in _Return of the King_, problematic elements of her story aside), but I'm not interested in coasting when there's still so much work to do. 

I'm definitely going to read both those links ASAP. Thanks for sharing them.


----------



## Steerpike

The idea that literature as social commentary has to be fake or forced is truly bizarre. That's what literature was for most of its history, and it is what a lot of literature remains. If you* don't think many writers make a conscious decision on characters and characterization in order to support some broader social theme, you would do well to enlarge the scope of your reading.

You think Octavia Butler didn't think about it before making the protagonist vampire-child in _Fledgling _a black girl? You can take the easy out and say the girl is black because Butler is black, but that does a disservice to the author and the work. Look, also, at a science fiction writer like Robert Heinlein. You think it is an accident that Friday is a bisexual, uninhibited female? There are scenes in that book that serve no other purpose but to reinforce that fact. Was Ellen being disowned by her family for marrying a Tongan not put in that book specifically as a means to draw in racial commentary? (And no I don't want to get into Heinlein, and what he thought he was portraying versus what others think he portrayed; the point is, he did this stuff intentionally).

I can understand if someone considers these issues and says "OK, that's not the story I'm writing." Fine. Write the story you want. But something is seriously amiss, in my view, if you get to the point of despising the very idea of it. A lot of writers use these techniques in important ways, and the written story as a vehicle for social commentary and teaching has a long history indeed. Do we really want to relegate all of fiction to mindless action stories that are read and immediately forgotten?

*this is the generic "you" and not a specific person.


----------



## BWFoster78

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> I think it's more about trying to raise awareness of the fact that a certain viewpoint (white male heteronormative) is severely overrepresented in fiction, in a pure statistical sense when compared to the populace. If you think that's an okay thing and that we shouldn't at least try to _encourage_ writers to expand their horizons, well, that's your view. I would encourage you to maybe consider that it's _not_ a healthy thing for our society to have one viewpoint so dominant.
> 
> I'm not asking you to insert things artificially to meet some kind of quota; I'm not asking you to devote your life to achieving universal equality. The only thing I (and most of the people in this thread, I suspect) are asking is that you at least acknowledge that there's a problem, and that it's something that benefits us all if we confront. That's all.



But that's not what I'm getting out of this thread.  I've stated a bunch of times that I have no problems considering what I'm writing and why I'm writing it.

What I'm getting is that some participants of this thread have a cause that they feel is so important that it's self evident that we all must pay attention to their cause and bow to it.  All this without any justification other than "it will make certain people feel better."


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> So anyone who doesn't consider themselves underrepresented can't hold this viewpoint? Sorry, I don't buy it.


That's not what that statement says at all. Rather, I understand why one would feel that way. It's natural to have empathy for groups you identify with, while empathy from groups that don't identify are the what you desire.



saellys said:


> That's the end result of the "I shouldn't have to care" logic.


There is a lot of distance between saying, "That's not my fight" & "Deal with it & be happy with what you've got."


----------



## saellys

BWFoster78 said:


> All this without any justification other than "it will make certain people feel better."



Already addressed this. You seem to have missed a large chunk of my posts.


----------



## BWFoster78

Steerpike said:


> This strikes me as overly defensive, and also as a failure to understand the argument being made. I wonder if we're even reading the same thread.
> 
> Also, it is perhaps easier not to care about representation when your group is the one being favored disproportionately in representation. I don't think it is that hard to understand why others who aren't represented well might have a different viewpoint.



Sorry, but I refuse to do anything to encourage the victim mentality that pervades our society.  Each group sees themselves as a member of a group and can only be happy when everyone acknowledges the "specialness" of that group.  The argument then is, "You don't understand; you haven't suffered the oppression that we've suffered."

Again, this whole thing disgusts me.


----------



## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> That's not what that statement says at all. Rather, I understand why one would feel that way. It's natural to have empathy for groups you identify with, while empathy from groups that don't identify are the what you desire.



And those groups would find it harder to empathize (understand and share the feelings of others) why, exactly?



T.Allen.Smith said:


> There is a lot of distance between saying, "That's not my fight" & "Deal with it & be happy with what you've got."



Not much at all, by your own logic. "Don't care; can't be arsed" leaves it up to someone else, and if people who don't identify this way are resistent to empathize, the choice for those who feel underrepresented is "deal with it yourself," or "be happy with what you've got," or both. Please feel free to fill in any options I missed.


