Standard caveat: think for yourself, blah blah, other people’s ideas no substitute for your own thought, etc., etc., important to understand that at some point generalisations must be made or else we’d never be able to have any sort of meaningful discussion, so on and so forth.
Now for the non-standard caveat. Firstly, I understand this particular topic may be a little more pointed than most, given the more sensitive nature of what I’m going to be discussing here, but I don’t care. You’re welcome to your opinions, and I’ll respect that, but I’d like the favour to be reciprocated. Secondly, the question might arise: since I do not happen to be of the female persuasion, what gives me the right to comment on femininity? To which I shall invoke Ebert’s Law, as well as the numerous times various women in my life have told me to “be a man”, to which I replied with the above, replacing femininity with masculinity.
In any case, let’s begin.
You may know that I currently have partials of Morally Ambiguous out with agents. Of course, there’s an essential editing and vetting process that goes before that, especially given the way I write, and part of this process is getting input from other people, either with the whole thing or through little snippets which can stand alone. One of the problems a certain person had with a certain scene was that it was (or at least, said person claimed) rabidly misogynistic: in it, Nodammo cooks an omelette and through the tomatoes used in the cooking, divines where the person who sold them is.
The problem? Apparently I am a rabid misogynist for having Nodammo cook in a kitchen. I won’t even go into the stock phrase which was used in the reader’s concerns, save that she was, at the time, wearing boots and still a virgin. I can see where the concern is coming from (and mostly laughing at it), but the problem was that said reader was focusing on the trappings of what s/he perceived to be the problem and mistaking it for the problem itself.
In any case, it got me thinking on associated matters, and below are the somewhat disjointed results. I’ll do my best to work out some sort of correlation between each point, but cannot guarantee flow.
1. Random misogyny is boring.
I think the above four words sum up this point very well. Like random racism, random misogyny is stupid, often very illogical, and very, very, boring. Like messages about racism, most messages about gender equality are the kind that don’t need to be heard in a speculative fiction novel—as I’ve covered before in my article on Issues, I’m not here to read your poorly-disguised pamphlet, and these messages have been repeated in the genre over and over again ad nauseum; it’s a made-up world, you can try something different. And like random racism, random misogyny is rarely explored in the depth that an important Issue requires—more often than not, it’s just used to identify who the antagonists are.
And that’s annoying. Given the prevalence of modern western morals, it’s an uphill task to make any randomly misogynistic character relatable, and most authors don’t even bother trying, happily chucking the (almost invariably male) character into a convenient antagonist slot. It’s a knee-jerk, like killing children, spearing babies and eating puppies are. The reader doesn’t need to think, all he or she needs to see is that the character doesn’t live up to our standards of gender equality and blam! Instant evil.
What makes it even more mind-boggling is when a) there’s no social/cultural precedent for said random misogyny and/or b) one is dealing with a species that doesn’t have much in the way of sexual dimorphism. At this point, it’s clear that the author is warping his or her conworld just for the sake of making an Issue.
Ye gods, I don’t have a problem with discussing your gender equality in your novel, but at least try to make it logical, vaguely new, reasonable, and deep enough.
2. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Once upon a time, there was this thing known as the fantasy genre, and it was rather well-dominated by muscled hunks saving helpless damsels in distress. Some people looked at it and said, “That isn’t right,” so they made some changes. So in the end, the ladies got some quite literal breast plates, swords of their own, and went out to kick ass…
…and get into trouble, requiring saving from muscled hunks. The trend’s continued into a lot of urban fantasy with female protagonists—which is one of the reasons why I don’t read very much UF these days, or at least, those not from my trusted authors list. All the men are magical private detectives with tortured pasts and are shunned by their magical fellows, and all the women are kick-ass ladies in supposedly dangerous relationships with strangely attractive men with extra big helpings of sexual tension, and get into situations from which they need to be saved by said dangerous manly-men. Of course, that’s a generalisation, but read enough of the big-name urban fantasy authors in the genre and a trend starts to emerge.
Talia Gryphon, Kelley Armstrong, Anita Blake, Patricia Briggs, etc., etc., I’m looking at you.
I don’t claim to be a psychologist, but there’s definitely a winning formula in such books; otherwise why do they continue to be written? Popular doesn’t necessarily mean good, though, and I was discussing this phenomenon with a friend some time back. She had this to say:
“I don’t know. Whenever I see this sort of relationship, if it’s a male character, I feel as if the female character’s being a reward for him. If it’s a female character, I feel as if I’m supposed to imagine myself in her place, which might work for some other people but doesn’t work for me. Either way, the results aren’t savoury.”
What I’m getting at is that if you want your female characters to be different, you have to make more than a few cosmetic changes—a simple role reversal, for example, isn’t going to be enough by a long shot. Which brings us to the next point:
3. The trappings aren’t the problem. They aren’t the solution, either.
Like I’ve mentioned above, Nodammo cooking isn’t a sign of her suddenly turning into a helpless damsel in distress. Nor is her choosing to wear a dress. It strikes me whenever I open a book and see the Mary-Sue character insist on wearing trousers, toting swords around and doing other activities commonly regarded (by modern-day western standards, of course) as masculine, that the author’s put the cart before the horse—these are the results of attitudes in the society the story is taking place in, and not the causes in and of themselves. So the princess insists on wearing riding trousers. Amazing. It isn’t going to do one whit to help the status of women in her society. Ditto for going hunting with the king. They do jack shit for the general status of women in her society, and instead is all about her, her, her.
It’d be nice to see more protagonists extend his or her concern of Issues beyond him or herself on a wider scale—but then, social movements just aren’t as exciting as big battles with the Dark Lord, and after the Dark Lord’s defeated everyone suddenly becomes non-racist/non-sexist/vegans/whatever. In short, just because someone decides to wear a dress doesn’t mean she’s being horribly repressed and that even if she claims to be doing it willingly, she hasn’t been brainwashed by the Evil Patriarchal System Which Is Responsible For All The Woes In The World.
Conversely, it’s possible to have all the trappings and still be shafted into the worst of roles. For those who have had the misfortune to have Richard A. Knaak’s Day of the Dragon or his other Warcraft novels inflicted upon them, you may happen to remember a certain Vereesa Windrunner. She goes through all the motions, beating up random drunk who leers at her and tries to cop a feel, la la la, being an experienced ranger (who fails to act like one at all), dab hand with a bow, la la la, hates the main protagonist (Rhonin) on sight, bickers, wears trousers, so on and so forth. Certainly has all the trappings. (Un)fortunately, she never goes beyond being Rhonin’s Designated Love Interest, has almost every single aspect about her centred about Rhonin, and in the later books is mostly forgotten about and relegated to popping out his babies (despite the fact that elves supposedly don’t breed very well. Wow, even Rhonin’s dick is amazingly powerful, hurrah hurrah).
The same could be said for Inheritance’s Arya—despite supposedly having all the trappings, she doesn’t have a role beyond being Eragon’s love interest. Arya isn’t expanded upon in any meaningful way or as a character in her own stead—she’s just an extension of Eragon.
Which is why I am so snide in Morally Ambiguous about the whole Ye Olde Warrior Princess schtick, which still seems more to me like eye candy for nerds. The problem back then with female characters in the genre, I believe, lay twofold: one, that they were too passive, and two, they were defined only in terms of other (male) characters. As Terry Goodkind proves, one can give a female character earth-shattering power and still stumble into the same stupid problems. You can make a Mary-Sue a princess, the most powerful magician in the world, the only female member of the ancient order sword to protect the world, an amazingly skilled kung-fu fighter—when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter. Cure the disease, not the symptoms.
4. Your worth isn’t measured by what’s between your legs. And it works both ways, dear.
You see, I consider myself an meritocratic egalitarian. That means that I 1) do my best not to put people below one another and 2) do my best not to put people above one another. Most people get number one right, especially for “victim groups”, since it’s been drilled into their heads by society. However, most people don’t get number two right.
