My Male Chauvinistic writing style

[Julian S Bartz]

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

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

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

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

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

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

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

 

[Steerpike]

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

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

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

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

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

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

 

[Amanita]

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

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

 

[Ophiucha]

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

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

 

[Ravana]

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

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

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

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

 

[Nihal]

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

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

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

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

 

[Svrtnsse]

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

 

[Svrtnsse]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[A. E. Lowan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Feo Takahari]

Probably relevant.

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

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

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

 

[Jabrosky]

Probably relevant.

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

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

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

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

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

 

[A. E. Lowan]

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

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

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

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

 

[Feo Takahari]

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

 

[Ophiucha]

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Jabrosky]

Might be another derail, but...

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

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

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

 

[Steerpike]

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

 

[Chessie]

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

 

[rhd]

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