Too few female characters?

[glutton]

BTW, when saying 'best of the best' I'm talking about someone who actually be portrayed as an even match or the favorite in a fight against a monster like Gregor Clegane or Conan, not someone who could pull a win over them as an underdog. In a world with a somewhat realistic approach to combat and no tricks, that would require some significant stats, she wouldn't need to be as strong but 'strong enough' at least. 'Best of the best' implies that the character is a heavy favorite over a large majority of her competitors, if she has a significant physical disadvantage against most of them then why are they so far behind in skill that it doesn't matter? Does the men's training suck, do they all have no talent? XD

BTW if a male character is presented as the best of the best melee fighter, I would also usually assume he has some good strength and if not the strongest, at least stronger than the average man.

I'm pretty sure I've read stuff where a female warrior is shown to not even be strong enough to lift an average man, yet she's portrayed as this awesome fighter even in hand to hand against men without any additional explanation. THAT is annoying. Just give her more strength.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

^Agreed. One thought to add, is you can have speed and skill (and the reach of a longer weapon) overcome a monster like Gregor Clegane, but there's a catch with every GoT fan has been exposed to.

Mountain vs. Viper was a perfect example of speed believably beating strength... and at the same time, it was a perfect example of the cost of a single mistake against a considerably stronger opponent.

 

[glutton]

Yeah, it's not impossible to overcome a physical discrepancy it's just that if you're at a disadvantage against pretty much everyone else it would be that much harder to be consistent enough to seem top tier.

If a female melee fighter is consistently awesome against men without some fancy explanation like an exotic martial art, the two most likely conclusions would be 1. she has great physical abilities, maybe she doesn't have to be as strong as a man but she shouldn't be like 40 percent weaker and also be smaller and have less explosive speed and durability... or 2. all the men suck.

The latter isn't too cool, so I usually assume the former... unless the author specifically mentions the character can't even lift an average male, in which case it's number 2 and I'm annoyed lol.

 

[Queshire]

Sorry, I'm just jumping into this without reading all the way through the thread, but as writers do we even need to address the differences in physical capabilities between the sexes? One of my primary inspirations is anime and manga and it's common in them to have females that are just as powerful fighters as males without any explanation needed to be given. True, they tend to favor certain styles of combat compared to the males, but that's a result of lingering sexism in the writer and the confines of the genre, not a result of their inherent physical capabilities.

 

[Steerpike]

Sorry, I'm just jumping into this without reading all the way through the thread, but as writers do we even need to address the differences in physical capabilities between the sexes? One of my primary inspirations is anime and manga and it's common in them to have females that are just as powerful fighters as males without any explanation needed to be given. True, they tend to favor certain styles of combat compared to the males, but that's a result of lingering sexism in the writer and the confines of the genre, not a result of their inherent physical capabilities.

In a fantasy world, you don't really have to. It may simply be that for the people of your world there is little difference in strength levels between males or females, or it may be that magic is prevalent and used to level the playing field.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I think a lot of this discussion has been focused too much on the writer (by my interpretation). I'm happy to write an average sized huntress taking down a giant monster, but do my readers buy into it? I realize that vs. a giant monster, 5'0"/6'0"/7'0" tall man/woman vs. 50'0" long monster... the writer just has to keep the story interesting and probably make the victory look nearly impossible. The reader is forgiving lack of realism because the story is fun.

Ironically, when it's person vs. person, I think the reader expects realism... by one's own definition of what's realistic! That differs for everyone (read this and all prior posts for evidence of that), so then as the writer, you do need to show how mismatched physical differences are applied. There's no character sheet with D&D-ish stats, so I don't think the reader cares if Sir Knight is 40% stronger than Lady Amazon or only 5% stronger. We can forget the % stuff because that's in the writer's head, not on the page. The writer thinks 15%; the reader thinks 30%. Whatever. If the lady is stronger than her male opponent, I think the writer can simply establish that she's physically strong and if she out-muscles the man, there's nothing wrong with that. Her physical strength can be established the moment the reader sees her out-muscle the knight, in fact.