If you’ve read Lynn Flewelling, you’ll know what I mean. No thank you, history has shown that all war won’t come to an end if you do a simple role-reversal (Catherine the Great, Queen Elizabeth I, Margaret Thatcher, etc., etc., etc.), I don’t believe that a matriarchal society is inherently better than a patriarchal one, or that someone is better suited for the throne because said person happens to have a pair of lady-lumps and a port instead of a dongle.
I’m not buying that women as a group are somehow inherently superior to men, that they’re supposedly more in tune with nature, empathic, non-violent, spiritual, kind, have “natural” healing magic, so on and so forth. (Apparently, one of the reasons I’ve been given by a novel was that they give birth. Would someone at least try to explain this to me?) Then of course, the camera swings to the ugly, brutish, stupid men with their magics that scorch the earth and render it barren and lifeless, and the stereotypical fertility goddess weeps in despair…
Yeah, you get the point. Most readers are smart enough to call out the stupidity in automatically placing things perceived as masculine over things perceived as feminine, as in Robert Newcomb’s The Fifth Sorceress. However, in my experience the reverse is more often than not happily accepted, with equally sexist stereotyping of both genders given a pass.
It’s stupid, and it’s very likely that whatever message which the author is trying to pass across is going to fall flat on the discerning reader. One particularly virulent example is Karen Miller’s The Riven Kingdom: the Sue princess of a main character spends an enormous amount of time whining about her station, how she doesn’t need men to control her life, the fact that the evil noblemen and thinly-veiled Christian church are out to get her to marry for the kingdom’s stability, all the usual whining nonsense echoed by a thousand Sue princesses in a thousand other trashy fantasy novels. You’d think she’d know something about gender equality as we know it. Oh, and she’s going to be a good ruler, because she’s a queen.
Guess what she does when she gets to her supposed true love and proposes? States explicitly that she never intends him to have any political power, that his role is to be the father of her children, and that he’s not even going to have the traditional title of king—he can damn well be Queen Consort or something on those lines.
Can you imagine the shitstorm if the genders were reversed? Still, apparently it’s all happy and condoned by the author, because the one true love goes and agrees to it anyway, sticks with it, and from what I’ve heard of the next book becomes a nasty evil man because he wants some sort of political influence. Hurrah hurrah, and I fling the book across the room. Doesn’t help either that despite supposedly having so many amazing traits, she never displays any of them.
Valorising people for their genitals is stupid—_both ways._
5. Rape: Overrated and underrated.
As I’ve stated above, rape is actually a very common literary device when it comes to female characters, be it main protagonists, supporting protagonists or extras. (Good ones, of course, with a capital G.) The Dark Lord or his evil henchmen rape the poor heroine, instant sympathy for heroine and plot device, perhaps with a big helping of tragedy and angst thrown in for good measure. Or maybe a side character gets raped giving the protagonist a perfect chance to go out and defend her honour, or a little silent empathy. Evil father/uncle/male authority figure raped character when she was a girl, that why she ran away from home. Need an excuse to be a “fiercely independent” (a.k.a. neurotic) lesbian warrior princess? Rape!
Judging by the accounts of (confirmed) victims which I’ve read and compared to the way the Issue is handled in a lot of fantasy, the effects of rape are simply understated and too easily dealt with. To be fair, though, that’s the case with a lot of traumatic events in the genre—there are plenty of sociopathic heroes who watch as their quaint little village gets razed to the ground, angst about it for a few pages and then happily go on their way as if nothing had happened. Then again, the reverse does happen: if someone goes on to become a neurotic lesbian warrior princess who distrusts all men just because she got raped once, I’d suspect she has deeper issues than that.
What I’m getting at is a repeat of something I said in point number one: that the Issue of rape simply isn’t dealt with in a manner that does it justice. By all means, have it if you must, but at least put some effort into making it worth something more than a plot device.
6. Oh, wait, it’s the most terrible thing in the world, and your life is one big suck.
This is it, the last point I’m going to be making. Yes, it’s all very nice and well that you want to use your female character to discuss Issues pertaining to her. Fine. Very often, when the matter of sexism is brought up in fantasy, the way the author states it (or at least the way I perceive the prose) is that it’s supposed to be the most horrible thing ever. Fine. The problem is that sometimes this tends to skew priorities out of order.
Going back to the example of The Riven Kingdom, the Sue-princess is pretty much obsessed with being queen of the kingdom she’s ostensibly trying to save, so much so that the bitching is pretty much non-stop, with apparently no other reason than to feed her ego. Nope, not going to settle for second place and manipulate the sad little man who’s pretty much in the palm of your hand to do as you want. No, must be number one. Fine. The problem is that in doing so, she gives a fuck-all to the stability of the kingdom she’s heir to. Fuck the noblemen and the thinly-veiled Christian church, fuck possibly igniting a civil war, fuck foreign relations with the neighbours, fuck the peasantry, fuck it all, I must be fucking top of the heap because I deserve it for the bits between my legs. At this point, the author, who has been trying to convince me that Sue-princess really cares about her kingdom and its people, falls flat on its face—it’s clear she’s throwing them to the sharks to feed her giant ego. (Personally, I wonder why so many royal Sues have been shocked when they’ve been told by their parents they’ve been punted off in an arranged marriage. They’d probably have been expecting it from the very beginning.)
Compare this to Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion, where the princess in a similar situation goes over a list of potential suitors, does a bit of math as to which is the most advantageous choice for her country, and makes the choice.
The Riven Kingdom might have a point, but it’s buried under heaps of the main character’s apparent narcissism, whereas I believe the latter example is the far more mature, responsible and truly looking out for the people. It’s, again, a problem of mistaking the trappings for the actual thing.
Even more laughable is when a heroine encounters the evil drunk leering men ubiquitous to every fantasy tavern, and the author leaves us with the impression that the evil drunk leering men are so horrible and evil they’re the worst thing ever while the author expect us to feel that way for the sake of making an Issue, conveniently forgetting the Dark Lord looming on the horizon. In short, priorities are being misplaced for the sake of an Issue.
Conclusion:
I don’t know about you, but all this fuss is annoying. I suppose it’s partly because the author often wants to make Issues out of the whole thing. Whatever happened to writing characters as people who just happen to be male, female, rich, poor, black, white, green, and their oddities just that, instead of supposedly being a stand-in for a whole social group?
SMARTALIENQT on 17 June 2009, 20:24 said:
Hmmm…
OK, I consider myself a feminist (juxtapose that word with n-a-z-i and I will have you keelhauled), but I agree with this argument. Sometimes a banana is a banana, and sometimes wearing a dress is wearing a dress.
One of the reasons why I like Tamora Pierce books is that the characters can go out and save people from bandits… in a pink tissue ball gown with pearl edging. And then they can go out and muck out stables in the next chapter wearing breeches. They can be short or tall, they can have glasses or not, they may suck at wrestling but excel at jousting, what matters is that they can do it just as well as boys can, and they are human.
One thing, though: there still is misogyny in the world. There just is. And so when people write in a misogynistic way cough TWILIGHT cough, there should be some argument. Nitpicking over every possible detail-that-may-be-interpreted-incorrectly isn’t the point – the point is to catch the damsels in distress cough BELLA cough and leave the people like Tris – who, despite hating wearing dresses, is too stubborn to wear pants.
If I am interpreting your question correctly, you are asking why one of the reasons for inherent female superiority is giving birth. The answer, as I understand it, is that women give birth to men (unlike in the Bible, with the whole rib thing), and so, therefore, we were first. Also, men never have to go through hours of pain to give birth. We do.
Overall, great article!
Reggie on 17 June 2009, 20:47 said:
I think the main thing is that there must be a distinguishment between misogyny and a character just being a certain way. If one uses a damsel in distress in a story, that doesn’t mean that the author hates women or is suggesting all women are like that necessarily… It’s just a character. If you make a story with a stupid black character, does that mean you hate black people? If you make a story with a white male rapist, does that mean you’re conveying a stereotype, or telling a story? I think people blur these lines too often, which is also the point (one of them, anyway) that the article was making.
