Overheard on another board: Female characters in fiction

[justiceischeap]

Last edited Sat Feb 4, 2012, 10:20 AM - Edit history (1)

I must say I was shocked (naively so, I presume) when I came across a thread asking what attributes a female hero should have and some of the misogynist replies that were given. Apparently female fictional characters only have two options: sweet and kind or smart and sassy (that was the thread starter by a woman). This bothered me a bit, limiting what fictional female hero's could be but I don't think the OP was being malicious (or overly thoughtful) in the question she posed. What bothered me even more was the discussion that was born later in the thread about femininity and masculinity.

One guy declared all female hero's should be 100% female/feminine with only the BEST masculine qualities ("bravery, occasional detached violent tendencies and dry humor&quot . If a female hero is too masculine then she will "alienate male readers and confuse female readers" (our simple little lady brains couldn't handle it apparently). He later takes a swipe at clearly defined gender roles (he's totally FOR those clearly defined roles) and "who ever heard of a transgender hero?" Following up with "personalities should reflect their God-given design...i.e...being a female." I can only imagine what his idea of god-given female design is.

Another guy proclaims that the fictional female character's he writes must be f*ckable and "assertive without being pushy." The same guy also refers to female commenter's by appending "poo" to her first name (i.e., Cindypoo). This same commenter tends to refer to women as "dame's" as well and thinks the left is very intolerant when we challenge him on his comments.

And, apparently, some sweet and sassy fictional character's somehow lose their femininity along the way, some are "strong and self-assured but shy around men", or "weak and demure until the (male) hero brings out her strong side."

I was telling my (male) roommate about this this morning and he reminded me that we live in a very happy, liberal bubble which makes coming across these types of attitudes all the more shocking. Of course, I'm still shocked over some of the replies, though, I guess, I shouldn't be. I do know one thing for sure, the are two male authors I'll never buy books from.

BTW, I've debated about whether or not I should link to the site (it's for indie eBook writer's) and have decided for now not to but if requested, I will do so.

Edited to add:
The thread is 5 pages long and the horrible (and sometimes wonderful) comments are sprinkled throughout the entire thread

[Justice wanted]

1. You bring up a very good point.

Female superheroes have had a tough go. Really when you think about it there is only a handful of successful Female superheroines that are Super Heroes in their own right and not just a female knock off version of the male counter-part. No disrespect to Batgirl and supergirl. But if you think about it you have a male dominiated realm of comics and than TV.

You should see some of the old Wonder Woman comics where it is some of the sexists and BDSM things you'll ever see for childrens comics. Some writers wrote her weaker than what she should be. I think really it is the male perception that is the biggest hurtle. (and meaning no disrepect to males on this board.) But it wasn't the young male readers of Wonder Woman that would change her or make her and shape her into the mold it was the male writers. I think their subconscious and for some their conscious where in fact maybe nervous of a strong female.

It has been a long struggle to where Xena came along. Yes, at first it seemed it was going to be a knock off version of Hercules BUT as the series developed and mature you found a very seperate complex development of the character. I believe it was due in part not only to Lucy Lawless but perhaps the male writers being comfortable enough with their own maculinity to make Xena as strong as she is/was.

Let's face some men will never be comfortable with a strong female. AND some females being so condiction to believe powerful women is somehow wrong in this society will never be comfortable with seeing a strong role model that way.

(I am sorry if I seem kind of babbly but I am half asleep-just waking up. I love the thread you started. and please post the link it would be interesting to see.)

[justiceischeap]

2. I have a problem with fiction in general

though my biggest issue is when you have a kick-a** female hero in the book, taking out the bad guys, being independent and totally focused on the task at hand and then walks in the hunky guy. Kick-a** female hero comes to a screeching halt, swoons and starts babbling about her lipstick and her hair or whether her ass looks good in her leather pants. The story then becomes more about how to bed this hunky dude then going after the penultimate bad guy... and, often, the female character who was once really smart and self-sufficient becomes totally dependent on this guy. I often think if you put the same character in a room with her two personalities, the initial kick-a** personality would totally, um, kick the a** of the newfound "I'm in swoon" personality--the two sides of the same personality would not like the other at all.

