So, the sex thing. Chuck Wendig’s blog today is about dudes writing chicks and the challenges therein. And I tossed in my usual two cents, but I’m on to Herr Wendig’s tricks – he starts these nifty conversations, then I write a few hundred words and post them ON HIS BLOG. Exploitive bastard, that Wendig.
Well not this time.
Anyway, my point over at TERRIBLEMINDS was that every human life is inherently unique, driven by experience, culture, family, nature, nurture, too much sugar, whatever. And, compared to the cumulative psychological baggage of all that stuff, the biological accident of genitalia seems trivial. I’ve known manly women, womanly men, and everything in between. But that observation feels glib, insufficient, cursory.
And then I glance at the bookcase and I see INFIDEL by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. OK, so it’s nonfiction and we’re supposed to be talking about writing characters. So sue me. It’s the story of a woman born into a fundamentalist Islamic family in Somali. (Haven’t read it? That’s OK, go do so now. I’ll wait. *drums fingers drums fingers drums fingers* Done? Good.) So I see INFIDEL and I think to myself sex doesn’t matter you say? Trivial you say? Here’s the story of a woman who’s entire life was defined largely by her sexuality, including with her barbaric female circumcision when she was just a girl. Imagine living within a religious and cultural construct so terrified of female sexuality that every girl has her clitoris ripped out at a young age – and not by a surgeon in a hospital under anesthetic, no. By some old woman with a knife in a tent. Imagine wives still being the chattel of their husbands, husbands routinely having multiple wives, and divorcing any wife they want simply by saying so. Imagine that and then say sex doesn’t matter.
But the thing was, Ali over came that. Through tremendous personal courage she found a way out of those circumstances and into a life she defined for herself. Where every woman she knew as a child succumbed to their circumstances, she did not. She rebelled against the entire milieu of cultural and religious mores in which she had been raised and without even the barest set of material of educational benefits most of us have known lit out on her own into a world and culture she knew not at all to redefine the parameters of her own existence.
And, woman or not, if that doesn’t make her one of the big swinging dicks, I don’t know what could.
OK, you say. Fine. But what does that have to do with writing characters? And I think the answer is this. If INFIDEL was a work of fiction (and I can only hope for the day when such a story can only be a work of fiction) the elements that made Ali’s sex important would be elements of plot and setting, not character. Her sex matters because the place and time and culture into which she was born make it matter. The STORY makes it matter. Maybe where we fail as male writers isn’t so much in the traits we give our female characters, but in the places we give them in our fictional worlds. Ali is at the center of her own story, and thus has to be the hero. And it is through that setting that her heroic character can be revealed.
So maybe it isn’t just the women we make up, it is the world we envision them in. If it is always a story centered around men, dominated by men, then the woman’s character can’t matter that much, no matter how rich or strong or compelling that character may be.
Wasn’t that the whole problem with the man/woman dynamic to begin with?
I’m just going to applaud and bask in your wisdom, sir.
I thank you. And I blush. But in a manly fashion.
Well-said.
The trick for me is, characters don’t exist in a vacuum. It’s perfectly acceptable to have a manly woman or womanly man, but they still exist in a world where those things are to some degree unexpected — in fact, the very reason you have to say “womanly man” is because it’s an unusual qualifier.
The only thing that matters is character, sure. But character is a culmination of a lot of things (as you note), and gender and sex are part of that composition. Or, should be, lest characters start to feel wholly generic.
– c.
Can’t ignore gender, but can’t assume too much by it either. Tricky business to be sure. I think we have to be careful about what’s internal (character) and what’s external (culture, societal expectations, etc.).
Assumptions are no good, absolutely. It’s why I encourage looking at those people you know and with whom you’re comfortable — I have zero idea what it’s like to be a woman in any context (ahem, ignore the sparkly dresses in my closet), but I know that *being* a woman is important, down to being a daughter, a sister, a mother, down to societal pressures, down to biological differences.
So, if you can capture any of that where appropriate — and those two words are critical — then a storyteller should endeavor to do so.
Because the assumption goes the other way: you can assume that such things don’t matter at all, which to me is a very “male writer” problem, too.
– c.
Good write up Dan. I agree sex and gender can take center stage when the story is the definition of the central character. I think Chuck was painting with broader strokes to avoid the pitfalls of stereotyping gender issues, and moreso sex. The women we write aren’t just the one dimensional girl friends or spouses, they need to stand on their own even if their bit in the story is limited.
For sure. I just think we also need to look at how central we make them to our stories. If they are always bit players, then their characters become less and less important no matter how well drawn.
Bravo, sir. Well said.
Thanks.
Why, faja, you do understand. Perhaps this is why you are such a wise faja and mentor. I totally agree with you: It’s not enough to have a kick-ass female in a man’s world and say “hey, I understand women, I am an equalist.” One needs to understand the rest of the women, the world, what and who dubbed it a “man’s world.”
Hey Dan–Am glad you’re getting into this area of how to draw female characters. I see the male crime and thriller writers losing half their audiences by making women essentially helpmeets to these Alpha-male types running the show.
I would get zero entertainment value out of such a book, so I don’t buy these books. Lately, I saw the movie “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo” and loved every minute. This girl, from a shadowy background, needed a guardian. Her family role was totally unclear. When the guardian took monstrous advances toward her, she eventually thought how to punish and kill him–with no help! How many fantasies do women have of punishing perpetrators in their lives, and then rarely do?
She also had the genius of curiosity, could work long hours independently, could work complex computer models, didn’t speak if she didn’t feel like it. Didn’t give info if she didn’t want to. She showed herself independent of the males time and again. In her sexuality, she was for a long time uncommited, unpredictable. And, she had that wondrous tatoo on her back!
My thought is that men don’t want to deal with such females. Men want women who hold down the fort. The idea of a woman punishing and then killing a man is so reprehensible, which was what made it so “thrilling” in the movie. What males are comfortable portraying isn’t the same as “thriller”–they have to get outside the comfort zone of stereotyping women.
[...] I don’t want to nice her up too much. A while back, I chimed in on this online discussion about dudes writing chics, and I had an epiphany of sorts. Sexism, from the writer’s perspective, isn’t necessarily how [...]