If you think that women can wrestle as well as men, I suggest you watch some wrestling. Certainly, they can achieve technical equality, but there are some things, like running or lifting heavy things, that men are better at simply because of design, or nature, or genetics, or whatever you want to call it. Like it or not, women are not the same as men. As a heterosexual male, I think that’s a good thing. Most of my friends are girls, even, I find them more interesting and easy to talk to.
I am no biblical scholar, but as I understand it the birthing process in the Bible still involves copulation, conception, and vaginal birthing. Perhaps I didn’t read closely enough.
P.S. Feminists are Nazis. Just to make sure I said it before CB got here.
Lccorp2 on 17 June 2009, 22:18 said:
@SmartalienQT:
I was being sort of sarcastic about the whole birth quote—I know the reasons given, they just don’t make sense to me. (Still, someone else’s views would be interesting.) You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, but especially in the age of epidurals and c-sections, I’m not buying the whole pain argument. Animals do the same thing, and of course, not all women choose to or can have children. It just reeks of the flip side of the coin.
The problem, as is pointed out in your paragraph about Tamora Pierce, is that people are caught up in the trappings. Dresses, trousers, swords, guns, and take those as identifiers of a narrow definition of “strong woman”, a concept that is actually rather nebulous and can be redefined to suit a wide variety of people. Kelley Armstrong’s Elena Michaels strong? Up in the balance. Terry Goodkind’s Kahlan strong? I think most would disagree.
Does misogyny exist? Of course, and it should be decried. That doesn’t excuse misandry, which is quite alive and well, and doesn’t have much of a public voice.
sansafro187 on 17 June 2009, 23:02 said:
I appreciate this article. I’m in the process of writing a novel(like everybody else it seems :D) and I seem to keep second-guessing myself about how my female lead would look through a gender-criticism lens or whatever. The male lead does all the fighting, because he’s the one who’s been fighting all his life, and it wouldn’t make sense for her to be able to compete with professionals.
It seems like something that has to be addressed at some point, since the setting is a pretty transparent pastiche of Sengoku/Edo Period Japan, so the society is pretty flagrantly sexist in most respects.
The only solution I’ve come up with is to just write the character as she is, projected misogyny be damned. That seems consistent with what you’ve written, so I feel heartened about it.
Maybe I’ll regret it when I’m looking for an agent to pick it up, but hopefully there are enough “strong” female secondary characters to mitigate such charges.
SMARTALIENQT on 18 June 2009, 00:14 said:
@Reggie
Very true. You have to take these things in context.
That was a reference to a Tamora Pierce character. I don’t watch wrestling, as I have nothing but rabbit ears.
I’m not so sure about that, but it’s too late to go internet hunting. Yes, men are different from women. Summarily, they are equal. And I find my male friends are easier to talk to, but that’s just me.
Neither am I.
The fact that woman was made from man, and made for the sole purpose to please man, is the issue. Note that it is wo man, not, oh, wo and manwo.
keelhauls Reggie I did warn you, you know.
sansafro187 on 18 June 2009, 00:28 said:
Oh, I don’t really want to get into an argument over it, but without getting into differences in strength or something quite so loaded and variable, I will just say, physiologically, post-pubescent women are generally inferior sprinters to an equivalent male because of less efficient hip angles… or so I’ve heard.
Artimaeus on 18 June 2009, 00:59 said:
Quite a nice article. It’s the roll of women in the story that’s important, not whether or not they wear dresses.
“Only Spartan women give birth to Spartan men”?
It’s stupid to say that any one trait or role makes one gender superior to the others. For example, it is traditionally the role of men fight in war. You could say this is because men are strong and heroic, and all the weak, inferior women must therefore rely on men to defend them. But it could also mean that women are too valuable to be slaughtered by the thousands in battle. It could be read either way, depending on how you look at the issue. Strength, weakness, superiority, inferiority, and heroism are all such fluid concepts. Who is stronger: the person who will never give up fighting for the sake of others, or the one who can accept compromises to see that the greatest good is served.
Reggie on 18 June 2009, 01:17 said:
*role
Feminism +1
sansafro187 on 18 June 2009, 01:23 said:
The childbirth argument is actually pretty relevant for determining why armies tend to be overwhelmingly male, especially in less developed cultures. If you lose, or only win a Pyrrhic victory, losing a large portion of your males wouldn’t have a catastrophic event on the birthrate, since one man could impregnate multiple women if it came to it. If you lost a significant part of your females in a war, there’s no fallback polygamy. You’re just boned. So there IS an argument against large-scale inclusion of women into the military, at least in most typical fantasy cultures.
Proserpina FC on 18 June 2009, 01:24 said:
Grrrr…. I HATE fantasy books with the setting of 15th Century Europe and the protagonists of 21st Century New York. What is the point of the word FANTASY if authors can’t actually think outside their worldview?
1) Royalty that never even considered that they would have their marriages arranged.
In Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire, Little Lady Sansa knows she’s on the short list to be married to the Crowned Prince. As a child, another noblewoman drew pictures of her wedding day with a prince like he was Justin Timberlake. You know why? Because THOSE women are products of their environments.
2) Yeah, -isms or any form of contempt for people that aren’t you being used as a Red Hand for evilness.
And I love the Double Standard in this, too. If the Hero hates a group, it’s because they are Always Chaotic Evil. If they aren’t, expect a reveal that one of them did something mean to the Hero as a child, so it’s sympathetic or that the hero will gain an Uncle Tom sidekick, whose admiration of the Hero will show that They Aren’t All Bad.
Nations aren’t nations unless they make SOME distinction between themselves and the people living right next to them. Two white, protestant, German-descended, liberal, 20-year-old, English majored, Nickelback-loving guys can still find reason to mock each other because of the USA-Canada political border, and THAT is in the Enlightened Western modern age, where there is enough food, water and resources to not need to consider your neighbors as rivals or a threat to survive. So how is it that in a fantasy setting where every village is a peasant hovel, is it wrong, nay, Evil, to not trust someone because they are a stranger from another land?
On sexism, it really seems to escape these authors that feminism is a social issue, not a personal petty grievance.
On all isms… Look, the reason it is stupid to hate random strangers for what they look like, how they act, their subculture or their heritage in America is because there are 50 states and 7 territories, thousands of square miles of land and water, 305 million of us, in thousands of different metropolitans, cities, suburbs, towns, townships and villages and every one of these places is stocked full of the basic needs of the human race. So, what do YOU care if someone is strange?
It is idiotic now, but it made SOME SENSE 500 years ago. Nowadays, a man could buy some language software, practice on it and go out and meet someone who speaks a different language and have a good ol’ time. 500 years ago, the general population couldn’t even read and write their own language, so communicating with, let alone learning from, strangers was just too frustrating to attempt. Just give me the chicken for these three coins and you can be back on your boat, Chinaman.
(Note that many writers are lazy on this because they make an entire continent speak the same language anyway, striping away at the organic nature of their medieval setting, not to mention common sense, and once again showing no understanding of humanity, society, and the reasons we mentally adapt to certain attitudes.)
Best social example: Homosexuality. I have too problems with how it gets glorified in fiction. The Modern West isn’t a poor, little village that needs many children because a fifth won’t survive into adulthood or to work the land or to fight in some war against a warlord threatening the countryside. Ironically though, that’s the fantasy town the hero is from, but how DARE they ask him to fulfill his duties as a man and think of the village before himself. He’ll fight in the war and risk his life, but he ain’t touching no pu-tang.
If the hero (rarely the hero, likely a side character) isn’t fighting for their right to ignore their justified-for-the-setting responsibility to their community, he is in a relationship that gets treated as The Purest Love of All or as Hetero, Without the Woman. I’m friends with soooooo many gay guys and they have all the problems and drama of mainstream dating (and worse, because they have to work so much harder to even FIND guys, just to still sort through the same assholes, sex-onlys, noncommittal, crazies, and Just-Not-That-Into-Yous that you do, lol).
