Writing a woman as a man?

[The Marquis de Leech]

Genderblindered: “We’re both queens. So who will hang out the laundry?”

I think the article is failing to distinguish between fantasy societies that have simply evolved as being gender equal, and those where women had to struggle to get into male-dominated positions. In the latter, there is loss of power going on, but in the former gender segregation of power is not something most people would think about.

Incidentally, in my story I've had an awful lot of fun creating a society with a gender-equal set-up, and where the protagonist is a male bisexual (no-one bats an eyelid at his sexuality). The society is also an incredibly unpleasant dictatorship, with vast discrepancies in wealth.

[Sci-2]

I think that the idea of societies being equal is sort of touched on, because if you have women fighters you should have male nannies, male camp followers, etc.

I do agree it isn't explicitly talked about.

ETA:

Guh. Stupid. There is only so much fucking work an author can be expected to do while still having, you know, a story.

Depends on the quality of the story you are writing IMO. Boring cliched rehash compared to something innovative?

ETA II: "You" meant in the universal sense.

[Sheep the Evicted]

Guh. Stupid. There is only so much fucking work an author can be expected to do while still having, you know, a story.

But you have to agree with the author that, despite these works all being fantasy, societies in general just aren't that fantastic. Its really rare to read about a world or a people that are TRULY different, and to be honest im not sure it would be very commercially viable even if anyone had the creativity to get away with it.

I can't think of anything except maybe The Culture, which is a bog standard utopia and thus easy to write.

[Callan S.]

I find the 'quick, made a gender equal society' thing a bit odd - it basically invents a rule, then tries to make the depicited human psychology conform to it for...absolutely no reason. If some wizard had cast a spell to enforce gender equality, I'd go 'oh, okay, there's a reason'. But somehow this equality just exists...you can't even say it just magically exists - it just exists without reason. Well okay, if you're writing some other humanoids which seem like humans but aren't, fair enough. Or if you want to write idealised humans, okay.

I'm not sure about innovation if it simply ignores human behaviour as it is. Maybe some twist on the wizards equality spell could be innovative. But just ignoring human behaviour? Some things about human nature are ancient - thus they are never innovative to write about.

Personally I'm curious as to whether the militarising habit of humanity is really just a minority of the male demographic (rather than the majority) and perpetrated upon the rest of humanity (who might otherwise be atleast less biased towards womens positions while living in societies beset by lack of resources)

[The Marquis de Leech]

I find the 'quick, made a gender equal society' thing a bit odd - it basically invents a rule, then tries to make the depicited human psychology conform to it for...absolutely no reason. If some wizard had cast a spell to enforce gender equality, I'd go 'oh, okay, there's a reason'. But somehow this equality just exists...you can't even say it just magically exists - it just exists without reason. Well okay, if you're writing some other humanoids which seem like humans but aren't, fair enough. Or if you want to write idealised humans, okay.

Suppose magic did exist among a wide segment of the population, could be used in malign ways, and that both males and females have equal magical ability. Wouldn't the society want all magic wielders to be part of the Establishment, rather than discriminating against a portion of the population that has the means to fight back?

[Happy Ent]

Personally I'm curious as to whether the militarising habit of humanity is really just a minority of the male demographic (rather than the majority) and perpetrated upon the rest of humanity (who might otherwise be atleast less biased towards womens positions while living in societies beset by lack of resources)

Richard Morgan’s (spectacular) Black Man is based on this idea. Today, males are biased towards women’s positions, and in fact have outbred the militaristic minority. In Morgan’s terms, the alphas. With the advent of agriculture, female conflict resolution became the “more fit” behaviour, so the alphas (with genetic variant 13) didn’t reproduce as fast and died out. (The conceit of Morgan’s novel is then that for reasons of law enforcement, such individuals are reintroduced into society on an experimental bases and kept outside of the gene pool.)

[thistlepong]

Odd. Recent research suggests law enforcement is primarily a testosterone thing. Most folks of either gender tend to be generous and compassionate as a result of efficient oxytocin reuptake. But a small portion of us with greater testosterone sensitivity tend to be less so. However those folks tend to be more willing to expend resources in order to force conformity with moral behavior or punish transgression.

