Writing a woman as a man?

[Nukelavee]

The issue with the "alphas" being required to fix problems caused by their own existence, ie, without them, enforcers wouldn't be required, is pretty blatantly false. Conflict will exist, just the style of certain crimes will change - brute force will become subtlety.

Assuming somebody didn't change a social construct/role in a story because they are fine with it as it exists, is also false, and a bit arrogant on the part of the critic. It ignores the possibility that the writer chose to deal with a specific aspect, and concentrated on it, because they knew their limitations, or because they felt changing everything, or mentioning it, made the project unworkable.

Sean McMullen does an interesting thing with his "Miocene Arrow" trilogy, showing two societies (well two major ones, North America and Australia), one where it's pretty standard male/female roles, versus one where the concept of ability over riding gender holds sway.

[Shryke]

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

No, it's reality.

Again, one assumes reality is the same unless told otherwise.

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.

No, the issue is the author just half-assedly adds "equality" by throwing in a few people with lady parts in traditional male roles and calls it a day. Which doesn't make a lick of sense in light of everything else going on in the story/setting. It's a thoughtless meaningless gesture.

[Callan S.]

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.

And male wet nurses?

I still think she's pressing for all these details as an oblique way of raising questions on how all that junk just fell into place and thus how incongruous it is. But that's just my guess.

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

Hold on, just before it was supposed to give an idea of how society can be? What's this when we throw men into the same abusive situations?

What are we doing? Broadcasting a message or pitching a problematic situation and leaving people to come to their own conclusions? How does the female rape broadcast a message of condonement, but male rape would be pitching a problematic situation to consider? Does the text have html tags in it for each? Okay, I'm being silly for a bit of a laugh there; but seriously how is that determined?

[Callan S.]

The issue with the "alphas" being required to fix problems caused by their own existence, ie, without them, enforcers wouldn't be required, is pretty blatantly false. Conflict will exist, just the style of certain crimes will change - brute force will become subtlety.

What are the 'crimes' you're imagining? Or it doesn't matter what the particulars of the crime are, they are still crimes and still need to be enforced? That's kinda the self refrencing justification I'm refering to.

I mean, subtlety? Like someone has a field of apple trees full of apples. Someone else comes up and takes one that has fallen to the ground and walks off with it...at a certain point, is it really some kind of subtle crime anymore?

[Sci-2]

I still think she's pressing for all these details as an oblique way of raising questions on how all that junk just fell into place and thus how incongruous it is. But that's just my guess.

I actually don't know what "all that junk" is referring to, and thus I'm lost at "just fell into place and how incongruous it is."

What are we doing? Broadcasting a message or pitching a problematic situation and leaving people to come to their own conclusions? How does the female rape broadcast a message of condonement, but male rape would be pitching a problematic situation to consider?

Depends on presentation, but given the rarity of the latter and the cliched, hackneyed use of the former, at minimum it would be different.

[Nukelavee]

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?

I dunno, what crimes were YOU thinking of?

Just seemed odd to posit that you wouldn't need enforcement if everybody was "meek". Meek doesn't mean "good", it just means less likely to be direct in actions.

[Callan S.]

Depends on presentation, but given the rarity of the latter and the cliched, hackneyed use of the former, at minimum it would be different.

I don't think it being different is the important part of the issue? There's no possitive quality a exploitative depiction of male rape has simply because it's novel and rare - it's the same/equal as an exploitative depiction of female rape.

Though maybe by cliched/hackneyed you mean an author who is genuinely trying to depict a problematic situation, but that ground has been covered alot before? Even so if such an author depicted a male rape in the same way - well, it'd be the same way as the cliched/hackneyed method.

[Callan S.]

I dunno, what crimes were YOU thinking of?

Just seemed odd to posit that you wouldn't need enforcement if everybody was "meek". Meek doesn't mean "good", it just means less likely to be direct in actions.

