Female Characters, Female Writers

[julieandrews]

swanjun pointed me to this lj post on female characters. Do you prefer reading about male characters to female ones? If so, why? For me, I'm not sure if I prefer reading about male characters or not, but when it comes to writing characters, I do much better with male ones. They hold my interest better. Does it come from years and years of reading about interesting male characters and less-than-interesting female characters? Or is it from something else?

Broad Universe's mailing list directed me to this article on the ambition of women writers. It doesn't touch on the cultural upbringing women receive that tells them to keep quiet, be submissive, try not to get noticed. Which I think is a great deal of the problem here.

That's why when people say there aren't enough women writers writing science fiction, getting their science fiction published, or getting their science fiction acknowledged, I have to wonder how much is on the women. Why aren't you writing? Why aren't you submitting? If you are submitting, why are you submitting to low-pay, no-pay, or low-circulation markets? Fanfic writers, are you really content with being read only by fanfic readers and not getting paid for it? Or is the 'hobby' aspect of it what keeps it safe and comfortable? Are you not winning awards because you're too humble and nice-quiet-girl to get yourself on the list, or to tell your publisher to put you on the list?

What gets less attention is the dearth of female main characters in science fiction, particularly at certain age levels and certain subgenres. Even if an anthology is half women authors, it might still be all male protagonists. Were we all raised on such a heavy dose of interesting male characters that that's all any writer can write, male or female? When a writer does use a female protagonist, are they usually less interesting and thus that story doesn't get published?

Does The Other play a part? Male writers may be drawn to female characters because they're not like themselves? While female writers are drawn to male ones for the same reason? Many of the more memorable, likeable, enjoyable, interesting female main characters and even supporting characters I can think of are written by male writers. Is this because male writers write more interesting female characters? Or is it because they write them more like male characters and we're right back to liking male characters better?

Read. Ponder.

Comments

[dien.livejournal.com]

Librarians FTW. :D

Yes and yes. The story where we're pursuing that balance is set 3000 years in the future, in a culture where we were specifically saying that the old race and gender rules didn't apply-- and then we realized that most of our characters were still turning out to be white males, which is when we said "alright" and consciously started working to change that. Bit of a shock, that-- that even though we're both female and considered ourselves POC-friendly (we're both white as well) we were still writing WM chars. Boo on that!

And yes, you do get variation once you put multiple women in. The head of state in this is a woman, her assistant/lover is a woman (and former courtesan), the head of the courtesan's guild is a woman (although there are many male courtesans too), the top professional athlete is a woman, et cetera, et cetera, and each one of those four women is very different from each other. It's such a delight to have women who aren't "womany"-- by which I mean that sense of disconnect you mention.

Not even in the media but sometimes in real life I hit this-- I was once dating a man, a perfectly nice and intelligent man, who, early on in our relationship, was very confused by me and constantly analyzing what I said. The reason? Because I generally meant what I said and wasn't playing "mind games." I didn't do coy, I didn't do 'I mean this but I'm saying this and waiting for you to figure it out so I can give you hell for getting it wrong', etc etc. This was something that had been routine with his last three girlfriends, and he just considered it something that went with women!

It's possibly mildly misogynistic of me to even have as a viewpoint, but that kind of woman? Pisses me off so much I'd much, much rather be a man, k thx.