[Sci-2]

I find the 'quick, made a gender equal society' thing a bit odd - it basically invents a rule, then tries to make the depicited human psychology conform to it for...absolutely no reason. If some wizard had cast a spell to enforce gender equality, I'd go 'oh, okay, there's a reason'. But somehow this equality just exists...you can't even say it just magically exists - it just exists without reason. Well okay, if you're writing some other humanoids which seem like humans but aren't, fair enough. Or if you want to write idealised humans, okay.

Wouldn't the reason be to show that women and men can be equal? It can also make a story have more interesting cast interactions - Malazan. As in a RL reason rather than a justification for the usual status quo? Or maybe I'm not following you but I think fiction working to change perception of what is and isn't acceptable male or female work is a good thing and far more important than the lecture-to-the-reader wanking in many works.

I think there are authors who are good at taking sexist societies and showing strength and struggle within them, but is that really what is happening in the majority of SFF? This is what the author of the article is decrying, that these quick fix attempts (female guard, female ninja society) are perhaps a good first start but artistically the world building could be far, far, far better.

[Callan S.]

Suppose magic did exist among a wide segment of the population, could be used in malign ways, and that both males and females have equal magical ability. Wouldn't the society want all magic wielders to be part of the Establishment, rather than discriminating against a portion of the population that has the means to fight back?

I don't know - taking it women don't have as much upper body strength as men - does that really mean they are at a huge disadvantage in martial terms? Particularly given that (as far as I understand) firearms aren't strength dependent?

It may not be so much a lesser martial capacity, but essentially an amount of one gender is primed to bully. And that gets normalised into the structure - I mean, what female lawyer can pull a gun on her boss until she gets equal pay? There is no martial break out method, because it's been normalised that you don't act that way. Or controversially, perhaps an amount of the other gender is primed to accept bullying? I could imagine nature/darwinism not giving a crap about letting in as a gene an inclination for acceptance of bullying if it leads to survival (or even if it doesn't affect survival one way or another - just a garbage gene slipping in). Note: I'm emphasising a segment of a gender. There seems to be a diversity of behaviour in either gender. But it's a bit like being in a union - if a significant segment of your members fold to pressure, then everyone else goes down with them.

HappyEnt and thistlepong: Wow, those seem two really interesting positions, don't they? Law enforcement - what if with lower testosterone (ie, if you assume a certain psychology comes from high testosterone) you basically get a population of 'meek' people who...by and large don't need law enforcement? Perhaps law enforcement is kinda like male lions in a pride - they are essentially there to solve a problem created by their own existance? Ie, male lions fend of other male lions. The only merit that might exist is garnered by the larger natural selection process, which sees who's genes are better at fending off? In black man, who is intervening to keep them outside the gene pool? A less than meek action?

[Arthmail]

Wouldn't the reason be to show that women and men can be equal? It can also make a story have more interesting cast interactions - Malazan. As in a RL reason rather than a justification for the usual status quo? Or maybe I'm not following you but I think fiction working to change perception of what is and isn't acceptable male or female work is a good thing and far more important than the lecture-to-the-reader wanking in many works.

I think there are authors who are good at taking sexist societies and showing strength and struggle within them, but is that really what is happening in the majority of SFF? This is what the author of the article is decrying, that these quick fix attempts (female guard, female ninja society) are perhaps a good first start but artistically the world building could be far, far, far better.

But a great many authors write books without looking to have this specific element become larger than the rest. It is not the importance of their story, something else is. Leave it for those that are interested or concerned enough with the subject matter to address the issue head on, but don't expect everyone to do so.

[Callan S.]

Wouldn't the reason be to show that women and men can be equal?

Show it how? By dues ex wave of the authors hand?

Put it the other way around - if an author writes a story to show woman and man can't be equal - and he does so by just saying it is so, with nothing behind it, would that convince you at all? So how would making male and female guards just exist cause they do, convince anyone on the other side of the line?

Assuming a best case scenario, anyone who you'd want to show that man and woman can be equal, well the person you want to show works from ingrained arguments. Those arguments are not addressed at all by having every second guard be female. Or atleast I estimate they aren't. Hell, given how crappy jacks society seems to be in the past, it seems pretty incongruous to me even.

This is what the author of the article is decrying, that these quick fix attempts (female guard, female ninja society) are perhaps a good first start but artistically the world building could be far, far, far better.

It's a long shot guess on my part, but I think the author of the article is basically sensing the above incongruity, but can't quite percieve what is wrong, so they are going the long way around of wanting genders in all roles.

