![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Excellent meta about writing women, YAY!
Apr. 7th, 2010 11:42 pmHow long has it been since I found a post linked on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom that I found really, really fascinating and worthwhile and relevant? Too damn long!
Writing with the Brakes Off by Legionseagle at Dreamwidth.
It's all about the internalized difficulty of writing exciting, adventurous, kick-ass, fearless heroines in a society where risk-taking is stigmatized, reviled, and punished much more strongly in women than in men (and the most adamant gate-keepers of acceptable behavior are, more often than not, other women, IMO).
Women are taught from a very young age that it's "too risky" to do things that men take for granted every day (getting drunk in public, walking wherever you want at night, angering someone with the power to hurt you). Even those of us who reject this line of thinking intellectually with every fiber of our beings* are still just a little bit handicapped in ways we can't even articulate when it comes to imagining the female hero or villain who LIVES HUGE.
* I don't reject the idea that this is, unfortunately, true. I do emphatically reject the idea that letting fear dictate our actions all the time is what we SHOULD do. The moral onus is not on US to circumscribe OUR behavior. And frankly, stranger danger, while real, is way overrated.
Someday I would love to be able to write a female Han Solo, a female Captain Jack Sparrow, a female Casanova, a female Fëanor, a female Caligula. The very fact that I file those archetypes under male names is a symptom of the problem. Most female readers have no trouble identifying with male protagonists--if we want to enjoy the classics of genre fiction or historical fiction at all, we must learn to do so early--but how receptive are we to the idea of a woman who lives for risk-taking (any kind of risk) the way the great archetypal male adventurers do? And if this idea is difficult, WHY? Why must it be?
I know that it is difficult for me - even as someone who loves women, even as someone who was a total adrenalin junkie in my youth and did pretty much everything that DARE, guidance counselors, sex ed teachers, and my parents told me never to do 'for my own good,' and came through it OK and regret almost nothing--it is difficult for me to even write the kind of woman I would like to be and still know I am not; the kind who has her own agenda, for good or evil or all the myriad shades of gray, or perhaps octarine--and is not vulnerable to guilt-tripping, shaming, scare stories, or "policing" of any kind. And who, just maybe, is not in any way "punished" for her "transgressions" at the end. Well, at least not above and beyond the way males are. (I'm not a fan of didactic "Crime Does Not Pay" fiction in general.)
I also totally agree with Recessional's reading of Éowyn: for all the interpretations of her character as patronizing and sexist writing on Tolkien's part, I still think, after multiple rereadings and decades of adulthood, the same thing I thought at 12: that she's just about the most well-rounded character in LOTR for all her weaknesses, and I also think she's the one who got the (relatively) happiest ending after starting out in the (relatively) darkest place.
metafandom that I found really, really fascinating and worthwhile and relevant? Too damn long!Writing with the Brakes Off by Legionseagle at Dreamwidth.
It's all about the internalized difficulty of writing exciting, adventurous, kick-ass, fearless heroines in a society where risk-taking is stigmatized, reviled, and punished much more strongly in women than in men (and the most adamant gate-keepers of acceptable behavior are, more often than not, other women, IMO).
Women are taught from a very young age that it's "too risky" to do things that men take for granted every day (getting drunk in public, walking wherever you want at night, angering someone with the power to hurt you). Even those of us who reject this line of thinking intellectually with every fiber of our beings* are still just a little bit handicapped in ways we can't even articulate when it comes to imagining the female hero or villain who LIVES HUGE.
* I don't reject the idea that this is, unfortunately, true. I do emphatically reject the idea that letting fear dictate our actions all the time is what we SHOULD do. The moral onus is not on US to circumscribe OUR behavior. And frankly, stranger danger, while real, is way overrated.
Someday I would love to be able to write a female Han Solo, a female Captain Jack Sparrow, a female Casanova, a female Fëanor, a female Caligula. The very fact that I file those archetypes under male names is a symptom of the problem. Most female readers have no trouble identifying with male protagonists--if we want to enjoy the classics of genre fiction or historical fiction at all, we must learn to do so early--but how receptive are we to the idea of a woman who lives for risk-taking (any kind of risk) the way the great archetypal male adventurers do? And if this idea is difficult, WHY? Why must it be?
I know that it is difficult for me - even as someone who loves women, even as someone who was a total adrenalin junkie in my youth and did pretty much everything that DARE, guidance counselors, sex ed teachers, and my parents told me never to do 'for my own good,' and came through it OK and regret almost nothing--it is difficult for me to even write the kind of woman I would like to be and still know I am not; the kind who has her own agenda, for good or evil or all the myriad shades of gray, or perhaps octarine--and is not vulnerable to guilt-tripping, shaming, scare stories, or "policing" of any kind. And who, just maybe, is not in any way "punished" for her "transgressions" at the end. Well, at least not above and beyond the way males are. (I'm not a fan of didactic "Crime Does Not Pay" fiction in general.)
I also totally agree with Recessional's reading of Éowyn: for all the interpretations of her character as patronizing and sexist writing on Tolkien's part, I still think, after multiple rereadings and decades of adulthood, the same thing I thought at 12: that she's just about the most well-rounded character in LOTR for all her weaknesses, and I also think she's the one who got the (relatively) happiest ending after starting out in the (relatively) darkest place.