So, yeah, I find that disappointing in a lot of ways (and it's obvious I'm not reading high-brow fiction when I describe the above scenario). Often times, I'll read a blurb and think, "Yes, this has possibility!", then I read the reviews for the book and the they almost always end up revolving around a romance. I guess I hate any book that is really a romance but disguises itself as something else, like a mystery or thriller or urban fantasy (which is becoming more and more like paranormal romance with each book published).

I'm also disappointed that women don't have fiction that revolves around truly strong female character's--somehow the cliche's always seem to work themselves into the novel.

[Justice wanted]

3. I know exactly what you mean. It isn't just heroes it has been in movies since they started.

My favorite example are Rosalind Russell movies. I love the fact that her movies pioneered Woman is strong excutive roles and career women HOWEVER when the final act came her character always turned to mush and fell in love for the leading man.

Tell it to the Judge

Take a Letter Darling

even His Gal Friday

But I will say that it is a slow development but women's characters are getting stronger. If you look at books from various parts of history you do see that women are becoming 3 dementional real and strong characters. Yes, it isn't perfect and yes, I would love to see it happen faster BUT it is hapening and we just have to keep encouraging writers of books, comics, tv and movies to keep developing woman so we end up having the women we want to have in fiction.

[seabeyond]

7. i stopped reading in the 80's cause of the protrayals of women

i just was not comfortable with it. i started reading fiction again about 2006, once my kids got older and didn't need/interrupt me all the time. i see a vast amount of difference in the stories and writing protraying female.

[seabeyond]

5. i read a new author kindle book and loved it. truly a kick ass main female character

part of the story was her being so strong, unemotional, smart, ect... i enjoyed the book and immediately downloaded the second cause was a continuation of the first story.

i had a really hard time getting thru the second book. the first, she had just started getting to know the guy. the second, she is established as a couple. when i finally finished i wrote a review.... what happened to our rio. thru out the book she is described as all that as she looks to the guy to make all decisions. comments came from the man like... you made her cry. and other comments. she became a total inept female as thru out the book everyone talks about how strong and independent she is.

i hear ya.

[seabeyond]

4. since getting a kindle, i have received a lot of free or cheap books from new authors.

i also do a lot of reading.

it doesnt seem to me that the men have expanded amount of characters either. they seem to be the macho/victim/sad/loser. or macho/hero/strong/winner

i imagine that there are formulas that are perceived as successful and thinking it is what the people want. go outside of the characters we have established and readers wont want to read

honestly, i find a lot of male readers hard to read. especially the kindle writer. not near all, but a lot. they write from what the conditioned male is suppose to see of females.

there have been male writers i read once, and so misogynist i wont go back. like the male movies, the female character is always servicing men.... never quite a person. the stripper or prostitute with a heart.

but then there are writers like sandford who tries not to be that writer. you can hear in his writing being the progressive man, but every once in a while it will come thru.

i really enjoy the male writers that simply dont have it in their writing like childs and koontz.

it is interesting how the men you talk about want to perceive women. a reader can hear that in the tone of the book.

[justiceischeap]

6. I just think it's sad

the industry and writer's themselves see a need to follow this formula. Heck, as you've said, they do it in Hollywood all the time too. The thing is, I think people would read strong, non-stereotypical character's and enjoy them.

I tend not to read a lot of male authors (I don't know why that is -- I prefer a female protagonist and male authors seldom offer them), so I can't speak to how they write their female characters but a lot of women author's do a great disservice to their female protagonists, IMO.

[kurt_cagle]

8. Some Thoughts From a Writer

First, just to make things clear: I'm male, I've just completed the draft of my first novel though I've published a number of short stories (and seventeen non-fiction books) and my protagonist(s) are in the main female. The story is set later this century, the 2080s or thereabouts, and focuses on the rise of a new Queen of Scotland in a post oil, Steampunk-esque future.