----------



## saellys

BWFoster78 said:


> Sorry, but I refuse to do anything to encourage the victim mentality that pervades our society.  Each group sees themselves as a member of a group and can only be happy when everyone acknowledges the "specialness" of that group.  The argument then is, "You don't understand; you haven't suffered the oppression that we've suffered."
> 
> Again, this whole thing disgusts me.



Actually, the argument I'm making is that despite your privilege, you're totally capable of understanding. If you choose to deny your own privilege or the problem of representation or anything else concerning this subject, that's your choice alone--please don't pin it on a "victim mentality" of any particular group.


----------



## T.Allen.Smith

Steerpike said:


> I can understand if someone considers these issues and says "OK, that's not the story I'm writing." Fine. Write the story you want.


I can't speak for everyone but this is all I'm looking for...that's not asking much & I believe that we reached this point ages ago.



Steerpike said:


> But something is seriously amiss, in my view, if you get to the point of despising the very idea of it. A lot of writers use these techniques in important ways, and the written story as a vehicle for social commentary and teaching has a long history indeed. Do we really want to relegate all of fiction to mindless action stories that are read and immediately forgotten?


I agree with everything here. Writers often make conscious choices for many reasons. Understand though, any time people feel forced into a direction, many will revolt against that pressure.


----------



## BWFoster78

> Welcome back! I hope it was a good trip and the slots treated you well.



Thanks.  It was a good trip.  I actually didn't gamble a dime; went to visit an old friend and did a lot of sightseeing.



> I and others have made several rational arguments about why it benefits you directly to represent more in your work. I haven't seen any direct response to any of them; just a continued refrain of "I shouldn't have to care". If you don't know which arguments I'm referring to, go back and read them. I'm through with repeating myself.



The only argument that I remember is that it may make some of my audience feel better.  I've stated before and will state again, it is not my responsibility to make my audience feel better.

I read over everything you wrote.  I did not see a single cogent argument as to why your cause should be treated as any more important than any other cause.

It certainly seems to me that the conversation goes something like this:

You: "This cause is the most important thing in the world, and all authors should consider changing their works to promote it."
Me: "Why?"
You: "Because it self evidently is that important."
Me: "Why?"
You: "It's about universal equality."
Me: "And why is that important?"
You: "I'm tired of repeating myself."

Truly, this is my honest interpretation of this conversation.


----------



## BWFoster78

saellys said:


> Actually, the argument I'm making is that despite your privilege, you're totally capable of understanding. If you choose to deny your own privilege or the problem of representation or anything else concerning this subject, that's your choice alone--please don't pin it on a "victim mentality" of any particular group.



But the victim mentality is exactly what is pervading all your arguments.  The man is keeping you down and you want all our help to make your feel better.


----------



## Steerpike

BWFoster78 said:


> Again, this whole thing disgusts me.



Bizarre to me that such negative emotion would be associated with minorities or under-represented groups expressing a desire to see greater representation in media. You can explain it as many different ways as you like, but it's not a sentiment I'm going to be able to _grok_ so I suppose we'll just have to let it rest there.


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## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> And those groups would find it harder to empathize (understand and share the feelings of others) why, exactly?


You're reading things into my statement that aren't there. I never said it HAS to be harder to empathize, only that its natural to have empathy for those you identify with. However, it is realistic to understand you won't find the same level of empathy (level meaning ratio not amount of concern in an individual) among people not directly self-identified with that group.  That's just logical & realistic. It says nothing about whether or not you should try to reach those people.



saellys said:


> Not much at all, by your own logic. "Don't care; can't be arsed" leaves it up to someone else, and if people who don't identify this way are resistent to empathize, the choice for those who feel underrepresented is "deal with it yourself," or "be happy with what you've got," or both. Please feel free to fill in any options I missed.


The potential for how an individual could relate are myriad. Someone feeling they don't want to champion a cause they're not passionate about doesn't equate to "deal with it & be happy with what you've got". 
The arguments aren't so absolute as "You're either supporting this view and actively working for the cause or you're against us." - There's a lot of middle ground.


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## Steerpike

T.Allen.Smith said:


> I agree with everything here. Writers often make conscious choices for many reasons. Understand though, any time people feel forced into a direction, many will revolt against that pressure.