Bottom line: it's not up to the writer to change readers' biases nor is it up to the writer to cater to readers' biases. It's up to the writer to entertain the readers. Where the biases come in is simply this: whether you agree or not, know that biases exist.

If I were a successful author, I might have a better idea of this, but here's what I think is the way to sell your fight scene to readers: Picture the fight in your head; choreograph as you see fit. If you're thinking realistically (based on your own beliefs/experiences, not someone else's), chances are it translates to the page as "close enough" for most readers. If you're writing something fantastical, take realism and exaggerate. The more interesting the story, the more exaggeration (or deviation from biases) you get away with.

 

[Trick]

No. No, no no no.

It boggles my mind that in stories that requires no laborious explanations of why a male character is the best of the world despite not being the hulk it's required that you change an entire gender's physical attributes so it's "believable" to some people.

I'm under the impression that if a woman dares to excel at something it'd give a heart attack to a lot of guys there, haha!

Stories that have male characters as "the best of the world" should contain at least inferable explanations as to why. Perhaps he trained in a special style or was granted magical power. Even then, he must be challenged by characters close in skill to make it interesting and create tension, unless the book is the written equivalent of crappy action flick.

You seem to think that stating factual things is somehow also saying silly things. You are inferring information that is not being implied. If someone says, "Men are usually bigger and stronger, especially in the highly skilled athletic levels" and "the best athletes in the world by statistics are men." - (run times, weights lifted, baskets made, home-runs hit, swimming times, and on and on with one exception I was recently informed of, rock climbing) They are not saying, "women excelling at anything is preposterous." In fact, the two statements are entirely unrelated.

If a woman dares to excel at something

At something? You are arguing against a straw man. Women excel at things constantly, I'd bet more often than men do, but that does not change the fact that men tend to be bigger and stronger or that the athletes with the best statistical records are majoritively men. That is simply fact and in no way takes away from the success of women, in sports or in any other field.

If I say, "that guy is the best." and it turns out that he is, that is not sexist. If you infer that I'm saying, "that guy is the best because women can never succeed at anything without a crazy explanation." you're taking too much of a leap.

 

[glutton]

In a fantasy world, you don't really have to. It may simply be that for the people of your world there is little difference in strength levels between males or females, or it may be that magic is prevalent and used to level the playing field.

Yeah I don't think it needs to be 'addressed', if I see less of a strength difference than would be expected in reality I just assume there is less of a difference in that world as mentioned.

 

[Steerpike]

Yeah I don't think it needs to be 'addressed', if I see less of a strength difference than would be expected in reality I just assume there is less of a difference in that world as mentioned.

Me too. It's funny, sometimes, the things we get hung up on as needing explanation, while aerodynamically impossible dragons and talking vermin don't require it.

 

[Queshire]

I don't like the implication that the world has to be different for men and women to be equal. Yes, that sentence is an intentional misrepresentation of what you said, but it is ultimately the crux of this debate. Battle is the main form of conflict in our stories so it is the easiest measuring stick between characters. The same problem would come up if the main conflict of the story was cooking, courtroom drama, or a children's card game.

There's the fact that men are on average stronger than women, and then there's the concept that men and women are equal. I think as writers we should put more weight on the concepts espoused by our works than conforming to facts.

 

[Gryphos]

Hypothetically, if you have a book with a very small cast. Say, eight people, four of which are women. Now let's say one of those women is renowned as a badass fighter, the strongest fighter of the cast. Does the reader really then require some kind of explanation for this? Obviously it's good to know why she's so good, that's just basic storytelling. But in this case would the reader really be going "hold on a second, in this extremely small cast it's a woman who's the best fighter. And she isn't even magically enhanced! My immersion is totally ruined."