If it is Just As Hetero, you can bet the author is a yaoi fangirl with no understanding or experience around GLBT. Now, I don’t mean the author is portraying two normal guys or gals who just so happen to love each other. I mean they are portraying two guys or gals who love each other which means that they WILL slip into the author’s narrow understanding of relationships. One will be the man: the breadwinner, the top, the taller one, the aggressive one. One will be the woman: suddenly domestic, the bottom, the shorter one. And I gag, oh do I ever gag, when magic gets involved and one of them becomes pregnant.
I LOVE me some men’s love, but the second one becomes functionally female, I quit. What is the point of the word FANTASY if authors can’t actually think outside their worldview?
Oh god, I could rant on and on about this. I’ll stop.
I just pray that as I write my novel, I keep these things and your words in mind.
~ Attitudes have social context. They are not signals of Evil or plot devices.
~ Heroes should never be so ignorant of their settings that they seem out of place, a teleported avatar.
~ Glorifying a disadvantaged group is not better than the other extreme of the spectrum.
~ If you can’t think outside your very, very limited experience of humanity, don’t write about strangeness in others. And stay out of fantasy, where everything, including your point-of-view hero is NOT FROM YOUR WORLD.
Asahel on 18 June 2009, 02:20 said:
Excellent article.
I had a friend who asked for advice on a particular scene. The scene involved a female fighter in combat against a more powerful foe. She’s able to do well, but cannot defeat him (it? I don’t remember) alone, but the tide turns when two of her friends arrive to help — both of whom were male. He didn’t want it to come off as a sexist “Oh she’s supposed to be a fighter, but she needed the big strong men to come save her” thing because the opponent was too strong for any of the three to fight singly — they all needed to work together. I told him that if those elements show in the text — she’s a competent fighter, the men couldn’t beat the enemy alone either, and they all have to work together to win — then it’s not sexist, and a reasonable person shouldn’t see it as such. There will, however, be unreasonable people, so be prepared.
By the way, SMARTALIENQT:
“The fact that woman was made from man, and made for the sole purpose to please man, is the issue. Note that it is wo man, not, oh, wo and manwo.”
That’s actually a very inaccurate portrayal of the Biblical story. Yes, Eve was made from Adam, but she wasn’t “made for the sole purpose to please” him. There are two reasons the text gives for her creation: 1) God saw that it wasn’t good for man to be alone. 2) Adam needed a helper suitable to him.
There’s nothing in there about her being made just to please him. To fill in a missing piece in the universe? Yes. To help the man because he can’t go it alone? Yes. Just to please him? Not in the text.
Finally, there’s also an old saying regarding the creation of Eve. It goes like this: “She was not taken from man’s head that she would dominate over him. She was not taken from man’s feet that he might trample her. She was taken from his side so that in all things she might be his equal.” An interesting interpretation, no? Perhaps even more interesting that it’s an ancient Rabbinical interpretation at least as old as Jesus’s time, and probably much older.
Steph Cullen on 18 June 2009, 04:53 said:
Also, God had her in mind from the beginning. She wasn’t just an add-on. I mean, think about it. Obviously, man can’t procreate by himself.
Anyways.
Thankyou for the advice to write them as characters. I need to remember that.
I’m just annoyed a bit, because if I write a girl who keeps messing up and needs her friend to save her, and that friend happens to be a guy, it’s going to look as if I’m being sexist.
If I make him the stronger one and her the smarter one, is that okay? Or am I just trafficking in stereotypes again?
I guess it’s just fleshing the characters out so that they each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
And I think I just answered my own question.
(username = much lulz)
WiseWillow on 18 June 2009, 08:31 said:
Make him smarter at some things, her smarter at some things. There are so many types of smart! He could be good with languages, she could be good with mechanical things, etc.
Oh, that Tamora Pierce wrestling thing? Kel is as big as most men (I think she’s eventually 6’ and burly).
As for Alanna, she is noted for being very stocky and quick. If there can be skilled little men as wrestlers, why not little women?
Danielle on 18 June 2009, 16:23 said:
@ SMARTALIENQT (and to add on to what Asahel said):
The Hebrew word used in the creation of woman is “ezer”—“Let us create an ezer for Adam.” I forget exactly how many times the word ezer is used, but in other books of the Old Testament, it is used to describe Israel’s military allies AND it is used to describe God as he helped the Israelites in times of war.
Women weren’t intended to be an extension of man. Like Asahel said, they were intended to be man’s equal. The word “ezer,” by the way, means “strong helper.” There’s a reason for that.
Jeni on 18 June 2009, 16:34 said:
Point 5 reminds me of this comic:
(and for your information, I never really enjoyed Home on the Strange. Nosirree.)
swenson on 18 June 2009, 18:28 said:
applauds article Great job. Supposed feminism in books drives me crazy. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. She cleaned the house, she cooked, she washed clothes, she raised three kids, she was the stereotypical mom. But does that somehow mean she was inferior? Of course not! She worked just as hard as my dad, just she did different work. So… books that insist women are only “liberated” if they act like men are being sexist. Women are equal to men no matter what they’re doing or wearing.
I agree strongly with the points about not disrupting the world/priorities/whatever to make a point. I mean, if the overall point of your book is to talk about sexism through the metaphor of a fantasy world, that’s fine. But if your overall point is something else entirely, then going off on random tangents about sexism is just stupid. Yeah, it’s an Important Issue, bla bla bla, but who cares? If it detracts from your story, shut up about it.
Scatterpulse on 19 June 2009, 00:01 said:
I had a friend who asked for advice on a particular scene. The scene involved a female fighter in combat against a more powerful foe. She’s able to do well, but cannot defeat him (it? I don’t remember) alone, but the tide turns when two of her friends arrive to help — both of whom were male.
Personally, I think the best way to look at this problem is like this: be honest. I don’t think there’s any problem with incorporating misogyny into a story as long as the psychology of the characters reflects the “reality” of their situation. For instance, in this case, why not just go with it? Your friend could really enrich this character by exploring this issue. If she’s a fighter, in a realm that’s ostensibly male-dominated, and can thus never be the best there is at what she does, how does that make her feel and act? Is she resigned to her “station” as a second-class warrior? Does she try to compensate with a huge sword? Does she have an inferiority complex? Does she go all Tetsuo on her friends’ asses and resent them while simultaneously knowing that she needs their help and protection? Does she compensate by using her wits or speed rather than strength, or maybe rely on psychological tactics (look behind you!)? Is she unhappy but determined to fight honorably for her cause, suffering to achieve her goals?
pant pant pant Okay, I’m getting a little too worked up about this. But it just seems to me that instead of looking at issues of sexism and such as limiting factors in storytelling, it would be cool if writers used them to expand their characters’ inner worlds. After all, a girl reading a story about a girl struggling with realistic issues of sexism is going to appreciate the story if it’s told honestly, right?
And what about the issue of internalization? You can write about this issue without falling into some sort of grrrrl power! trap. It would be pretty affecting to read a fantasy tale of a sexist society wherein female characters have internalized their treatment and accepted lives they may not want as a result. Maybe a female warrior acts tough but is secretly afraid, because of her upbringing, that she really isn’t worth as much as a man.
And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to explore the other side of this issue, too. If you’ve ever read “Shooting An Elephant” you can see how these sorts of structures harm those who are in power as well as those who are victimized. Maybe there are male characters who feel trapped in their “superior” personas and just want to sit down and let someone else save the world for one damn minute. Or perhaps there are male characters who are unaware of their cultural trappings like Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart and who suffer greatly because of it.
In my opinion, some of these ideas would be refreshing.
Also:
You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, but especially in the age of epidurals and c-sections, I’m not buying the whole pain argument. Animals do the same thing, and of course, not all women choose to or can have children. It just reeks of the flip side of the coin.