I don't think force is even an option, though. I guess people can perceive it that way. The way I look at the various arguments around the issue, or something like the Bechdel Test, is from a standpoint of 'awareness.' There are two situations here (well more than two, but two I want to distinguish):

1) Author is self-aware and aware of the work and says "Yes, I understand what people are saying about these social points, but that's just not what this story is about, not what I want it to be about, and I'm going to write it my way."

2) Author as a product of society has grown up reading about and seeing the standard majority depictions in fantasy and science fiction, or -insert genre-, and without thinking about it or consciously realizing it, produces work that mimics (in terms of representation) what author has seen and heard his whole life. 

In the case of #1, OK. I don't know what else to say about it - you write your story your way.

In the case of #2, you can really broaden the writers thinking and make them at least start to consider issues they'd never thought about before. This is probably more useful with young, starting writers because hopefully as we grow older we mature into people who are at least cognizant of the world around us. But if you've spent any time working with high school and college kids, I think you'll agree that something simple and seemingly less than valuable to an older, more established person can turn on a light bulb in the mind of a kid or young adult.

As with most things in writing, if you've thought things through and are doing something intentionally, then great. Write what you want, how you want. That's your prerogative as an artist.

On the other hand, if you're stumbling through various aspects of writing, with no real idea or awareness of what you're stumbling into and why, you've got a problem. It goes not only for representations, but for things like POV, overall style, word usage, rule-breaking, etc. 

Write what you want in the way you want, but do it from a place of understanding of what you're doing and why. If you get to that point, I think you've reached the appropriate end point.


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## Ankari

I think the opposition of this test can be summarized into this:

Nothing is more important than the story itself.  Any external influences can, and will, modify the story.  It is up to the author to decide what the story is and preserve it.

Another point, and this is where Brian (I'm sick of writing BWFoster78) and I agree.  If you allow such tests to help determine the quality of your story, when will it stop?  Another test, called the Poverty Test, will gauge how well your represent the poor and destitute.  Another test, the PETA Test, will judge how you portray the cruelty of animals.  Then we'll have the Patriot Test, that will qualify if you're painting the "Right Side" in the same light as your nation of origin.  How about the Democracy Test, making sure you a majority of your governments closely resemble a modern democracy and are painted in a positive light.


When will it end?


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## Steerpike

Ankari said:


> I think the opposition of this test can be summarized into this:
> 
> Nothing is more important than the story itself.  Any external influences can, and will, modify the story.  It is up to the author to decide what the story is and preserve it.
> 
> Another point, and this is where Brian (I'm sick of writing BWFoster78) and I agree.  If you allow such tests to help determine the quality of your story, when will it stop?  Another test, called the Poverty Test, will gauge how well your represent the poor and destitute.  Another test, the PETA Test, will judge how you portray the cruelty of animals.  Then we'll have the Patriot Test, that will qualify if you're painting the "Right Side" in the same light as your nation of origin.  How about the Democracy Test, making sure you a majority of your governments closely resemble a modern democracy and are painted in a positive light.



On the other hand, none of those issues are necessarily bad things to have thought about when writing, which gets back to the awareness point I tried to make.


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## Benjamin Clayborne

BWFoster78 said:


> But that's not what I'm getting out of this thread.  I've stated a bunch of times that I have no problems considering what I'm writing and why I'm writing it.
> 
> What I'm getting is that some participants of this thread have a cause that they feel is so important that it's self evident that we all must pay attention to their cause and bow to it.  All this without any justification other than "it will make certain people feel better."



Maybe they have, but I feel like you might have overcorrected in your response; you keep coming off as "I don't care about this particular issue and I don't have to." I'm pretty sure that's not how you actually feel, but that's what it sounds like to me. 

Today's Sinfest is especially apropos of this thread: *Sinfest*


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## Benjamin Clayborne

BWFoster78 said:


> But the victim mentality is exactly what is pervading all your arguments.  The man is keeping you down and you want all our help to make your feel better.



Do you _really_ think that women in our society (talkin' U.S.A. here) _aren't_ oppressed at all? That there is no pervasive social bias against them? (Note that pervasiveness and severity are orthogonal.) They aren't after just "feeling better." They want to _stop being oppressed_. They want to be able to feel like they can walk down the street at night without undue fear of being assaulted. They want to be given the same consideration in professional contexts that men are. Feminism, as it's been said, is simply the radical notion that women are people and, by extension, deserve to be treated well.