The question you pose is an interesting one to me, because one of my goals is to make characters that don't align to form. Having said that, the main character is, deliberately, trained towards violence, and much of the story involves her learning how to tame and control that side of her, because she lives in a world where resources are scarce, structures are collapsing, and leadership is often brutish and capricious. She's not in fact all that terribly sympathetic a character - I had to create a secondary character, a female war correspondent turned partisan in the war for Cascadian Independence against the Free Republic of America (put the Freepers in their own country, then turn on fast forward for seven decades, and you get a pretty good idea how nasty they can get) to provide a sounding board, to show the protagonist's own self doubt and inner turmoil.

To get back to the thread here - finding the right balance for female characters is difficult, because I believe that women are more nuanced readers than men are in general, meaning that characters in general need to be more multifaceted for female readers than for male ones . Additionally, while I've written character based short stories before (where the emphasis really is on the characters and their interactions and the story is effectively a snapshot in time), the novel as a structure typically requires broader themes, especially in the realms of science fiction/fantasy, and these in turn tend to require that characters be more heroic or more villainous. In this case the protagonist is closer in spirit to Boudica or perhaps Grace O'Malley, and I find that she's more interesting when she's a strong type like this, but it comes at the risk of de-feminizing her.

So, in answer to your comments, I think that the goal of the writer should be to tell an entertaining story. Cliches and stereotypes can be used as devices if necessary, but overall they tend to be a lazy shortcut to character development, regardless of gender or circumstance.

[justiceischeap]

9. Your book sounds interesting and something I'd probably like reading

I guess my biggest qualm is that (some) people think there's really only one way to be feminine. I'm not what (most) people would consider outwardly feminine. That said, just by virtue of being female, makes me feminine. I don't think it makes a woman less a woman (and really, this is where the feminization argument comes to play) if she is strong, and can slay a dragon so to speak. One could argue that women who grew up in gang-plagued areas and who are violent aren't any less feminine, they're just more violent. I'll use female hispanic gang members for an example. They can be quite violent but often tend toward the very (society-conceived) feminine "look." Does their violence make them appear less feminine? Not so much, IMO.

I often think that when (some) people pull out the feminine card, what they often mean is they want their women to be weaker than men (I'm referring to mostly fiction here). That if a female protagonist is stronger than a male protagonist, this somehow emasculates the male and I think that's the wrong way to look at it. If a female protagonist is stronger than the male, it just means that she doesn't need to be rescued. There's nothing inherently wrong with being rescued but women do not need to be rescued as often in real life as they seem to be in fiction. Telling men or women through fiction that their gender roles are in danger because they did or didn't rescue someone adds to the problem women face in our society. If we continually read that women need to be rescued, then (some) men will continually seem to see us as weaker because of that need and if he encounter's a woman who doesn't need to be rescued that makes her threatening because he can't act on his preconceived role--which could be interpreted as damaging his ego.

I don't know, I'm mostly pulling opinion from where the sun don't shine but it's the way I see it, right or wrong. Mama didn't raise no psychology major but she did raise a thinker.

[kurt_cagle]

12. Rescue

This actually comes up in the story at one stage. The biggest problem that Eleise Sinclair (my protagonist) faces is that she tends to throw herself into dangerous situations, even when there are other people who are probably better qualified to help are around, and in one case gets captured, has to be rescued, and is most indignant about it (in another case, she is kidnapped, her compatriots go off to rescue her, only to have her escape on her own and rescue them). Granted this is part of the exigencies of fiction - have a bear chase your hero(ine) up a tree, have her figure out how to get back down again, rinse and repeat - but yeah, subverting the rescue trope is fun.

A point though from your comments. Fiction is not real life. Most people live fairly humdrum lives - they go to work, they raise kids, they party or have quiet nervous breakdowns or do a thousand one other things that are not, in general, all that interesting. The writer's job is to entertain. Heroes are heroes because they have special characteristics, do special things, and deal with life at a faster pace than us mere mortals. That's why the depictions of characters in fiction are usually painted in more vivid colors and broader strokes than real people are, because these characters are in fact idealizations. As I wrote the first draft, one of the things that I realized is that this character, from the perspective of a "peaceful law-abiding citizen", could very well be seen as some crazed psychotic lunatic or a terrorist of the first order. From the perspective in which she operates, what she does is necessary, and for many she also becomes a hero and role model, but there are always other perspectives. Yet from either perspective, she is an interesting character that hopefully will force the reader to think about some hard issues.