Meek doesn't mean crime committing either.

What I'd suggest is given a millenia long history of shakey access to pivotal resources like food, any notion of lack of enforcement has an innate, bred into the genes sense of danger to it. Them meek, they'll just be less direct in their actions and boom, bad stuff! Heck, I'm making that hypothesis by feeling that danger myself/probing that feeling and trying to make a model of it to consider.

How much superstition could creep into the notion of enforcement, with no regard to current food access? Not just culturally pased on superstition, but built right into the genes?

[Sci-2]

I don't think it being different is the important part of the issue? There's no possitive quality a exploitative depiction of male rape has simply because it's novel and rare - it's the same/equal as an exploitative depiction of female rape.

Depends on the audience. It isn't by default a good thing or something to be celebrated, but such a depiction might make those - straight males like myself - who don't have to worry as much about being raped consider the issue in a new light if they have to put themselves in the victims place.

Though maybe by cliched/hackneyed you mean an author who is genuinely trying to depict a problematic situation, but that ground has been covered alot before?

I mean cliched/hackneyed in the sense we've seen before - as punishment of the "bitch", as an impetus for the men to seek revenge, as a means of showing how evil a bad guy is, as a means of explaining why a woman is reserved/evil/insane/mean.

It can happen even in good books. Vellum is a great book, very original, but it has a martyr-female-rape as well. It isn't as exploitative as something like Windup Girl though.

[Callan S.]

Depends on the audience.

Well no - or atleast not at any time when one is campaigning against apparently sexist texts.

It isn't by default a good thing or something to be celebrated, but such a depiction might make those - straight males like myself - who don't have to worry as much about being raped consider the issue in a new light if they have to put themselves in the victims place.

Well then doing that, as a goal, is probably what to pitch to authors, rather than just 'have half the guards be women!'. Rather than just sticking men in the same abuse situations as women, arbitrarily. I think you have a goal there and I think switching in males into abuse positions in pursuit of that goal/a goal works as a cultural questioning method - but I don't agree with purely switching in males for arbitrary reasons/towards no goal/towards no real reason beyond quota.

PS: That's partly why I thought the author of the article was pushing towards questioning - because in the same way, when nudged along, your own 'have males in abuse positions' became 'have males in abuse positions, with the goal of...'. I think her article was just on the borderline of birthing a goal. Just sayin' - doesn't really matter! It's the internet - we must type!

[thistlepong]

PS: That's partly why I thought the author of the article was pushing towards questioning - because in the same way, when nudged along, your own 'have males in abuse positions' became 'have males in abuse positions, with the goal of...'. I think her article was just on the borderline of birthing a goal. Just sayin' - doesn't really matter! It's the internet - we must type!

If I read you correctly, this is at the end of her article.

It’s not just about changing our conception of what women’s work is, or what women’s place is or women this, women that, wear this, wear that. Because I can tell you, after spending several years hip-deep in Abrahamic religions and people’s interpretations of them, I’m kinda bored with seeing societies who overly focus on and define themselves (and are outwardly defined by others) entirely on the appearance and conduct of the women within those societies.

Innovative worldbuilding is about asking, really asking, what it means to be a man in this society too, and what exactly constitutes men’s work – if there is such a thing. What can men wear? What can they say? What jobs can they hold? And… why? If you’ve got gendered work, there should be a good, non-cliched reason for it. If you don’t, great.

[Callan S.]

Yeah, but I think the further question she's on the very edge of is "WHY are we asking this question at all?"

Is it just so we can escape into plausible little worlds?

Or are we reaching outside of the book, the attempt to make sense in the fiction actually extends to an attempt to make sense of the real world? The anal-ness about fictional world detail almost becomes a scientific examination of the real world?

The former is...fine as a choice (sure, I'm a little derogitory towards it, but hey, that's me), though it actually tends to be the default rather than a choice. But I like to think she was on the borderline of choosing the latter.