On Writing Women. Looking for honesty...

[Heliotrope]

Oh man I'm so glad you read it and found the quote! I was going to go there next.

I think this is really what bothers me the most about the way female characters have traditionally been portrayed in fantasy... like these sort of a-sexual beings... either too interested in being angelic and virginal, or so focussed on being "the strong female character warrior who hates men and is not interested in sex".

It feels so unnatural. Sorry people, women like sex. We have desires and passions and we make mistakes and we like boys (or girls) too. Even as a youth I knew this felt weird. It wasn't that I was hunting out sex in books, it was more that I wanted to see women portrayed as real people, and sex, or at least some resemblance of normal human emotions, is a big factor with that..

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Since I am asexual, all of my characters are, too, but then, my books take place in another universe that isn't much like Earth customs and so forth. Though there is plenty of romance!

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Hmmmm

I've always been more "masculine" in manner and interests than my female peers. Growing up, most of my friends were boys. I still have a lot of male friends. And most of the characters I relate to the most in books are male. So I guess i never was very bothered by this. (I really really loved LOTR.)

It deserves mentioning that I hated, was apathetic toward, or flat-out refused to read most of the usual "girl" books. Little House on the Prairie? Blech. Anne of Green Gables? I guess it was okay. I had to read Caddie Woodlawn for school and my not so humble opinion was that it was shit. I especially loathed books where the tomboy girl grew up by the end of the book and started to like hoop skirts and girly things and accept that she was a woman or whatever. (Caddie Woodlawn. Excuse me while I retch.) Tomboy characters were about the only way i saw myself in female characters and to treat it as a phase that would be matured out of or even as a character flaw to be overcome was disgusting and alienating to me. (FYI, i never grew out of or overcame any of my basic character traits. Whatever magic wand that passes over every female teenager and gifts them with obsessions with hair, makeup and nails mysteriously passed me over.)

On the other hand, I love to read about badass women, complicated women, strong women, conflicted women, women of all types. Heck. My WIP is 60,000 words in and the sole male character hasn't arrived yet, The cast is almost entirely women. It's a very diverse, mixed bag of women of every color, shape, size and personality.

I guess i don't necessarily *need* female characters in books. I'm probably more likely to relate to the guys anyway. But maybe that's because females like *me* aren't common.

 

[Nimue]

Huh. This thread is interesting to me because it's making me wonder how being a trans guy has influenced my reading. I read LotR and the first Dune book for the first time back when I thought I was female, and I...didn't really think about the lack of good women characters. I mean, once I got into fandom discussions online I began to realize that a lot of fantasy had a problem with this, but on my own I didn't see it.

I didn't see myself in female characters even when I thought I was a girl, instead identifying with the male protagonists. I wonder if any other trans men have similar experiences.

I’m sure that’s a shared experience... Imagine if you had been able to read some great fantasy with trans men protagonists as a kid! I hope the new generation of readers has more of those opportunities... As a small bookish white girl, I didn’t have to go so far to find stories that spoke to me, but still, a little out of the mainstream. Tolkien’s writing and world is beautiful, but it never lodged close to my heart, and perhaps that was part of it. I certainly noticed and chafed at the lack of involved female characters.

I’ve never read Dune, or Name of the Wind, or Wheel of Time, though I’ve tried. I couldn’t even get past the first book of ASoIaF. Epic, sprawling, military or political fantasy just doesn’t interest me as much as small, personal, deep-diving stories with a bit of romance, literal and poetic, do. I wish there was a sub-genre for that, but until then, I have to look for women writing female-led stories.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Wouldn't it be great if there was a fantasy story in which trans people were culturally accepted as normal *writes note to self*

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Dragon: You would probably like Claymore a lot; all of the characters in it are, to censor myself, terrible-donkey. Did I show you a link to it already? I can't remember. Here it is, anyway, for anyone who's interested:
Claymore 1 - Read Claymore 1 Online - Page 1

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Wouldn't it be great if there was a fantasy story in which trans people were culturally accepted as normal *writes note to self*

I'm way ahead of you on that, kind of. I have several gay/lesbian characters, genderless characters, and a hermaphrodite character, but not a trans character [yet].

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Oh, wait, what am I saying, I do have a trans character, in my second book. Well, sort of. Since everyone's asexual, the character in question didn't really change his sex, but rather gender.