As a white man myself, I completely understand the feeling that it seems like a lot of groups want special treatment. The thing is, they want that special treatment because of _decades of abuse._ They're not just making it up for fun.


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## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> I agree with everything here. Writers often make conscious choices for many reasons. Understand though, any time people feel forced into a direction, many will revolt against that pressure.



I would not dream of oppressing anyone by forcing them to make particular creative decisions regarding their own work. I've tried to present compelling points about how we writers _can_ do this, and how it will benefit ourselves, our readers, and fantasy as a whole if we _do_. No matter how lofty I make my reasoning, however, all anyone seems able to say in response is "Don't tell me what to do!" It's like playing blocks with my sixteen-month-old daughter--I can build a tower as tall as she is, but she always goes for the bottom block first. "I shouldn't have to care" attacks the very basis of this whole discussion. 

So, for final clarification and in the hope that maybe we can move on to other aspects of this issue, _I'm not telling you how or what to write_. Only some examples of how you can, if you choose to, and what the benefits could be, if you do. Okay?



BWFoster78 said:


> Thanks.  It was a good trip.  I actually didn't gamble a dime; went to visit an old friend and did a lot of sightseeing.



Nice. I bet Nevada desert weather beats the heck out of the yo-yoing here in Missouri right now.



BWFoster78 said:


> The only argument that I remember is that it may make some of my audience feel better.  I've stated before and will state again, it is not my responsibility to make my audience feel better.
> 
> I read over everything you wrote.  I did not see a single cogent argument as to why your cause should be treated as any more important than any other cause.
> 
> It certainly seems to me that the conversation goes something like this:
> 
> You: "This cause is the most important thing in the world, and all authors should consider changing their works to promote it."
> Me: "Why?"
> You: "Because it self evidently is that important."
> Me: "Why?"
> You: "It's about universal equality."
> Me: "And why is that important?"
> You: "I'm tired of repeating myself."
> 
> Truly, this is my honest interpretation of this conversation.



I told you in at least two posts that this doesn't have to be the most important issue in the world to you (or me) for you to adopt it as part of your work in some measure. Furthermore, abdication of responsibility for what your work perpetuates can lead to a backlash like that I mentioned in the post about _Sherlock_. Also:



saellys said:


> It is your world. You can do whatever you want. Just be aware that if you choose to present a female-excluding story, or a story that normalizes some harmful stereotype, you are likely to hear the opinions of your audience, and how you respond to those opinions will determine whether they remain your audience.



As for why it's important: 



saellys said:


> Here's the thing, though: you are affected by the problem. If you were to make your work--that tiny little sliver of the fantasy genre as a whole--more welcoming to people who are overwhelmingly marginalized, more readily able to be accepted as the pure entertainment you want it to be, your readership could expand dramatically. That's money in your pocket, to put it callously.



And one that was actually a response directly to you:



saellys said:


> One rational argument I've offered concerns increasing the breadth of your readership and not alienating particular groups who are tired of not seeing themselves represented favorably in a genre they otherwise really enjoy. If you write it, they will come. You may insist that you're not responsible for people's feelings when they read your book, but if you gave them that much more to relate to, they might come back and read your next book, which translates to money in your pocket.
> 
> Another rational argument I've been meaning to throw in here, but haven't found the opportune moment, is challenging yourself as a writer. That happens when you get out of your comfort zone and write things you normally wouldn't (hypothetical "you" once again).



-----



BWFoster78 said:


> But the victim mentality is exactly what is pervading all your arguments.  The man is keeping you down and you want all our help to make your feel better.



That is a very twisted, dismissive, and overly personal interpretation. I wouldn't be here, writing a fantasy novel and discussing fantasy novels, if I had a victim mentality and felt personally mistreated by the genre. I am still capable of recognizing that something in this genre I love is broken, and that it will take a lot of people to fix it. It's not about making me feel better. It's about making fantasy broader and richer.


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## T.Allen.Smith

saellys said:


> So, for final clarification and in the hope that maybe we can move on to other aspects of this issue, I'm not telling you how or what to write. Only some examples of how you can, if you choose to, and what the benefits could be, if you do. Okay?


Yes. We'd already come to this understanding. I mentioned it again, only because it was raised again. The comment wasn't directed towards you specifically.