Yeah, no. At this point in earth’s history, the pain of childbirth goes hand-in-hand with the wrestling argument; men are, for the most part, physically stronger than women, and the pain of childbirth is a reality that women do indeed have to bear. That’s just reality at the moment. Just because epidurals and c-sections exist doesn’t mean the pain of childbirth is magically not an issue. For one thing, not many people in the western world can afford to just have a c-section. When you’re living on minimum wage, that just isn’t a reality. For another thing, a great deal of the human population doesn’t even have access to the sorts of hospitals we know and enjoy in the western world, and many in fact don’t have access to any hospitals at all.
I mean, try telling a 14-year-old mother in the lower classes of Thailand that the pain of childbirth “just reeks of the flip side of the coin”.
Also, childbirth for animals and childbirth for humans are not the same thing. I don’t know many lizards who give birth the way humans do (although if you know any, those have to be the coolest lizards ever).
And again, psychology comes into play. Imagine you want to have children that are biologically yours, but the only way to do it is to be kicked in the balls for about ten hours. Now imagine going through your whole life knowing that that’s how things are, that it might affect future career goals, that your body may never recover entirely from the experience. Not to mention your bones literally rearranging themselves for the process. Oh yeah, and you might die (that’s why c-sections came to be, after all).
Perhaps I’m interpreting your statement as being glibber than you intended, but it just seems odd to wave the entirety of the pain of childbirth off just because a wealthy minority of the world’s population can avoid the highest peaks of the pain. If I’m reading into it too much, I apologize and I’ll give you a delicious cookie.
Asahel on 19 June 2009, 01:15 said:
@Scatterpulse:
Excellent suggestions all. I’m not sure if some of those are a direction he might wish to take the character, but I’ll be sure to direct his attention here.
Lccorp2 on 19 June 2009, 03:37 said:
@Scatterpulse re: my comments:
I’m not sure where you got the idea that childbirth pain wasn’t an issue and shouldn’t be alleviated. My point was that it’s quite silly to valourise women for it.
Do remember the context in which it’s used in a lot of psuedofeminist fantasy—that it’s used as a blanket statement in order to supposedly prove the inherent superiority of all women over all men, which is stupid because most of the characters saying that usually a) don’t have children anyway or b) it’s often possible for ye olde staff-wielding healer (invariably female) or herb-woman to take it away. The main argument as I understand it, is that since women can take the pain of childbirth, something which men will never experience, they this equates to them being superior in all respects. (I’ve heard arguments such as the “since we create life, we’re more in tune with it!” annoyance, but we can go into that later if you must)
Yes, really.
Have you ever heard of kidney stones? About the excruciating pain (renal colic) they can cause not over the span of hours, but over months or years, with the peak when they’re passed out (if ever so)? Go read some accounts of kidney stone patients—some women patients have compared it to, and even surpassed, the pain experienced during childbirth. Oddly enough, men suffer from kidney stones too, so that puts paid to the “we can undergo more suffering” argument, even assuming that all women have biological children.
Now let me paraphrase you:
Ever notice how the dangerous occupations are almost always male-dominated, and no one pushes for equal representation in these industries? Alaskan crab fishermen, foundry workers, oil riggers, deep-shaft miners, so on and so forth. Even today in the U.S of A, 94% of workplace-related deaths are men. (NIOSH figures) By the same logic, men are doomed to deaths by their occupations.
Ah, but not all men work in dangerous occupations. Just as not all women choose to have children. At this point, it gets ridiculous. How many brownie points are we going to assign to each biologically or socially determined gender role? Who is going to be trusted to assign them? Does it all matter in the end?
I repeat: I’m not against the alleviation of pain, regardless of its source. What I am glibly dismissing is the idea that a whole group of people should be put on a pedestal not because of any merit of their own, but because of the bits they happen to have between their legs. I think we can agree on that.
Now that that’s done with, a few more comments:
-I’m not sure where you got the idea that I was referring to reptiles when saying “animals give birth, too.” I’ve been to Australia and seen a lambing. Let’s just say I’ve seen more aesthetically pleasing sights, and the ewe was far from comfortable.
By the by, there are many species of viviparous and oviviparous reptiles. The most famous (and closest to mammalian) example is the viviparous lizard, but a simple google will bring up plenty more.
-As I’ve pointed out in my Issues article, a LOT of Issue-centered speculative fiction is terrible, because more often than not the author refuses to seriously consider the other side of the Issue and any of the characters who disagrees with his or her stance on said Issue are either evil, stupid, or have a deep, dark agenda.
To be honest, I still have to come across a single piece of speculative fiction which involves gender issues and treats it as a social movement, rather than a matter of personal ego. Your suggestions in the first half of your post are excellent, but the point is made moot when the Issue isn’t even dealt with in a sensible way. Either it’s turned into shallow egotism (The Riven Kingdom), beaten into me at every turn (Touched by Venom), has no social or cultural precedent (countless fantasies), don’t even make sense (A lot of Christopher Rowley’s works, which often involve furries), or is pretty much a thinly-veiled soapbox speech on how the oppressed group is naturally and inherently superior (Lynn Flwelling).
Ophelia on 19 June 2009, 04:54 said:
Aargh. You’re almost there – you have the basics down, some good ideas, but the execution is making me cringe a bit, Lccorp.
>>Judging by the accounts of (confirmed) victims which I’ve read . . .
Christ, who do you think your audience here is, that you have to write that? Confirmed victims? Fuck.
>> if someone goes on to become a neurotic lesbian warrior princess who distrusts all men just because she got raped once, I’d suspect she has deeper issues than that.
Nice to know that lesbianism is an “issue.” And “just because she got raped once?” Has your reading of confirmed rape survivors’ stories led you to believe that rape typically does not have considerable effects on a person’s life?
It looks like this whole article was prompted by this agent’s critique of a scene in your novel. Maybe the agent’s nuts; but . . . well, given the slips you’ve made here, although it seems like you have the right idea, I can’t dismiss the possibility that there’s something in the way you’ve written the scene that may have pinged the radar of someone who’s read far too many shitty misogynist stories in her time. I know I’m getting more jaded and less tolerant of things like this. Is the scene up at II anywhere, or are you willing to put it up?
>>Does misogyny exist? Of course, and it should be decried. That doesn’t excuse misandry, which is quite alive and well, and doesn’t have much of a public voice.
Lol forever. Did you mean that the decriers of misandry have less of a public voice – or what you wrote, which is that misandry is both alive and well (oh no!) and doesn’t have much of a public voice (so . . . no one talks about it, and yet they do talk about it enough in novels that its prevalence annoys you?).
-
Proserpina: Excuse me if I’m reading this incorrectly, but it seems as though you are arguing that, since, say, someone a few hundred years ago would not have the language skills to communicate with someone of another race, it’s A-OK to present your characters in such a situation acting with uncriticised racism? You may be writing about “then,” but your audience is reading it now. And if that reader is Chinese, or of Chinese descent, that’s going to hurt. Same as with misogynistic fiction; the author may not hold those prejudices, but that doesn’t matter to the person reading the story.
I also dislike the idea that a homosexual man should get to breedin’ instead of helping his community in other ways. If the character was a woman, would you condone the narrative having her forced into marriage and raped until she conceives?
-
Swenson:
>>Supposed feminism in books drives me crazy. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. She cleaned the house, she cooked, she washed clothes, she raised three kids, she was the stereotypical mom. But does that somehow mean she was inferior? Of course not!
And that is a feminist interpretation. I hate so much how mainstream culture seems to think that feminism is all about forcing the poor women out of their lovely homes; it’s about having the CHOICE!
Scatterpulse:
>>Yeah, no.
Cosigned!
Ophelia on 19 June 2009, 04:59 said:
All that and I didn’t even note the first thing that raised my hackles. Calling women “females?” Niiiice. Unless you’re talking about the females of many different species, “women” will work just fine, thank you, and if that messes with your alliteration, maybe it’s worth the sacrifice.
In case you’re confused: normally, the people you see on the internet referring to human “females” are the douchey Nice Guys, the geeky men and boys who Just can’t Understand why women don’t like them, the ones who think it’s a more academic term but can’t see how it depersonalises, how clinical and distancing it is, how it separates “the female” from the humans having the discussion.