[seabeyond]

14. love this. and this is what i was thinking reading thru this thread.

i think we can hear in the writing when it is disrespect, and i do see some writing of female as that. (not often the male character but i do see it in a few and have criticized for that. it totally turns me off. when he is all this and the woman is insulting all the time without willingness to try to listen and understand. she is presented as strong. i dont feel it strong, but abusive. a little sarcasm here and there, but a few authors take it to mean. )

but yes, though i want to identify and enjoy the characters, be a part of the story, i also know it is a story to entertain.

[justiceischeap]

15. I totally get that fiction is not real life and often real life is quite boring

That doesn't mean though that gives author's room to create these totally absurd caricatures of women (and men). I read a lot (too much) of urban fantasy and I see a recurring them in this genre as I explained in the OP. The female hero is kicking ass and taking names and then a god-like man walks into the room and bam!, she becomes this really gross portrayal of some "other" weak-kneed woman who would do anything for this man to save her.

What often makes it worse is the author will throw in a couple of other guys to create tension (and don't get me started on the whole alpha werewolf/rape thing that goes on). Instead of using action or adventure to create tension, now they're using sex and, to me, that is the sign of a lazy writer (no offense meant if your book has romance) or publisher's trying to cash in on the romance market.

At the end of most of these books, the message I get is that these female hero's are good for only two things: throwing themselves into incredibly dangerous situations and winning because they have Super Hunk helping them now and second, they are for the amusement of Super Hunk (because the hunky guy is usually much more dominant than the female protagonist). It's the Mary Sue syndrome.

Maybe I shouldn't expect so much from the urban fantasy genre (and thrillers and mysteries) but it'd be nice to see something that doesn't follow that formula for female protagonists. I think you can still write entertaining fiction without resorting to these types of tropes.

It would be really nice to see a book with a female and male protagonist that doesn't lead to romance. It's almost saying, if you read too much into it like I'm probably doing, that men and women can't be friends without sex involved. I don't have sex with my male friends, nor do I see them sexually--of course, I'm a lesbian, so maybe that makes a difference (but I don't view my female friends that way either) but I doubt all straight women walk around salivating over their attractive male friends. You know, just waiting for the moment they can kiss his luscious lips and feel his rock-hard body against theirs while falling deeply into his soulful eyes.

[kurt_cagle]

17. Ah yes, the Unholy Triangle

A whole genre built around the witch/warrior, vampire and werewolf as a proxy for the hard-edged dame with a heart of gold (as the proxy for the (mostly female) reader), the wealthy, urbane rich guy and the tortured boy from the wrong side of the tracks. I was actually on a writer's panel with Kat Richardson about this particular trope at an SF convention in Seattle last year, and there's no question that it has taken over both the urban fantasy and romance genre like kudzu.

It's a formula, a certain degree of wish fulfillment, and yes, ultimately it is fantasy, but it also caricatures the caricature. It plays to the fantasy that the bad boys can be tamed by the right woman. Bad boys are fun - they are dangerous, adventurous, doing something that breaks out of the expectations of your family or culture. It's worth noting, however, that the stories become considerably less interesting once the bad boys have been tamed, which is why the series that feature this trope begin to get stale and tedious after the first couple of volumes, unless there is something else to carry it (for some reason, father/daughter issues tend to be the follow-through trope, for some bizarre reason).

[seabeyond]

13. except you and i are seeing ourselves about the same, and over time and experience, conclude about

the same. so i am going to go way out there and say, we are right and know what we are talking about, lol.

i feel the same, when using feminine is to put the woman in a airtight box.....

