I've been turning this over in my mind since I read the post on female characters, but my thoughts are still a bit scattered.
I think my main problem is that my answer to the initial question is, simply, no. No, I do not like the male characters better and never have. Either I didn't have a favorite character, or I would elevate the only available female, however minimal her part, and select her as my favorite character. Or, lacking a female character in a setting I really liked, I would make one up.
This has been my pattern pretty much forever, and not just with books.
Transformers - Carly (though later female Transformers appeared and I was quite pleased with them, even though I had already made up a bunch of female Transformers myself) TNG - Beverly Crusher He-Man - Sorceress Batman - Batgirl & Catwoman Ender's Game - Petra HHGG - Trillian Narnia - Jill & Polly Prydain - Elionwy etc.
I'm a little less sexist in my favorite character choosing now (some of the above have changed as a result), but I do still have this tendency. And I know that from a pretty young age I've been very very aware of whether or not I was reading stuff by female authors or by male authors -- it was something I paid attention to. I would fume about this in junior and senior high school, especially when the curriculum was too male author and male character heavy. (I guess looking back it's hardly surprising I went to a women's college, ha ha.)
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a dearth of female main characters in science fiction. And when there is a dearth of something, the ones that do appear tend to be all of a kind, because simply by existing they are different and no effort has to be made to have them be unique in other ways. It's probably part of why I really haven't read as much science fiction as you have. I could never get past the missing females problem, and so have stuck with mysteries (no lack of female characters or female authors there) or girls' series.
This is one of the reasons that the Japanese manga/anime culture was such an exciting discovery. Here were vast quantities of female characters -- main characters, supporting characters, token characters, they run the gamut. And because there were so many, there was -variation-. A lot were the same, but there needed to be effort made at having them stand out from the crowd. There are other problems with manga and anime, but a -lack- of female characters is not one of them.
no subject
I think my main problem is that my answer to the initial question is, simply, no. No, I do not like the male characters better and never have. Either I didn't have a favorite character, or I would elevate the only available female, however minimal her part, and select her as my favorite character. Or, lacking a female character in a setting I really liked, I would make one up.
This has been my pattern pretty much forever, and not just with books.
Transformers - Carly (though later female Transformers appeared and I was quite pleased with them, even though I had already made up a bunch of female Transformers myself)
TNG - Beverly Crusher
He-Man - Sorceress
Batman - Batgirl & Catwoman
Ender's Game - Petra
HHGG - Trillian
Narnia - Jill & Polly
Prydain - Elionwy
etc.
I'm a little less sexist in my favorite character choosing now (some of the above have changed as a result), but I do still have this tendency. And I know that from a pretty young age I've been very very aware of whether or not I was reading stuff by female authors or by male authors -- it was something I paid attention to. I would fume about this in junior and senior high school, especially when the curriculum was too male author and male character heavy. (I guess looking back it's hardly surprising I went to a women's college, ha ha.)
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a dearth of female main characters in science fiction. And when there is a dearth of something, the ones that do appear tend to be all of a kind, because simply by existing they are different and no effort has to be made to have them be unique in other ways. It's probably part of why I really haven't read as much science fiction as you have. I could never get past the missing females problem, and so have stuck with mysteries (no lack of female characters or female authors there) or girls' series.
This is one of the reasons that the Japanese manga/anime culture was such an exciting discovery. Here were vast quantities of female characters -- main characters, supporting characters, token characters, they run the gamut. And because there were so many, there was -variation-. A lot were the same, but there needed to be effort made at having them stand out from the crowd. There are other problems with manga and anime, but a -lack- of female characters is not one of them.