Lccorp2 on 19 June 2009, 11:02 said:
Oh look, did I strike a nerve? Clearly you either a) didn’t bother reading closely because it was a hot-button issue close to you, or b) you had your judgement clouded for the same reason. Of course, there’s always the possibility that c) I did not make myself clear enough, and after this explanation if you still disagree with me, tough beans.
By the by, I never said it was an agent who read this and rejected it. Hell, the biggest partial I’ve given was up to the first thirty pages, and the scene’s in chapter 28. It was a beta reader who read it and complained. Or did you even read closely?
Well, yes. I think that my audience here is comprised of rational, moderate and largely nonpartisian people, willing to consider views they do not agree with, try and understand where the opposing viewpoint is coming from, and try to reconcile False accusations do happen for a number of reasons. Remember the Duke case a few years back? Very prolific. How did it end?
Please stop putting words in my mouth. You are insinuating that I stated that lesbianism is a problem to be solved. I said nothing of the kind, but I do understand that you may be unfamiliar with the terminology of “Issue” which I use in my articles. You may wish to read “On Issues” to gain a greater understanding of the term as I use it (and apparently, most of my readers understand)
Number two: Remember the context in which this trope is often used: as a plot device. One very common example would be: Character X (female) is raped by character Y (male). Character X then goes on to spurn males as a group, which may have two possible outcomes: Character X initially spurns character Z (male), who then goes on to show her the meaning of tru wuv, happily washing away the consequences, or she becomes a lesbian and makes a Big Bold Statement™ complete with anvilicious adages.
The thing is, it’s like any other traumatic incident. Some people clam up and go numb, some people can’t take it and spiral into depression, self-mutilation or suicide, and some people seek—and find—absolution, be it a long or short path, an easy or hard one.
But to sum up my thoughts, yes, if ten years after a car accident someone is still running and screaming at the sight of cars as if it had happened yesterday, and is still unable to differentiate one irresponsible motorist from the millions of motorists out on the streets and is painting them with the same broad brush, I believe said person has deeper psychological problems than just being hit by a car, problems which are keeping him or her from healing. Said problems would be interesting to write about, but no one ever seems to want to devote the ink to working the problems out in the prose.
Here’s what I stated:
Please explain clearly how the above quote could have possibly led to your interpretations of what I said, and from which I suspect you just skimmed all of my words and had a Pavlovian response to certain words and ideas. Is it not clear enough that I stated that a) misogyny exists and is bad, b) misandry also exists and is equally bad, and c) misandry doesn’t have much of a public voice? I mean, everyone else seemed to understand.
And don’t tempt me. Really. Don’t tempt me. Your snide dismissal of the idea that men might actually have concerns is pretty much exemplary of how modern westernised society treats the pain of men. Don’t make me break out the molested little boys with their caretakers getting little more than a slap on the wrist and society thinking of them as “lucky”, false accusations, paternity fraud, automatic assumption of guilt in domestic violence, Bobbit, don’t drop the soap and groin-kicking jokes, conscription, depiction of fathers as idiots and hopeless buffoons in general media—
But that belongs in the forums, if I ever bother to debate (and probably won’t, as Jerk and CB have proven—it’s impossible to argue with people on certain topics). Still, the point I was making here is that prejudice based on one’s gender is wrong, no matter who it happens to. Because, surprisingly, everyone (yes, white heterosexual Christian males included) is supposed to have rights, a certain amount of dignity and equality of opportunity, regardless of whether they belong to a victim group or otherwise.
With regards to Prosperina’s statements: I don’t claim to speak for her, but here’re my thoughts, for what they’re worth:
Integrity and verisimilitude of the constructed world should never be sacrificed just to make a political point. (See: Hezekiah) It is true that negative traits will tend to push readers away from a character, thus the usage of them to identify antagonists. It is not impossible, though, for said character to be likable. Hannibal Lecter is a very good example—despite being a psychopathic cannibal, the way he is portrayed in the work starring him has earned him quite a following. I’m sure everyone here can think of fans gushing over antagonists (Draco Malfoy, anyone?), so there shouldn’t be a problem with not transplanting people from modern western society into a medieval conworld.
Personally, I believe that one should keep one’s beliefs separate from any analysis of the written word, and they should be debated separately. Take for example characters from two books on opposite ends of the spectrum: Halaflora from E. E. Knight’s Dragon Outcast is pretty much a Stepford wife and hopeless romantic, throwing away her political position as the dragon equivalent of the king’s granddaughter to marry (or more correctly, be mated with) the main character and thereafter waits on him hand and foot (or the dragon equivalent thereof), sings to him, and is desperately aching to have his eggs. Compare this to The Riven Kingdom and the Sue-princess discussed in the article, and I’m sure you’ll agree they’re quite dissimilar.
However, I don’t hate Halaflora for being a Stepford wife: I hate her because she is a satellite character with no inner life of her own and is defined by another character. I don’t hate Sue-princess (sorry, I can’t remember her name) because of her feminist ideals: I hate her because the way she expresses said ideals is completely counterproductive to execution of said ideals and destroys their good image.
FYI: I am ethnic Chinese, and I didn’t have a raging fit at Prosperina’s comments. Maybe it’s because I understood the spirit in which the “Chinaman” statement was made, or maybe it’s because I don’t go out of my way to read deeply into everything everyone says, think up the worst possible interpretation and get all angry about it.
And finally:
Interestingly, I don’t see you complaining about the times I used “males”, or derivatives thereof. How about we discuss in the forums the times the term is used in the media and how no one gets full of righteous indignation over it, or about the usage of “women and children” as victims, compared to gender-neutral nouns when it comes to men?
Sorry, shaming language doesn’t work here. Try somewhere else. Thank you for insinuating a) I am a geek, b) I am immature, c) women don’t like me, and d) I am insensitive enough to not know of this as an issue. All of which, even if true, have no bearing on the validity of the arguments I am making. You do realise that the need to resort to shaming language reflects badly on you, right?
Number two: remember the genre I am speaking about, and do note that I specifically included examples of furries (Christopher Rowley) in my article.
You will excuse me if I am more than a little suspicious of the possibility you had an automatic response, skimmed through my article, and then proceeded to write a reply full of righteous indignation?
Puppet on 19 June 2009, 11:06 said:
applauds article Great job. Supposed feminism in books drives me crazy. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. She cleaned the house, she cooked, she washed clothes, she raised three kids, she was the stereotypical mom. But does that somehow mean she was inferior? Of course not! She worked just as hard as my dad, just she did different work. So… books that insist women are only “liberated” if they act like men are being sexist. Women are equal to men no matter what they’re doing or wearing.
quote from Swenson
There was actually a study that showed if the mother was paid to do all the chores, watch kids and so on, that she would make more money then the other parent.
anon1 on 19 June 2009, 19:26 said:
I am only responding because you asked someone to explain to you why giving birth gives women more valor.
Well, it isn’t the act of giving birth. Every woman who gets pregnant has to give birth (at least before abortions). The valor comes in what happens afterwards when the woman freely gives up sleep, sanity, and self to care for a little ball of needs who must have constant care to survive. Now I am only taking about newborns, babies gradually become more and more dependent, but a newborn typically feeds every two hours and takes nearly an hour to feed, so you do the math.
Now I know that dads and others can help with feedings using bottles, but before bottles existed, that job fell only on the mother. So the survival of our species depended on the willingness of the mother to give everything she had to her baby.
Because of this, woman have evolved to be more compassionate, empathetic, and giving than men. You may disagree, but based on my experience, I think that this is true. I know that there are some men who are extremely compassionate and some woman who seem to be completely void of it, but in general, I think this is true.
Now I don’t think this makes women superior to men, men have their own strengths, but I do think this is a valid argument as to why the ability to be mothers (those bits between the legs) gives admirable qualities to women.
Reggie on 20 June 2009, 02:15 said:
I love me some controversy. I think Ophelia wins just because she got worked up enough to be all “Fuck! Piss! Shitting tits!”