Obviously this example is somewhat exaggerated, as book casts are usually a bit larger. But the point still stands. Your cast of characters does not need to be a microcosm of that world's society. You can have a woman be the best fighter in your novel and not even have to explain it. I can't speak for everyone, but I wouldn't have any problem with that.

 

[Steerpike]

Hypothetically, if you have a book with a very small cast. Say, eight people, four of which are women. Now let's say one of those women is renowned as a badass fighter, the strongest fighter of the cast. Does the reader really then require some kind of explanation for this?

No, they don't. At least, not the reasonable readers you have. There are always going to be those who get hung up on minutiae, or who will make an issue out of it ostensibly for believability but more likely because they have an underlying problem with the concept, but you cannot please everyone and you shouldn't twist your writing to try to mollify the least common denominator.

 

[Trick]

one of those women is renowned as a badass fighter, the strongest fighter of the cast. Does the reader really then require some kind of explanation for this? Obviously it's good to know why she's so good, that's just basic storytelling.

As long as I get backstory, or the hint of one, I'm good and that goes for male and female characters across the board. If a character has a skill I want it to make some sense. If a any character, female or male, is a cook on a ship and then wips out a lock-picking kit and deftly gets through a locked door in seconds, I want to have known they could do that already or be surprised and then find out why they have that skill later, even if it's just implied, i.e. it turns out the cook was an assassin all along, just lying in wait for the right time to strike. An assassin picking a lock makes more sense...

In the case of a female warrior being a renowned badass fighter, well, that's kind of an explanation in itself. She is renowned so... clearly she's lived a life of fighting and had a heck of a knack for it so she survived and got better and better. No reader immersion broken, I'm still reading.

 

[Tom]

I don't like the implication that the world has to be different for men and women to be equal. Yes, that sentence is an intentional misrepresentation of what you said, but it is ultimately the crux of this debate. Battle is the main form of conflict in our stories so it is the easiest measuring stick between characters. The same problem would come up if the main conflict of the story was cooking, courtroom drama, or a children's card game.

There's the fact that men are on average stronger than women, and then there's the concept that men and women are equal. I think as writers we should put more weight on the concepts espoused by our works than conforming to facts.

Amen.

I think it all comes down to social conditioning most of the time. The majority of girls are or think they are bad at math because they're told their whole lives that women have inferior spatial and mathematical abilities. The majority of men are or think they are bad at expressing their emotions because they're told their whole lives that real men don't cry, emotion is weakness, etc.

If social conditioning is changed, what happens? Well, the gender gap is narrowing when it comes to interest/ability in mathematics. As societal opinions of girls' cognitive ability changes, girls are hearing less about their supposed inferiority in math, so they are applying themselves without the fear that they are only going to confirm that "girls are bad at math".

Unfortunately, for men the situation is getting worse, and for a lot of guys bottling up emotion is channeled into physical violence. Male violence is often an unhealthy expression of anger and frustration at having to "have it all together" all the time and being told that showing emotion is vulnerability (which it is--but it's a healthy vulnerability).

Social conditioning. There you go. Use it, twist it, subvert it. Or in the case of the girls vs. guys debate, change it for the better.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

You can have a woman be the best fighter in your novel and not even have to explain it. I can't speak for everyone, but I wouldn't have any problem with that.

An example from popular film... Remember the Colonial Marine named Vasquez from the original ALIENS?

She was an undisputed hard ass, especially among her male counterparts. It required little to no explanation. Simply showing her in combat, along with a breakdown of modern gender barriers (she showered alongside the men with zero attention being paid to the act as strange), was enough to believe she was tough. In fact, the actions of her teammates implied she was the toughest of the group.

 

[Steerpike]

An example from popular film... Remember the Colonial Marine named Vasquez from the original ALIENS?

Yep. Vasquez came to my mind during the course of this thread as well

 

[Sheilawisz]

Hi everyone, I did not want to post in this thread again but I have decided to do it anyway.

