How did all these men get in here?

[lenora_rose]

Rejection from F&SF came back. Only got to JJA with this one. Damn. I was rather proud that only one prior story failed to make it to GVG.

Both this and Strange Horizons said the same thing: Good writing, just not hooked/grabbed/held/ whatever by the story itself.
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I'm behind on movie watching, so you all probably already know that the Prestige is seriously good. Right. Right?

If you don't, go see. It's in the cheap theatre. Rival magicians, much illusion, and the kind of twists throughout (Not just at the ending, tough that twists too) that work, and more importantly, keep working even after you know or guess what's going on. Worth seeing again.

(And yes, Bowie makes a pretty good Nikola Tesla.)
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I think there's a reason I'm on the bad feminists list.

I find I read books with perfect comfort without registering anything wrong in the slightest, only going, "Oh, um. Yeah." where others later mention badly stereotyped female roles. In books written before 1950, I tend to give them intentional leeway, but I'm fearing now that this is bleeding into my modern day reading more than I meant it to. There's other ways I'm a careless reader, or a reader who notices but gives a pass, but this specific one has been bugging me, if only because I've been giving less leeway over time to steretyped racial concepts, anywhere I know enough to notice them, and less leeway to unconsidered stereotypes about sexuality. But other aspects of female life?

The reason I'm mentioning it? Well, it comes down to a dangerous trend in my own work.

Various pro female writers lately (In this case, by lately, I mean for the last few months, though matociquala's latest discussions have certainly been among the most obvious) have been talking about gay characters as protags and male characters as protags.

I can't say it's something I've never thought about, considering that one of my mental labels for the current books is "the ones with the straight male lead". Yup, another (female) writer with a profusion of alternate sexualities.

It's not intended. With Raising the Storm, there are very good spoiler reasons for a major character to be male gay (and possibly even not to read as wholly masculine), therefore the main character has to be bisexual. (The female lead's story evolved so weirdly I can't even know wherre to start to discuss how her sexuality came into it.)

And frankly, unless it turns out I'm writing bad males with the ones who are supposed to be masculine, I'm not too worried about teh gay. Or, more commonly, teh bi (I really like truepenny's label "janus", but since I use janus imagery for something else entirely, I can't steal it, darn). Or the sex-changy ones or the hermaphrodites or the transgendered, though they almost all hit in one specific series. Or the kinky ones.

But right now, that's not what's been bugging me. What has is, well:

Raising the Storm: Three major characters. Lead male, the other two are one male, one female. Others get their perspective throughout.
Bird of Dusk: Protag male, though there are occasional other points of view scattered throughout.
Labyrinth: Current point of view character female, but there's a second point of view pushing me to include it which would be male.
Serpent/Soldier: Two Male points of view in the first book, one continuing into the second. It's possible the theoretical third book will be from a female first person POV, because then I know how to open it, but right now I know when and why the two men are writing all this stuff out, and I don't have a justification for her besides "I wanna!"
Blood of the Woods: At least two books. Again, alternating points of view, two male, one hermaphrodite (Who self-identifies as female when given the chance to decide which to pretend to be.) Until the weird s*** kicks in.
Dark Water: One of each, and for once, the woman wants to get more point of view. But the titular character is also male, and the story centres around him even though he never gets point of view.

9 Men. 4 Women. 1 Other that's kinda sorta more female than male. The proportion in short stories seems more even, but then, I don't write many and I sell even fewer. I think my percolating novels also even out more.

The truepenny/matociquala discussions about men in traditionally feminized roles being the easiest way to discuss female cultural roles without people getting seriously ambushed by the girl cooties is insufficient explanation, as it doesn't fit the bill for why and how RtS turned out as it did, and definitely not for Serpent and Soldier, where the protag is if anything occasionally uncomfortably pushed into overly stereotyped masculine roles. Blood, too, the male characters have some weird stuff happen - one sex-related - but overall aren't in feminized roles - if anything, females end up in traditionally male roles in the course of things. (I can't deny it's present in Bird, considering what happens to the main character, but that book is about alienation, and atypical sexuality and atypical gender roles are present to support that theme, not vice versa.)

I've got good female characters, (or I do if I have any good characters at all). Some of them even let me in their head for a scene or two, even a novella (About a quarter the length of an average book and an eighth of RtS). None, not even Heather (Labyrinth), who was intended to, seem to want to support a whole novel all alone.