Though the article did make me think that equality isn't just equality - it's the closing of certain positions. Okay, so women get put into certain positions which are abusive. So what...we then pop men into those positions of abuse half the time? So now women AND men are abused? That's absurd.

[DornishKnight]

As a new writer, one of my main characters (out of four) is a teenage girl. So i'm trying to avoid bad moves by writing her personality based on a combination of girls I actually know. That said, what exactly is meant by "femininity"?.

My plan is to create a personality, then base her decisions on what someone in her circumstances would probably do.

[Sci-2]

So how would making male and female guards just exist cause they do, convince anyone on the other side of the line?

It's a long shot guess on my part, but I think the author of the article is basically sensing the above incongruity, but can't quite percieve what is wrong, so they are going the long way around of wanting genders in all roles.

Though the article did make me think that equality isn't just equality - it's the closing of certain positions. Okay, so women get put into certain positions which are abusive. So what...we then pop men into those positions of abuse half the time? So now women AND men are abused? That's absurd.

No, she's saying a society that has female guards should have male nannies, because if the society is meant to be equal it shouldn't just be sexy ninja chicks but real distribution of roles. As for convincing, it might convince women and men IRL given that is the society we are moving towards.

So what...we then pop men into those positions of abuse half the time? So now women AND men are abused? That's absurd.

Actually this would be infinitely more interesting, IMO, than the standard pseudo-feminist rape fests in SFF we see way too often.

SFF that rides convention and cliche is fine, but she's talking about producing art.

ETA:

But a great many authors write books without looking to have this specific element become larger than the rest. It is not the importance of their story, something else is. Leave it for those that are interested or concerned enough with the subject matter to address the issue head on, but don't expect everyone to do so.

Agreed, a work doesn't have to spend hundreds of pages exploring the nuances of gender to be good - heck Vellum is very pro-LGBT yet has a woman as rape tragedy cliche in the first hundred pages. I've had issues with Bakker's portrayal of women but think it's some of the best fantasy out there.

I think what the article is suggesting is that a lot of world builders don't think through the ramifications of their decisions, and some more insight into gender roles would be more interesting/immersive.

[Shryke]

I think what the article is suggesting is that a lot of world builders don't think through the ramifications of their decisions, and some more insight into gender roles would be more interesting/immersive.

I think she hits on a good point, even if I didn't quite agree with her conclusions.

What I think the whole issue really points to though is the inherent laziness of the world-building in alot of these works. It's just "fantasy medieval world, but without the sexism cause that's wrong!". There's no actual thought put into the construction. It's a fantasy world not built on any firm understanding the period it's aping, the gender roles it may claim to be "subverting" or any of that. It's just done for the hell of it and crammed in.

I don't think that's necessarily bad either. World-building only goes so far and only fills in so many parts and hand-waves away the rest. Sometimes you, the author, just don't give a shit about that part and you just wanna tell your story. Nothing wrong with that.

But I think it's important to acknowledge that you are handwaving in those situations. Something like, say, Malazan isn't thinking hard about gender equality at all. It's brushing the whole concept under the rug in favour of just having some women soldiers and not actually tackling the issue of gender roles at all.

[Mentat]

I find the 'quick, made a gender equal society' thing a bit odd - it basically invents a rule, then tries to make the depicited human psychology conform to it for...absolutely no reason. If some wizard had cast a spell to enforce gender equality, I'd go 'oh, okay, there's a reason'. But somehow this equality just exists...you can't even say it just magically exists - it just exists without reason. Well okay, if you're writing some other humanoids which seem like humans but aren't, fair enough. Or if you want to write idealised humans, okay.

There could be quite a few reasons... Maybe it's just a very illustrated and peaceful society that doesn't discriminate against people matter-of-factly. Warmongering societies full of strife and petty ambitions are bound to discriminate against someone, be it by race, gender or some other trait. Addressing why your fictional society came to be that way and how that can affect other things indirectly is fundamental in world building.

Suppose magic did exist among a wide segment of the population, could be used in malign ways, and that both males and females have equal magical ability. Wouldn't the society want all magic wielders to be part of the Establishment, rather than discriminating against a portion of the population that has the means to fight back?