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## Ankari

Steerpike said:


> On the other hand, none of those issues are necessarily bad things to have thought about when writing, which gets back to the awareness point I tried to make.



With the exception of PETA, you're right.  They are more social awareness issues.  But you can get the point I'm trying to make.  And another point, why do you think there is a problem as discussed in this thread?

You have to apply this concept to the world at large.  Should white, heterosexual males go to Japan and China and demand better representation?  There are white, heterosexual men living there.  Should Latin Americans go to Russia and demand better representation in Russian fantasy?

This is similar to the issue raised a few years ago where a man sued Hooters because he wasn't allowed to work there (as a server).  Is everyone in agreement that such a case isn't going to far?  Would women be OK if most employees in Victoria's Secret were white, heterosexual males?


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## saellys

T.Allen.Smith said:


> You're reading things into my statement that aren't there. I never said it HAS to be harder to empathize, only that its natural to have empathy for those you identify with. However, it is realistic to understand you won't find the same level of empathy (level meaning ratio not amount of concern in an individual) among people not directly self-identified with that group.  That's just logical & realistic. It says nothing about whether or not you should try to reach those people.



So you were using a blanket statement about empathy and identification only to justify your own lack of interest in the issue after we narrowed down everything that could potentially inspire your individual concern? I'm trying not to just assume things here--that's the course the discussion took, and I can't help but draw connections when I say "I just want a little help" and you reply with "You need to be realistic about who you ask for help" (i.e. not you). 



T.Allen.Smith said:


> The potential for how an individual could relate are myriad. Someone feeling they don't want to champion a cause they're not passionate about doesn't equate to "deal with it & be happy with what you've got".
> The arguments aren't so absolute as "You're either supporting this view and actively working for the cause or you're against us." - There's a lot of middle ground.



One does not have to be working for a cause to naturally write diverse characters, as your own example illustrates. But saying, in approximately so many words, "I don't care about this enough to do anything intentional in my own work" falls where in that middle ground, exactly?


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## BWFoster78

Steerpike said:


> Bizarre to me that such negative emotion would be associated with minorities or under-represented groups expressing a desire to see greater representation in media. You can explain it as many different ways as you like, but it's not a sentiment I'm going to be able to _grok_ so I suppose we'll just have to let it rest there.



I haven't expressed the why of it well.  Let me make a, hopefully, better attempt:

Let's say that there exists in our population a group with purple eyes.  Let's say that I included a character with purple eyes in my novel, and I get an email that says, "I couldn't help but notice your purple-eyed character and that you depicted him as smart and good.  I'm concerned about the menace that purple-eye'd people represent.  To me, they're all evil and stupid.  If you could see your way clear to depict them as such, I'm sure I can rally support to your book."

I think that everyone on this forum would be morally disgusted by such a request to change a character's attributes.

I simply don't see a difference between that request and the request that is being made on this thread.  Both are asking me to change a character based solely on that person's race, religion, gender, or physical characteristics.  In my worldview, if the hypothetical request made in the fictitious email is wrong, so is the request for "positive" changes.

Does that make a little more sense?


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## Ankari

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> They want to be able to feel like they can walk down the street at night without undue fear of being assaulted. They want to be given the same consideration in professional contexts that men are.



A) No one is.  This is a much great issue than gender discrimination.

B) In my life, I haven't seen evidence of this.  I worked at a call center, retail outlet, and now, run a business.  My staff is made up of 70% women and 30% males.


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## Benjamin Clayborne

Ankari said:


> With the exception of PETA, you're right.  They are more social awareness issues.  But you can get the point I'm trying to make.  And another point, why do you think there is a problem as discussed in this thread?
> 
> You have to apply this concept to the world at large.  Should white, heterosexual males go to Japan and China and demand better representation?  There are white, heterosexual men living there.  Should Latin Americans go to Russia and demand better representation in Russian fantasy?



That's a nice straw man you've got there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it...

Kidding aside, your analogy makes absolutely no sense. Half the U.S. population is women; they're already here, and part of our society. Them hoping for fair representation isn't remotely like people of one nationality going to _another country_ and demanding representation.


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## BWFoster78

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> Maybe they have, but I feel like you might have overcorrected in your response; you keep coming off as "I don't care about this particular issue and I don't have to." I'm pretty sure that's not how you actually feel, but that's what it sounds like to me.
> 
> Today's Sinfest is especially apropos of this thread: *Sinfest*



It's more like the assumption that this particular issue is so much more important than any other issue bothers me.