[seabeyond]

11. i think a writer needs to get past the concern of defeminizing and this is why...

when that is in the back of the mind, then conditions of what is feminine is forefront. and that is where the writing gets contaminated.

but if you stay true to the character of the woman, then she cannot be unfeminine simply for the fact she is woman and feminine.

i am very aggressive, some gals have said intimidating and i don't try at all nor want to be. in so many ways i perceive myself as not feminine just from the definitions of what feminism is. years ago i had said something to my mother about not being and she corrected me right away that just was not true. the essence of who i am is very much feminine.

years later, without thinking about this, i had said something to a man about not really being feminine (the defined perspective) and he corrected me immediately, telling me it was not so. absolutely wrong. he is just a male friend, hubbys best friend, very male, repug, fox news watching. we often talk about the gender issues. so not about making me feel good.

it just is not something i am concerned with so never really thought much about it. but, it told me that wherever the feel of feminine comes from, it is not about strong, aggressive, competent women, regardless of what we are being told.

interesting post.

[redqueen]

10. Yeah, sadly it isn't even surprising to me.

Women are too often portrayed more as caricatures than characters... in all kinds of media.

We're immersed in it culturally so it's really no wonder people have those expectations, and enjoy those simplistic characterizations.

[kurt_cagle]

16. Caricatures

I think that's a good point, and it's been a cause of concern to me for a while.

It's hard for any work of fiction to avoid caricaturing, and perhaps harder in television than for most media. There you have to establish multiple characters, create a scenario, build up an engaging plot and bring the story to a conclusion within 46 minutes. For many TV writers, this means a reliance upon tropes and conventions to fill in some of the details, it means that the characters need to be all surface (deep introspection, while vital, is boring) and it often means that interactions have to be intense and quick, while in real life that's actually very seldom the case. The actors need to be not just pretty or plain but beautiful or grotesque, because a lot of television bypasses the higher orders of the brain and goes for those biologic cues that we look for at an animal level, such as the presence or absence of symmetry or enhanced sexual characteristics, in order to determine the possible health of a mate. (And lets not forget that more eyeballs on a woman's breasts or a man's chest will also mean more eyeballs on the car commercial that follows, with those sleek curves or rugged features molded in steel rather than flesh).

The problem with that is that after a while the viewers of these caricatures cannot distinguish them from his or her own life. We don't measure up, which fuels our desire for the material products which can then be pitched to become more like these caricatures). We emulate the shallowness because people reading in libraries are boring to watch, even if they are writing the next great novel or researching a case (indeed, about the only time I can think of showing a person reading a book is when someone is selling a vacation on a beach). It becomes a feedback loop.

I would argue that I don't think books are AS bad, though they do pick up that bias. The need for caricature is still there, but what appears perfectly normal in a television series can seem extraordinarily shallow and empty in a book. Characters that might seem funny in the canned laugh-track world of TV comedy become pathetic, snarky and mean when the same is translated to a novel. That's one reason why most avid readers tend not to watch that much television. eBooks right now are facing some of that because a lot of writers in that media are coming from their expectations of television, but I think this is a transitional stage.

[ZombieHorde]

18. I generally base my characters off real people, but tone them down.

For example, I once based a woman character off a heroin addict I knew, but I made her a stoner in my story.

[libodem]

19. So interesting

Intriguing subject. Wish I had something pertaining to the subject, to offer but I'm not a writer.

[justiceischeap]

20. Are you a reader? Are you a feminist? If so, you have something to add to the conversation

I write but I'm not anything like a professional writer but I do read, a lot. I've seen the pattern I talked about in my OP in kinds of genre's -- the way women are written in (most) fiction is at best two dimensional, at worst one dimensional.

[libodem]

21. Yes, I love to read

I like Stephanie Plum, the bounty hunter. She is single and funny. Seems like most of the books I like have a competent capable female lead, who is likable.

[seabeyond]

23. that is a fun series. stopped reading about 12, 13.

but i did enjoy the series. dont know if i am going to catch up.

[Lunacee2012]

22. I would just like to add this to the thread.

I had two different college English professors, one female the other male, tell me that they usually hated reading about female characters that their male students created because they were almost always flat and 2-d.

[justiceischeap]

24. It happens with a lot of female writers too

The majority of authors in Urban Fantasy are female and their characters often drive me nuts after a certain point in the books (when the male protagonist enters) but I'm happy to have some validation for what I've talked about.