Scatterpulse on 20 June 2009, 17:09 said:
Lccorp2:
Well, this is a long one. Maybe you’ll get through it, maybe not.
Why yes, thank you for asking, I have heard of kidney stones! I’m not sure where you got the idea that I was claiming women are somehow superior to men in my post. By saying that childbirth is painful for women, one is not automatically saying that women are in any way superior or even that they possess a higher threshold for pain than men. Childbirth simply hurts women in a big way. It’s a fact. Whether kidney stones exist and are painful or not, childbirth does hurt for women. I’m not sure exactly why the kidney stones argument seems to be the default argument when talking about pain in childbirth (I’ve heard it before, so many times), especially considering the fact that women get them too. Men do not hold the monopoly on kidney stones! And considering the fact that I didn’t in any way dismiss men’s pain in life, it seems odd that you bring the kidney stones in as if it’s some sort of contest of pain. I didn’t even say that childbirth is the worst pain a woman can go through. All I said is that there IS pain and that it’s still a relevant issue.
I didn’t even imply anything further in my post because I agree; the double-standard in these types of works can be infuriating.
(I’ve heard arguments such as the “since we create life, we’re more in tune with it!” annoyance, but we can go into that later if you must)
If I must? When did I even suggest this was on the horizon? I have to agree with you here; that’s a ridiculous argument.
Yes, really.
It’s okay, dude. I believe you.
Now let me paraphrase you:
Oh, good.
Well, you sort of got where I was going, anyway. Basically: childbirth hurts for women, and that pain shouldn’t be dismissed. Your whole diatribe about dangerous work environments for men isn’t really relevant to my point, so I’m not going to bother addressing it. When did I say men don’t experience pain or gender biases, anyway? Don’t put words in my mouth, man.
At this point, it gets ridiculous. How many brownie points are we going to assign to each biologically or socially determined gender role
Amen.
I repeat: I’m not against the alleviation of pain, regardless of its source. What I am glibly dismissing is the idea that a whole group of people should be put on a pedestal not because of any merit of their own, but because of the bits they happen to have between their legs. I think we can agree on that.
Yeah, I didn’t actually say that you were against the alleviation of pain. I said you were being unjustly dismissive of it.
I’m not sure where you got the idea that I was referring to reptiles when saying “animals give birth, too.” I’ve been to Australia and seen a lambing. Let’s just say I’ve seen more aesthetically pleasing sights, and the ewe was far from comfortable.
Okay. I used reptiles as an example. I thought I’d go with one animal rather than listing every animal in existence to make my point (I concede that I may have been vague). Lizards seemed sort of funny and I like lizards. Congrats on seeing the lambing, though! I’ve seen a cow giving birth, so I guess I’ve seen a cowing (that was a joke; not a very funny one, I’ll admit, but a joke nonetheless). It wasn’t in Australia, though.
By the by, there are many species of viviparous and oviviparous reptiles. The most famous (and closest to mammalian) example is the viviparous lizard, but a simple google will bring up plenty more.
HOLY CRAP ON A STICK! Google? Why didn’t I think of that? Thanks, condescending author! Good thing you displayed your extensive knowledge of lizards, because obviously I was looking to have an in-depth biological debate about lizard vs. human childbirth!
As I’ve pointed out in my Issues article…
Yeah, I haven’t read your issues article, so I don’t have your whole philosophy down. Thanks for assuming, though! You mention this in another post to someone else, too. Not everyone reads all of your articles, man. Unless you’re writing strictly for the people who have, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to just assume people know where you’re coming from as soon as they visit the site.
Your suggestions in the first half of your post are excellent, but the point is made moot when the Issue isn’t even dealt with in a sensible way.
Why, how dare you, sir! You don’t know that Asahel’s friend isn’t dealing with this Issue in a sensible way! And until his story is published and available for public speculation, I vow to defend his honor to the hilt! I actually don’t even know if “defending to the hilt” is a real saying, but I’m angry enough to not care! In fact, I challenge you to pistols at dawn!
And…I don’t really know what you were going for in the rest of that last paragraph you wrote. Nothing that I said in my first post indicated that I disagreed with your thesis. I pointed out a glib statement that seemed unfairly dismissive, and I commented on that. Not your whole article. I didn’t say anything about your argument as a whole, positive or negative. Just because I disagree with one apparent point in your argument and make one lame joke about lizards, it doesn’t mean I didn’t understand what you were saying.
Lccorp2 on 20 June 2009, 19:54 said:
@Scatterpulse:
Regarding the last paragraph, I did not mean you were not taking the Issue seriously. I meant that while your suggestions were excellent, most authors don’t bother to spend the ink building upon said suggestions and go straight to the same old routine. Hence, your suggestions usually never come into play when the whole matter isn’t taken seriously and instead pumped for all the angst and sympathy-wrenching it’s worth.
I think this has been a bit of a misunderstanding. Cookie?
Lccorp2 on 20 June 2009, 19:59 said:
An addendum:
Look, Scatterpulse, I think we basically agree on this Issue but are both misinterpreting each others’ words. Can we agree to drop this for now? If I’ve misspoken, do accept my apologies.
Snow White Queen on 21 June 2009, 01:03 said:
Interesting topic…this actually came up in our house today when we were talking. Why is it ok if a girl beats up a guy (ooh, she’s such a fighter!) but not if a guy beats up a girl (oh no, he’s hurting a poor innocent wittle gurl!)
There is still sexism, it’s just a bit more subtle.
This is a very interesting discussion, however. I shall be keeping up.
swenson on 22 June 2009, 08:25 said:
@Ophelia – at the risk of badly misinterpreting your words (which seems to happen a lot with me with touchy topics, usually because I write before I think…), I’d like to respond. I wasn’t saying that if my mom worked out of the home that it would be eeeeeevil, especially because my mom also holds down two jobs (secretary/accountant/scheduler/organizer/everything else for my dad and her’s small business and a part-time job working at Baby Gap). My argument was merely a reflex against the feminists who insist that any woman who works in the home is being oppressed, is horribly degraded, make the men stay home and do the work, liberated women don’t stay home and do housework, blah blah blah. (and yeah, I’ve had the incredible unfortunate experience of meeting some people who say these things!) So my point wasn’t that women should do housework, my point was that women who do housework aren’t necessarily oppressed, and it’s just as viable a career choice as, I dunno, being an engineer or business owner or whatever they want to do.
@SWQ – I’ve always wondered about that one, too. I guess because men are typically stronger than women, they’re viewed as being more easily able to hurt women, so them hitting a woman is construed as abuse, which is actually a fairly likely possibility for a guy hitting a girl. But when a woman hits a man, the odds of it being abuse are substantially lower.
I guess maybe men are viewed as being able to take more hits, too? So if a woman is hurt, she could get hurt more seriously, or whatever?
Zahano on 22 June 2009, 17:18 said:
Please note that Caesarean births may require anesthetic and therefore render the patient unconscious during the procedure, but it also requires stitches and can cause a lot of pain for a long time after the baby is born. This pain is generally lasts a lot longer than the pain of a normal, headfirst vaginal birth and does NOT mean the patient is never in pain as a result.
Juniper on 22 June 2009, 23:10 said:
I truly appreciate this article. It is looooong overdue. Thanks for being brave enough to post it.
From the bottom of my heart,
Juniper
Lisa Jonte on 23 June 2009, 15:40 said:
@ Lccorp2
“I…but especially in the age of epidurals and c-sections, I’m not buying the whole pain argument. Animals do the same thing, and of course, not all women choose to or can have children. It just reeks of the flip side of the coin.”
Aaaaaand… you lost me. Seriously, you had me completely up until that point.
Speaking as someone who has had both epidurals and c-sections (twice) does NOT mean that labor and its pain are somehow magically bypassed.
An epidural does not magically transport a laboring woman on some puffy pink cloud of ecstasy to that mystical moment when the baby appears. Women get to labor, sometimes for HOURS before the cervix is at the requisite point where an epidural is called for. After that, there is no guarantee that an epidural can even be administered.
