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

[tomomi.livejournal.com]

There were limits for me. Unless there was some redeeming quality to the girl I would generally look for a substitute or lose interest in the show.

For example, I never could bring myself to like Uhura, even though she was a woman on the ship doing a responsible job. She did not seem to have any authority whatsoever and then she also had that stupid uniform.

[julieandrews.livejournal.com]

I don't _dislike_ Uhura, but I could never work out why she got all this airtime singing and what was supposed to be so good about her singing. I should've liked her more, if only because she was communications officer, and I thought that was a cool job. It was a cooler job on seaQuest. :)

I liked Nurse Chapel okay, until she went all inappropriately ga-ga over Spock.

Not that TNG improved matters. Yar was good, but brief. Crusher was okay, but also disappeared, leaving season 2 in worse shape than season 1. Troi was a definite TOS throwback. And Pulaski was just horrid.