The existence of magic, actual magic you can see and touch, is one of the things that would have a more profound difference in a society. The possible repercussions are endless. Does it stunt technological advancement? Are people afraid of mages? Are mages corporative? Do mages discriminate against non-mages? How is magical power obtained? Through knowledge? How is that knowledge shared or guarded? Through bloodlines? Are the 'magic families' an oligarchy or do they war amongst themselves? Through chance? How does it affect religion? The concept of a better-born nobility? Menial tasks? Architecture? Agriculture? You could start and not end!

Regardless, discrimination is bound to exist in an unfair society. Fear is an excellent breeding ground for hate, and though a commoner might grovel before a powerful sorceress, if he lives in an unfair society, he might blow off some steam by beating his commoner wife when he gets home while he curses the 'witch' he had to defer to.

To me Ian M. Banks's Culture is a perfect example of a society where genders are not only equal but insignificant and it makes perfect sense. It's mainly the easyness of gender swapping but also it's utopian nature. A society where there is gender equality but also race discrimination or significant social differences between nobles and commoners is more difficult to swallow.

[thistlepong]

Still catching up with the thread... standard abasement about irresponsible repetition...

Callan, the research comes on the tails of animal research showing that even rats and some insects will act for the betterment of single individuals before meeting their own needs, let alone more complex, larger mammals; including us. Ent's post just made me think of it. Some of the posts I've read so far seem to slyly imply that folks, particularly men, are bastards about acquiring and retaining power. Civilization, however, isn't a result of aggressive behavior. It's a result of civil cooperation.

Hurley's article is neither a revolutionary program nor does it miss a point. It's a blog considering the presentation of equality by authors with that specific intent. I'd tend to agree that throwing in female background characters in unusual roles doesn't really succeed. Throwing in male characters in female roles would be a step forward, and it would better accomplish the "taken for granted" equality mentioned.

The best example of well developed equality I can come up with is a science fiction example. Pat Cadigan's protagonists are overwhelmingly women, mostly written as women rather than men with lady parts, that act and interact in complicated social settings. Readers see a familiar world with a lot of women doing normal - well, sf normal - things and dealing with normal concerns. It's rarely jarring, which is kind of fantastic. It's only when I try to summarize for people that I realize what a triumph that is. So yah, it's possible to write great stories without bogging down in exegesis.

However, the notion that one has to hand wave in equality is a bit disingenuous. Authors are able to hand wave inequality because they can reasonably assume readers won't interrogate it much. That's pretty lazy in itself, whether or not the author's concerned with the issue.

[Shryke]

However, the notion that one has to hand wave in equality is a bit disingenuous. Authors are able to hand wave inequality because they can reasonably assume readers won't interrogate it much. That's pretty lazy in itself, whether or not the author's concerned with the issue.

No, authors can simply put inequality in a book and leave it at that because inequality is pretty much a given in society. It's like gravity. Nobody asks authors to explain why shit falls down when you let it go in their world either.

[thistlepong]

Authors writing about this world, sure. In a fantasy setting, then, any portrayal identifies the project and prejudice of the author. If they move a bar here or there regarding the intensity of any inequality vis-a-vis their native environment, their level of concern with the ones left alone is probably revealed. If they leave it exactly as they see it then their native environment is revealed. It's still a handwave, though. Wow, look at all this stuff readers will just take for granted!

[Shryke]

Authors writing about this world, sure. In a fantasy setting, then, any portrayal identifies the project and prejudice of the author. If they move a bar here or there regarding the intensity of any inequality vis-a-vis their native environment, their level of concern with the ones left alone is probably revealed. If they leave it exactly as they see it then their native environment is revealed. It's still a handwave, though. Wow, look at all this stuff readers will just take for granted!

No it doesn't.

In any setting, anything not shown to be different is assumed to be the same as we'd expect in the real world.

When I read a book about 20-somethings in New York, one assumes LA still exists even if it's never mentioned.

When I read about a medieval society and no mention is made of a lack of gender roles and norms, one assumes they exist because that's what you would expect in the real world.

[thistlepong]

It's just a hand wave you're comfortable with.

Maybe we're coming at this from the same perspective and calling it different things, though. When an author says all roles are equally shared, do you take that as given and move on? If so, then we're pretty much in agreement.

If not... Well, it'd prolly be best to bring the same level of critical attention to all works. In which case, the author's attention to, in the case of this thread, gender and hir presentation thereof is revealing. If it's all stuff I can take for granted then I can assume the author does as well, if ze thinks about it at all.