Women and Men in Fiction
If you’re as sensitive about gender roles in fiction as I am, reading through the work of great authors – or not-so-great authors — can be like treading a mine field sometimes. I want very much to admire style and craft, skill and genius, but I often find myself deeply troubled by the portrayals of women the old boys tend to give us. Even modern authors, such as Martin Amis, leave me worried. Amis is unquestionably a master of the craft, but he writes flippantly about rape, consistently objectifying or even dismembering his female characters. From what I’ve read, his women are usually either labelled as sluts or are entirely passive, empty-headed victims. And either way, the men fantasize about raping them without shame. I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not.
Work like this leaves me wanting to write something about gender roles in fiction, and the responsibility we have to make all of our characters human beings. Nowadays, it would be seen as repugnant and unacceptable to show a character of another race as an animal or as deserving of violence or torture. It is still completely acceptable, however, to routinely do these things to women in fiction. There are a lot of apologies for rape out there, not to mention blaming women for their sexuality or implying that they are deserving of violence. So what can we writers do about it?
After the jump: pledges you can make to portray men and women responsibly.
One of the things I feel responsible for is a thoughtful portrayal of the characters in my stories. I want to take a stand and say that I will not judge a character to be deserving of violence because of his or sex. I will not portray a woman as morally lacking because of promiscuity. And above all, I will do my best to give my characters inner lives, and show that all characters, regardless of gender, deserve inner lives. What pledges will you make?
The solidifying of gender roles can start very young. In particular, writers often portray adolescent boys in a very one-note way. The writers help create a perception that all teenage boys can do is think about sex in an aggressive and dehumanizing way. In reality, sex may be on the brains of a lot of teenagers (male and female), but it doesn’t always have to be in a violent way. When writing your story about teenage boys, don’t succumb to that stereotype and accept as a given that all boys want to get girls under their control for their own purposes. By writing a character that way, without psychological depth, you’re contributing to the ocean of literature and other media that tell kids this attitude is okay.
What else can we as writers do? I think this thoughtful portrayal of gender roles is very close to the heart of what I think is morally important about being a writer. As a writer, I have the power to give people insight into another person’s mind, to sympathize and understand the experience of others. That sympathy is crucial to just about all morality. My way of encouraging sympathy, therefore, is to give people a window into the lives of people who are different from them. While sexist portrayals of people often stem from a refusal to understand the experience of another gender, I can help by giving people that needed insight. And if you’d like to pledge a similar responsibility, you can too.
I’ve read many female viewpoint characters written by men that seem to reflect a man’s wish as to how women think and it bugs me no end. Of course, I’m sure many men have the same gripe with women writing male viewpoint characters. I have no trouble creating believable female characters, but my male characters often fall short. So I applaud this post and I pledge to approach writing all characters with an open mind and heart.
For me I mostly wrote in a female POV for I am female it was becoming a safety net for me. SO I the decided to challenge myself and write from a Male POV. I had a male be my main character. I hate sterotypes so I went outside the box and I just made him human. I kind tried to show and get into the male psyche and perspective of thing.Like how they got this image to uphold but inside them is really deep and complex,and sometimes hard to show. The story never really been exposed though it was just something I wrote to challenge myself. It may see the light of day one day.
I agree with your thought process here. It seems to me that if, as a writer, you commit to writing three dimensional characters, you’ll escape those labels of “oversexed” or “promiscuous.” Conversely, if you set out to write a female character to cast her in a solely virtuous light, you may also be selling the character short. The key is to make your characters real–I think the rest then takes care of itself.
“I will not portray a woman as morally lacking because of promiscuity.”
But didn’t that just happen in real life with Tiger Woods? (a man, no less) … That’s what happens in real life. People make those types of judgments for those types of reasons. No offense, but I would say if you want to write effective fiction, then give the truth about how people are, not how you wish them to be.
ITA agree with Eva.
I recently read a story within my genre to get myself in the mood for writing a piece. The read was about a big woman losing her virginity and was written by a man.
If it weren’t for the mention of her panties being huge then I would have liked the story better. I didn’t see the need to mention the size of her undies other than to get a giggle out of the audience.
I mean seriously, does that even need to be said? Why make fun of your characters in such important and sacred moments in their lives?
Great post, and I agree with many of the comments already generated on this. It’s hard to write from a different gender’s pov. Recently I’ve made a game of reading something without looking at who wrote it and trying to guess if the author is male or female. It’s amazing how those difference always seem to come out in our writing. Like Charlotte, I’m trying to write from a teenage boy’s pov, and it’s been a challenge. My biggest concern also comes from my own students. Since I teach high school English, I’m always trying to find meaningful literature that doesn’t stereotype any gender. Anyone with suggestions?
I think it’s interesting post and it carries a good point not to stereotype or show gender characters in only one way, but at the same time there has to be a fine line between “the pledge” and making it authentic. If your pledge starts to border on idealism, then your also bordering on creating a fantasy world. I’m currently reading Louann Brizendine’s “The Female Brain”, partly because I’m writing more from a female perspective, but also because I just find women fascinating.
I’d actually say that your combining to issues here – the first is portraying gender, which actually I’d say the more important issue is not how other character’s treat women (i.e violence or rape), but more as a member of the opposite sex, has the author managed to be authentic when writing as a man about a woman, or woman as a man. The second issue is the inclusion of violence, rape, abuse etc.. in fiction – which I hate, because it is definitely present in society, but it is clearly something that sells or is easy to sell, maybe because anger, hate and violence are such easy emotions to portray, compared to love, peace and friendship which are inherently more complex.
I do like the ideas above, but I’m not for excluding things just because we want to create a better society – I think that’s ignorant and actually the way to deal with things, in my opinion, is to include them, but with a sense of morality, kind of like a fable or a moral tale. I really liked (talking film here) Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, which includes rape, gangs, violence – but which also includes an ultimate way to be above all of that, as illustrated in the final actions of the film. Perhaps “name and shame” – show the bad stuff, then shame it with a good way to deal with it.
I write daily offbeat fiction at http://jamesbent.com/blog – ultimately the point of my writing is to do good, but if I need to do that by showing bad, then I will.
geez, spot the typos in that post and get a prize. I need an editor.