 

[Nimue]

Dragon: You would probably like Claymore a lot; all of the characters in it are, to censor myself, terrible-donkey. Did I show you a link to it already? I can't remember. Here it is, anyway, for anyone who's interested:
Claymore 1 - Read Claymore 1 Online - Page 1

Heh, I suppose the same thing holds here... When I went through a phase of reading manga, Claymore was one of the series I got deepest into...until the story started getting mushy, which happens in most long-running forms of media. Why I don’t watch much television, really—those poor overstretched story threads.

 

[Tom]

I’m sure that’s a shared experience... Imagine if you had been able to read some great fantasy with trans men protagonists as a kid! I hope the new generation of readers has more of those opportunities... As a small bookish white girl, I didn’t have to go so far to find stories that spoke to me, but still, a little out of the mainstream. Tolkien’s writing and world is beautiful, but it never lodged close to my heart, and perhaps that was part of it. I certainly noticed and chafed at the lack of involved female characters.

I’ve never read Dune, or Name of the Wind, or Wheel of Time, though I’ve tried. I couldn’t even get past the first book of ASoIaF. Epic, sprawling, military or political fantasy just doesn’t interest me as much as small, personal, deep-diving stories with a bit of romance, literal and poetic, do. I wish there was a sub-genre for that, but until then, I have to look for women writing female-led stories.

It would have been amazing to read about trans heroes as a kid! It does seem like the literary world is diversifying, and I'm starting to see more kids' books and YA with trans protagonists, which is incredible. I only wish some had come out 10 years earlier. But yeah, I was pretty oblivious as a kid/young teen about the lack of female characters in most of my favorites, though I did read books with great girl protagonists as well. (Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke was one I loved a lot, as well as the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.)

I never made it through Name of the Wind or Wheel of Time, though it was more to do with my beef with their plots and styles than anything else. I loved the first two ASoIaF books, but I burnt out from their sheer size, lol. I do wish fantasy had more room for personal stories. I still like big, sweeping, political stuff, but it means nothing to me if there's not a person driving it at its core.

 

[Tom]

I'm way ahead of you on that, kind of. I have several gay/lesbian characters, genderless characters, and a hermaphrodite character, but not a trans character [yet].

I'd like to point out that the modern terminology for people who exhibit ambiguous sexual characteristics is intersex. Hermaphrodite is an outdated term that a lot of intersex people are uncomfortable with, since it was used by the medical field for a very long time to dehumanize them.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Etymologically, there's nothing dirty or dehumanizing about the term, but I do understand your point.

But, then again, what do I know? Nothing.

 

[Tom]

Etymologically, there's nothing dirty or dehumanizing about the term, but I do understand your point.

But, then again, what do I know? Nothing.

Etymologically, yes, but given its historical use it is pretty dehumanizing. I was just pointing it out because I used to use it too until an intersex person asked me not to.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

What do you call an intersex character who has no...sex, then?

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Sorry for derailing the discussion again.

 

[Heliotrope]

Ha! It's all related, actually. I think so, anyway. It's about discussing the male-dominated tradition of fantasy, and how other people of a variety of sexualities (including hetero-women) have been so badly misrepresented. It's all good.

 

[Tom]

What do you call an intersex character who has no...sex, then?

Like an asexual intersex character? Or agender? Either way, intersex people relate to their gender/sexuality in much the same way non-intersex people do.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

Now I'm confused.

 

[Heliotrope]

Intersex is when you have sex organs that don't fit the "standard" definition of male or female. They are still sexual beings and can still feel arousal.

Asexual is when you don't have any sexual feelings or feelings of arousal, regardless of type of sexual organs.

So you can have someone who is asexual intersex, which would be an "intersex person with no feelings of arousal".

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

It would have been amazing to read about trans heroes as a kid! It does seem like the literary world is diversifying, and I'm starting to see more kids' books and YA with trans protagonists, which is incredible. I only wish some had come out 10 years earlier. But yeah, I was pretty oblivious as a kid/young teen about the lack of female characters in most of my favorites, though I did read books with great girl protagonists as well. (Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke was one I loved a lot, as well as the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.)

I never made it through Name of the Wind or Wheel of Time, though it was more to do with my beef with their plots and styles than anything else. I loved the first two ASoIaF books, but I burnt out from their sheer size, lol. I do wish fantasy had more room for personal stories. I still like big, sweeping, political stuff, but it means nothing to me if there's not a person driving it at its core.

I'd like to add to your comment about personal stories in fantasy because I find those important too. In planning one of my projects i found that I was utterly unenthusiastic about writing about a war and the changes wrought upon the world during it because it seemed too...big. Impersonal. I always want to write about characters and their relationships.

ASOIAF has never really interested me. Maybe because of that.