There are few issues that are Universal Truths.

Causes are based on personal experiences and opinions.  The attitude that your personal experience and opinion is more valid than the causes that led me to advocate for my causes bothers me.


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## Steerpike

Ankari said:


> You have to apply this concept to the world at large.  Should white, heterosexual males go to Japan and China and demand better representation?  There are white, heterosexual men living there.  Should Latin Americans go to Russia and demand better representation in Russian fantasy?



I think places like the U.S. and U.K., to use two examples, are much more heterogenous. But to get to the broader point, I don't think 'demand' is right. I don't have a problem with them using their speech to say "Hey, we should have better representation." A writer is a private individual and can do what she likes at the end of the day. Likewise, with Hooters or Victoria's Secret, I think they can hire who they want within some broad limitations, and that a wholly private club shouldn't even have those broad limitations so long as we're all talking about adults. But that gets pretty far afield.

I think, yes, everyone has the right to say "I would like to see better representation." If you don't want to do it, as an author, then OK. But what's the problem with people asking for it?


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## BWFoster78

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> Do you _really_ think that women in our society (talkin' U.S.A. here) _aren't_ oppressed at all? That there is no pervasive social bias against them? (Note that pervasiveness and severity are orthogonal.) They aren't after just "feeling better." They want to _stop being oppressed_. They want to be able to feel like they can walk down the street at night without undue fear of being assaulted. They want to be given the same consideration in professional contexts that men are. Feminism, as it's been said, is simply the radical notion that women are people and, by extension, deserve to be treated well.
> 
> As a white man myself, I completely understand the feeling that it seems like a lot of groups want special treatment. The thing is, they want that special treatment because of _decades of abuse._ They're not just making it up for fun.



If the pendulum swinging one way is bad, I feel that the desire to keep it swinging the opposite direction is just as bad.


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## Mindfire

Benjamin Clayborne said:


> Maybe they have, but I feel like you might have overcorrected in your response; you keep coming off as "I don't care about this particular issue and I don't have to." I'm pretty sure that's not how you actually feel, but that's what it sounds like to me.
> 
> Today's Sinfest is especially apropos of this thread: Sinfest



I don't get the joke.


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## Steerpike

BWFoster78 said:


> I simply don't see a difference between that request and the request that is being made on this thread.  Both are asking me to change a character based solely on that person's race, religion, gender, or physical characteristics.  In my worldview, if the hypothetical request made in the fictitious email is wrong, so is the request for "positive" changes.
> 
> Does that make a little more sense?



Yes. I guess what I'm seeing in the thread is a request for writers to think about these things. Not someone saying "you have to change this specific character right here to one I want to see." I don't have a problem with people asking to be better represented in writing, movies, and so on. I think there are a lot of good reasons they should be. But I'm not going to support a law that mandates it or anything. People will still be able to write what they want. Merely being criticized by one group or another doesn't take away the author's right to write their own story in the way they see fit.


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## Devor

I've completely missed whatever it is that's going on in this 27 page thread, but I think you've got to put the storytelling above the outside pressures and one's predispositions in order to write the characters that help to enhance the story.  It doesn't make sense to include token out-of-place minorities in some settings.  It doesn't make sense to exclude the wide-scale diversity you would see in many other settings.

It also doesn't make sense to tell other people to take stories you know nothing about in specific directions, or to try and negatively classify someone else's mentality.

*We're not here to be activists.  We're here to tell stories.  Let's focus on that.*

One thing I will say, though, to try and add to the conversation, is that sometimes I find in the stories I'm reading that too often, when you include some of these characters, they can kind of be story-stealers.  As someone told me once, there's no mention of camels in the 1,001 Arabian Nights because it's so heavily ingrained into their culture that camels are boring to them.  But when westerners write a similar story, they detail every camel down to the saddle bags.  I feel like something similar happens when non-minorities write about minorities.  I'm not referring to stereotyping.  I mean that the minority aspects become weighty talking points and subplot tumors that can sometimes end up being a detraction from the story as a whole.  Just something to consider.

Lastly, to anyone who thinks there should be more minority heroes in our great fantasy stories, it seems to me that the only thing to really do about it is to go out and write one.  You're not going to get an authentic character by pressuring someone else to do it if they don't want to.