Why is it so incredibly important for you to be believable in what you write? We are, after all, Fantasy writers... This thread has become too focused on the real world where we live and the real species that we are, but this is a Fantasy Writing community and perhaps we should take the thread back in that direction.

If I want to write a freaking story about a world where women are normal height while all men are three feet tall midgets, so women easily push them around all the time, I will write it, and that's all.

That would probably give a heart attack (like Nihal said) to many male readers, but I would not care if that was the type of setting that I wanted to write. I could also invent a species in which females have easy access to some form of adrenaline-fueled super strength while men cannot do it, and so what if some people do not believe it?

Also, I wanted to say this from a realistic point of view: Have you considered that when a person is flooded with adrenaline and grasped by sheer wilderness in the middle of a battlefield, that person is basically a monster? It would not matter much whether the person is a man or a woman, because both have performed incredible feats of strength under those circumstances.

In a fanfiction story that I wrote about Frozen recently, when Princess Anna finds herself in battle she goes wild and fights powerfully just like her soldiers, and so far all my readers have accepted it and nobody said that it was strange or unbelievable.

 

[glutton]

I don't like the implication that the world has to be different for men and women to be equal. Yes, that sentence is an intentional misrepresentation of what you said, but it is ultimately the crux of this debate. Battle is the main form of conflict in our stories so it is the easiest measuring stick between characters. The same problem would come up if the main conflict of the story was cooking, courtroom drama, or a children's card game.

There's the fact that men are on average stronger than women, and then there's the concept that men and women are equal. I think as writers we should put more weight on the concepts espoused by our works than conforming to facts.

Nobody's saying you have 'conform' to facts and have no woman be close in strength to the strongest man, in my latest novel the female MC is at least 3X stronger than the male MC - who is no wimp, he is a fit young man who knows how to fight and can lift more than 200 lbs over his head, the female MC is just a straight up MONSTER - with no explanation beyond that she grew up outside society fighting monsters to survive. It's just nice to be aware of real life physical differences so you know how far you're straying from the norm and can at least guess how 'unrealistic' some readers will find it. Then if you wish, you can decide to word your blurb in a way as to prepare readers for what they're about to see... eg. whether to call your character 'a skilled female warrior' or 'a walking engine of destruction whose blade is stained with the blood of ten thousand men' lol.

Okay that last one was intentionally over the top but even just describing her as a 'mighty warrior' carries a different connotation than just 'skilled warrior' and can help readers know if it fits with what they like.

 

[Penpilot]

When you bring the best of both together, the men win, every time. This is not a flaw in women, it is simply a biological lottery that favors men very heavily. There may be a very rare women who can compete in a professional sport with men but I have never heard of one. And, if you offer evidence of even a few I'll guarantee that they either naturally or unnaturally had male hormone levels.

Here's a video of Jenny Finch Olympic softball pitcher facing off against a minor league pro player.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG8NOR6Lg2c

Here's a video of Manon Rheaume. First woman to play goal in a pre-season NHL exhibition game. Yes it was a publicity stunt, but she faced off against some of the worlds best and acquitted her self well. She never made it to the NHL but she did make it to the IHL which is the minor leagues, one step below the big show. She also went on to the Olympics, winning a gold medal.

Here's a retrospect on her history making experience.

IMHO, neither of them from my untrained eyes appears to have unusually high levels of male hormones.

That is impressive and she could probably beat many/most men. I doubt she could best Bruce Lee or even Jet Li for that matter.

Sorry, just an itch I need to scratch on this. Jet Li is an actor. What he does on screen has more in common with ballet dancing than it does with martial arts.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

You can have a woman be the best fighter in your novel and not even have to explain it.

I agree. You don't owe readers an explanation (which is what I meant by not catering to biases in my tl;dr post). Just entertain, and show what your character can do. If readers are immersed in your story, there shouldn't be a reason to put the book down and say, "Bah! If it was guy, then it would make sense!"

EDIT - A short post this time because I have to go the the Dragon's Egg thread and RP the strongest player character in the group. She's also the tallest.