This is just random thinking. And there are enough ideas above to last me a few years, so I can't exactly go out of my way to amend this now. If I even "have to"; the diversity broadens as soon as you take culture, skin tone, species, and sexuality into consideration.

I just wonder about myself. Is it because in spite of myself I still think men get more adventures?

Comments

[yndy.livejournal.com]

Bowie was excellent as Tesla - if it hadn't been for his eyes, I wouldn't have known it was him until much later in the film...

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

I knew who he was because of the number of fans whose journals I read, otherwise I'd have just thought "Good actor. Weird eyes."

Of course, all the actors I thought did rather well except for one of the women, and I think that's more how abbreviated her scenes were than any limits to her abilities. But the two male leads did a very good job of seeming sane and getting your sympathy, until by the time their obsessions were triggered you're still half hoping...

I often wonder about gender writing

[senekal.livejournal.com]

Obviously since each of us only gets one gender to be (well the vast majority of us anyway) we can really only truly understand that half of the human race viscerally. That's how our brains are built.

But, of course, writers have to write both genders unless they're writing in a VERY odd universe. Because of that, any writer has to 'make the jump.' Some take that plunge better (and some deeper) than others do.

I've seen a lot of men playing women and women playing men in roleplay situations - which is essentially free-form 'writing' if you will. Despite this I ban gender bending from my games because, while there are some who can manage well, most are abysmally bad at making that jump. In fairness, women seem to do men better than men do women. Certainly Lois McMasters-Bujold has no issues creating believable male characters. I can read Miles Vorkosigan easily and not have any issues with seeing him as a believable guy. Not a hugely alpha male guy, despite his skills at leadership, but a guy nonetheless.

Men, on the other hand, seem to frequently 'write' women poorly. Many are total sluts in the nastiest possible way. While there are, of course, real people of both genders who are total sluts (I've never really thought of the term 'slut' as exclusively female and in that I'm breaking my own rule of using English correctly where possible), the vast majority of humanity is far more discerning in their attitudes on sex, partners etc.

Obviously there are people who can make the jump believably. But even there it's never quite on the mark. They get away with it comfortably because we have such variety in our species. While a guy who is good at writing women may write one who is like some women somewhere he'll never quite hit the more central 'true' women so that women will be entirely comfortable with seeing the character as wholly one of their gender. And vice versa of course. Only a real prodigy will ever manage to hit that mark.

But being that we're dealing with all of humanity, there are certainly a few of those prodigies out there. I'll venture that they're very very rare, though.

One of my few attempts to write a female protagonist (Glo in 'Strings' seemed to come off reasonably okay, but I haven't tried to explore relationships with her or God forbid write something sexual. So in that way I'm rather copping out a tad, although if Strings goes novel length I will have to take that plunge. I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope she doesn't come across as a guy in a dress...

Re: I often wonder about gender writing

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Gender writing I don't think is harder than any other kind of writing someone you aren't. There are certainly men with whom I have more in common than I do with some women, and I'd find those estranged women harder to write sympathetically. I will admit I'm more interested in the character being true to itself than to the standards of its gender; still means no excuse for falling off on making that aspect of character less right.

I don't tend to write very good full out alpha males, but then, that's at least partly because, contrary to what men seem like they'd like me to think, I have met very few alpha males, and while you can point to certain changes in present society, I think the real one is that alpha males are, by definition, less common than men with *some* alpha traits and some middle-of-the-pack traits, and some really aren't masculine, whether deliberately or in spite of themselves. I'm trying to write more of the average, so it's clear the two worst cases of not-very-masculine males are more obviously on purpose, and even with them, to sharpen the line so they still read as less masculine male, not women with the wrong genitalia.

The other thing most women have observed is that it's a lot harder to ignore the male point of view, it's so pervasive to society, so usually a woman has to figure some of it out to cope, while a man can get by without trying to understand women. (Not that it necessarily makes them better writers or better observers of humanity across the board, just that it might explain why more women do better at the swtich than men.) Someone actually described Stephen King's attitude to women, based on his female characters, as fond, respectful, but also mystified. (I also think the fact that women have to understand something of the man's world but not vice versa is where the myth that women are harder to understand comes from.)

But right now I'm less concerned with whether I'm writing the men right than I am with how many bloody men there are in these stories.