As for the c-section, the pain of the initial labor is then followed up by weeks of recovery pain. I have an 8” scar across my lower abdomen thanks to the c-sections I had to have. An 8 INCH FECKING GASH is pretty much the opposite of painless, or even pain-reduced.
Add to all that, the special, SPECIAL pains, discomforts and petty humiliations that go with being pregnant in the first place and I humbly submit to you sir, that you know not whereof you speak.
Juniper on 23 June 2009, 21:29 said:
Maybe I’m misreading Iccorp2 but I think his point was that the birthing process doesn’t give women automatic better-magik-holy points. I never got the impression that he meant that the birthing process is painless or to be considered flippantly.
Zahano on 25 June 2009, 19:55 said:
Ms. Jonte reiterates my points perfectly. Thanks. She said it better than I did.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT WE ARE SAYING, PRICK POSSESSOR?
lccorp2 on 25 June 2009, 22:13 said:
@Zahnao:
And Juniper reiterates my point perfectly. I already made myself clear enough in my replies throughout the discussion.
What’s your point? You do know that second sentence of yours is making yourself look silly and reactionary, right?
Proserpina FC on 10 July 2009, 21:58 said:
Crap. Someone responded to me? GROOVY!
Ophelia: Proserpina: Excuse me if I’m reading this incorrectly, but it seems as though you are arguing that, since, say, someone a few hundred years ago would not have the language skills to communicate with someone of another race, it’s A-OK to present your characters in such a situation acting with uncriticised racism? You may be writing about “then,” but your audience is reading it now. And if that reader is Chinese, or of Chinese descent, that’s going to hurt. Same as with misogynistic fiction; the author may not hold those prejudices, but that doesn’t matter to the person reading the story.
I also dislike the idea that a homosexual man should get to breedin’ instead of helping his community in other ways. If the character was a woman, would you condone the narrative having her forced into marriage and raped until she conceives?
My response:
1) Fantasy rarely takes place in our world, so unless the writer is a lazy hack who makes a Fantasy Counterpart Culture and doesn’t know how to change the details, who in the audience is going to get hurt? Plus, the original criticism is FIRSTLY toward fantasy characters acting like enlightened liberal Americans when they are described as illiterate, backwater peasants. That is annoying, illogical, false, bad writing, lazy writing and unimaginative.
2) Does an illiterate, backwater peasant hero HAVE to be racist towards foreigners of his world? No, but if the setting has any depth to it, he isn’t going to automatically understand them. If the foreigner and him speak the same language, but only because the foreigner’s empire occupies the hero’s country, there will be tension and I wouldn’t call it “racism.”
If the foreigner is from a far off land and comes to the hero’s port town to trade (the example that had the Chinese man), then the hero isn’t going to be able to sit down and hear the traveler’s damn life story and about the tragic loss of his daughter to the Dark Lord of his land, like what would be the usual set up in a shallowly constructed fantasy. They wouldn’t speak the same language. The hero just wants his damn chickens. If you can’t communicate with someone, then you usually don’t connect to them. They are a stranger. Even worse than a stranger: they are a foreigner. And I wouldn’t call that apathy “racism.”
If the hero was taught to fear a neighboring tribe, let him fear them. That isn’t racism. There is a history between those tribes, past grievances, rivalries for scarce resources, tension over territory. That isn’t racism, that’s just life. We compete with each other in groups for food, water, money and influence with the King/Mayor/Governor. And — this is the MOST IMPORTANT PART — if the setting the author designed really is medieval or low-tech, then the hero’s town is VERY scarce in resources, food and water. The “everyone respect everyone” attitude of the modern age is only possible because food is plentiful in every grocery store, water pours freely in every tap and the post-Industrial Age of mass production has left us with MUCH too much time on our hands.
3) I never said that a homosexual man in a medieval setting HAS to breed. I said if the story is playing culture of the time straight, he WILL be EXPECTED to breed. He will be. It is freaking medieval age. I don’t get why people seem to think that a low-tech, no hospitals, no mass production world works the same way as turn-of-the-millennium America.
If the author makes a medieval world that has more enlightened attitude, possibly because their is better health (by magical means?) or homosexual men are given a special task in their society or the city culture has more liberal space between sexualities than the unimaginative countryside, so the gay character moves into the city, then that actually shows creativity in worldbuilding and attention to detail.
But, if the author keeps it vanilla grey medieval, then why the glorifying the lesbian’s plight? Gay and straight maidens alike had to hurry up and marry men they may have vaguely liked, but what mattered more was if he was respectable, a good household-leader and good at whatever craft he specialized in. What makes the lesbian so fucking tragic? She was raised to believe it was her duty to find a smart, skilled man to marry and to raise children, just like every other woman in her small, isolated village. Wasn’t it expected that “one grows INTO loving their spouse” instead of “marrying for love” which came into popular opinion in the 14-15th centuries… Well after the medieval ages that most fantasy authors strive to write in.
So then where do you get the idea that she would be RAPED from? Why wouldn’t she willingly give herself over to her husband for her duties? She may be vaguely content with him, but they aren’t having sex for fun, they are doing it for a purpose. That’s what her mother instructed her to do. Glorifying this one woman because she is, at ONE level, different from the other women, is ALSO completely illogical for the setting most fantasy authors are obsessed with writing in.
As you can probably tell, I have no interest in writing in medieval, heroic, swords-and-dragons fantasy. The farthest back in magical/scientific development I would go is 10 years before the Industrial Age. :P
Aoede on 17 July 2009, 18:40 said:
Proserpina, Ophelia:
I think the problem here is the necessity for distinction — too often disregarded — between PORTRAYAL and APPROVAL. Just because a creator portrays X in her work does not mean that she approves of it. Otherwise we would be saying that Ray Bradbury approved of censorship and George Orwell approved of brainwashing and so forth. Neh? Eh.
ProserpinaFC on 19 July 2009, 13:20 said:
Quite.
The portrayl of a hero being umcormfortable around a forigner (or having low expectations of a woman, or ignoring his crush on his best friend to marry a maiden) is not a stamp of approval. It’s making a character a regular, flawed human being who is actually a product of their environment and not some hack-jobbed “message character” placed in the “backwards past” to teach everyone a lesson in egalitarinism.
Tolly on 10 December 2009, 11:44 said:
I love this article so much. It outlines and defines some of the biggest issues that are making it harder and harder for me to read fantasy without throwing a book across the room.
I had such a major fit not long ago – I knew I was going on a trip to the mainland for the day and I knew I was going to be stuck in the airport for a few hours in the evening because it was the only way to keep the ticket prices low, so I bought a few random fantasy novels from a local second hand bookstore. One was great, one would have been great if not for the increasing Sue-ness of the female lead. And the last one made me want to scream my lungs out. “Oh, I am a woman so I can use magic, but I am barren so I have no connection to the world and will eventually lose myself, but OH! There is a woman in another culture who I can train to be a great magician because she has borne children and her foolish husband has died and OH GOD MAKE IT STOP!!!” slams head against a wall
I’m being so very careful not to let this slip into my own writing. My main characters are in love, yes, but they are a balanced pair, having talents and personalities that let them work really well together, instead of going ‘oh she’s a woman so she has this kind of magic’ or ‘oh he’s a man so he must be short-tempered and/or destructive’. It’s been SO MUCH FUN. Yay for NaNoWriMo!
Deborah on 4 November 2010, 10:03 said:
I always got annoyed by feminist soapboxing. I’m debating this scene where my heroine beats a guy in a fight, but it was only because it was a practice fight and he let her win because he liked her,and that made her mad… People might say some of my female characters were weak because some of them were primarily wives and mothers. But I’ve decided that if said character(the heroine’s sister) is strong enough to deal with five children (all boys!), a depressed husband, and doing a lot of her husband’s work when he can’t or won’t (he is king of the country), and later when her husband dies, picks up some weapon or other (I haven’t decided what) and becomes so fierce she gets called ‘the Tigress’, I don’t really have to worry about her being weak merely because she’s a mother.