((wow, that got ninja'ed by like 16 posts))


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## Steerpike

Mindfire said:


> I don't get the joke.



She does what she wants. Period.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Ankari said:


> A) No one is.  This is a much great issue than gender discrimination.



I'm having trouble parsing this. No one is *what?*



> B) In my life, I haven't seen evidence of this.  I worked at a call center, retail outlet, and now, run a business.  My staff is made up of 70% women and 30% males.



Are you seriously saying that because _you_ haven't experienced this, it can't possibly be true? _Seriously?_ So all the women who _do_ talk about how they feel disregarded and disrespected solely because of their gender are, what... Delusional? Lying? Whiners? Isn't it possible that maybe (at least some of them) are telling the truth about their experiences? Isn't it possible that you have blinders on, because you're _not_ part of that group?


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## Steerpike

BWFoster78 said:


> If the pendulum swinging one way is bad, I feel that the desire to keep it swinging the opposite direction is just as bad.



Yeah. But once it has started in one direction, it has to swing back the other way to get back to the middle.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

BWFoster78 said:


> If the pendulum swinging one way is bad, I feel that the desire to keep it swinging the opposite direction is just as bad.



What's with all the straw men today? *Nobody* (except a few extremist kooks) is suggesting that men be put in the position women are now. What they (we!) are asking for is for the pendulum to be in the middle, where it should be.


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## BWFoster78

> Here's the thing, though: you are affected by the problem. If you were to make your work--that tiny little sliver of the fantasy genre as a whole--more welcoming to people who are overwhelmingly marginalized, more readily able to be accepted as the pure entertainment you want it to be, your readership could expand dramatically. That's money in your pocket, to put it callously.



And I've said many times that I do not tailor my works to try to please any one audience.  In the long run, I believe that being true to the stories I want to tell will lead to much more success than trying to please anyone.  

I don't see this as an argument for the legitimacy of your cause.



> Another rational argument I've been meaning to throw in here, but haven't found the opportune moment, is challenging yourself as a writer. That happens when you get out of your comfort zone and write things you normally wouldn't (hypothetical "you" once again).



Again, what does this have to do with the legitimacy of your cause?



> That is a very twisted, dismissive, and overly personal interpretation. I wouldn't be here, writing a fantasy novel and discussing fantasy novels, if I had a victim mentality and felt personally mistreated by the genre. I am still capable of recognizing that something in this genre I love is broken, and that it will take a lot of people to fix it. It's not about making me feel better. It's about making fantasy broader and richer.



Another point on which we're never going to agree...


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne

Mindfire said:


> I don't get the joke.



The joke is that from the POV of where women are now, "utopia" is simply being able to go walk down the street alone at night without undue fear of being harassed or assaulted. As a man, I can go do that without undue fear. Women, for the most part, can't. I walk three blocks to the gym around 10pm some nights, and I'm never concerned about being attacked. I know it's *possible* it might happen anyway, but I also know it's very unlikely, so it doesn't bother me any more than any other unlikely danger.


----------



## BWFoster78

Steerpike said:


> Yes. I guess what I'm seeing in the thread is a request for writers to think about these things. Not someone saying "you have to change this specific character right here to one I want to see." I don't have a problem with people asking to be better represented in writing, movies, and so on. I think there are a lot of good reasons they should be. But I'm not going to support a law that mandates it or anything. People will still be able to write what they want. Merely being criticized by one group or another doesn't take away the author's right to write their own story in the way they see fit.



I've said multiple times that I do feel that certain members are advocating a call to action that goes beyond "think about your writing."

Maybe I'm reading stuff into it, but I've prefaced most of my arguments with the caveat that it's the judgment that action is mandated that I'm most against.

If I look at my writing and think, "I feel comfortable with how I've portrayed the characters," I don't feel that this test has a whole lot of value.


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## Devor

*I think this thread is getting too heavily away from storytelling into gender politics.  I'm going to lock this thread to consult with other moderators.*

Please be patient.  Regardless, take a breather, everybody.


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## Benjamin Clayborne

BWFoster78 said:


> It's more like the assumption that this particular issue is so much more important than any other issue bothers me.



I don't think anyone in this thread has said that gender equality is the most important issue in the world. Maybe they have; if you can quote one person saying it, that would be helpful. Otherwise, this is a straw man.


----------

