Am I the only one who distrusts female fantasy authors?

[Gigei]

Gigei, you mean him don't you? GGK is a man.

I do know what you mean though and to be honest it's never bothered me since he's such a good writer. But that's just me.

Really? *shock*

[beniowa]

Touche.

[Lyanna Stark]

Re JoannaL:

I actually agree with you that Carey is attempting to write from a feminist PoV. I am actually not displeased with her intentions, just with the way it was carried out (perhaps I am even more disappointed and displeased with it because it has the potential to be very good).

Her purple prose and the Mary-Sue like characters just destroy that though. It is described as a young girl's dream of prettiness, free sex with extremely handsome men while you are also the most pretty of a pretty group of people. Since feminism has for a long time been fighting the stigma of objectification it just...I don't know, a bit of a shot in the foot? Or at least very hard to descrive well.

To be honest, if you remove the purple prose, make the characters human (i.e. not all extremely pretty, beautiful and attractive) and change the narrative so that Phedre actually reacts to the things that happen to her, then I think it could have the potential to be really good.

I definitely don't think that people should be put off female fantasy authors if they don't like Carey.

to 2) I think bad sex scenes are rather a reason to distrust male but female authors. There a dozen of really bad sex scenes written by male authors, is this a reason to distrust male writing?

One example is the on this board so much beloved S. Bakker. The Prince of Nothing triology is in this regard all the time much much worse than anything Carey is writing. The rapist is generaly a three-dimensional fleshed out character who we should relate to while the raped woman is normally just a dumb animal. This is how I would define a bad sex scene.

While I can see where you are coming from with this, the only character that fits this is Serwe. (And even with her, there is a philosophical dimension which is interesting.)

Rape in Bakker's universe is absolutely not a sex act, but a display of power.

Also, as far as I remember, the described characters being raped are mostly men.

[Gigei]

Her purple prose and the Mary-Sue like characters just destroy that though. It is described as a young girl's dream of prettiness, free sex with extremely handsome men while you are also the most pretty of a pretty group of people. Since feminism has for a long time been fighting the stigma of objectification it just...I don't know, a bit of a shot in the foot? Or at least very hard to descrive well.

Well said. I guess equality in Terre D'Ange just means both sexes

are objects of lust.

[Ran]

My take on the scene were Phedre was tortured the first time was NOT that it was written as being a terrible sort of abuse at all.

Well, to quote the scene:

But d'Essoms had laid the poker against the inside of my thigh, and the stench of my own scorched flesh surrounded me. The poker had stuck when he pulled it loose, tearing skin.

There was no pleasure in this, at least not in the way that anyone but an anguissette would understand it.

Emphasis mine. "Stench", "scorched flesh", "tearing skin", and "no pleasure" don't seem to me to be words and phrases intended to titillate anyone.

And Phedre was still attracted to the people who abused her, which makes no sense.

Well, first off, that particular fellow didn't quite intend to actually burn her -- he was threatening it and threatening it and then lost track of what he did. He was contrite immediately afterwards, and honestly so, and in the end that's the sort of life she leads.

As to mental trauma, well, it's there. She talks about how the Skaldi used and raped her, and in the third book she goes through a crisis of faith, basically, because of the betrayals of her body when she was in an especially loathsome situation. To a large part, being an anguisette is a curse -- she didn't want the destiny given her because of it, and she often doesn't like the fact that she derives pleasure from things being done to her against her will.

Since feminism has for a long time been fighting the stigma of objectification it just...I don't know, a bit of a shot in the foot?

I can see your point, but ... if everyone is beautiful, what is there to objectify? To a certain degree, objectification is about creating a hierarchy of what's desirable and what's not. But if everything and everyone is desirable, well, there's not a lot of point.

Certainly, it gives readers plenty of "eye candy" to read descriptions of. But you basically can't say, "Oh, she's bad because she's ugly" or "He's good because he's handsome." Their looks are meaningless to their character, which to my understanding is one of the major points of the feminist critique of objectification, the belief that beautiful=good and ugly=bad.

make the characters human (i.e. not all extremely pretty, beautiful and attractive)

It sounds like you're saying an attractive person isn't human.

The people are basically half-angelic. It's a fantasy.Do you have a problem with beautiful elves in fantasy literature, too?

In any case, I think you should judge the characters individually as characters, rather than writing off each and every character because they all happen to share the trait of being good looking. It'd be like writing off Ned Stark because just about everyone in A Song of Ice and Fire is white.

[salinea]

Her purple prose and the Mary-Sue like characters just destroy that though. It is described as a young girl's dream of prettiness, free sex with extremely handsome men while you are also the most pretty of a pretty group of people.

And women. Lots of lesbian sex too, and the importance of both the protagonist and the antagonist being female, and their relationship works also in a great way in those books (I'll admit to finding it a guilty pleasure for a lot of the plot, however, and the purpleness of the prose. Worldbuiling's actually pretty good though).

[Lady Blackfish]

... and suddenly it seems that the last bullet isn't acceptable in some narrowly defined genus of alpha-masculinity.

That it isn't acceptable to be a woman, to live in the glacier-clear knowledge that relationships and emotions and life are never simple. That it isn't acceptable to express this.

That it is regarded as "brave" of GRRM to have included among his main cast an adult woman (Catelyn Stark) who thinks like an adult woman.

That it isn't acceptable to be a woman writer.

That if you are a woman writer, you'd better stick to gushy romance, because you'll never sell action books to either men or women: the latter will not want it and the former will not accept it.

What hope for writing as a woman, except if writing by numbers?

<snip>

- should we, a) do anything about this, or , care?

For this post, let's assume first that we care. I certainly do, and anyone who doesn't never has to read my posts, after all.

The essay you linked is very useful as it touches on escapism, wish fulfillment, and enfranchisement. In fantasy we have a genre that is built on a body of myth that is gender-imbalanced. Let's chalk this up to the fact that the societies that gave rise to these myths and tropes in the first place were themselves gender-imbalanced. Not a big stretch. Let me quote from an essay posted on the board a while back by I Forget Who:

James admired Stevenson’s writing, but – as was always true of his response to fellow writers’ work – he was honest about it, both to others and to the writer. James could have been speaking about science fiction or other future genres when he pointed out that heroines were almost totally absent from Robert Louis Stevenson’s fiction. “The idea of making believe,” wrote James, “appeals to him much more than the idea of making love.”

I think of this as the Donald Duck Universe aspect to our SF and adventure genres up to recent years – a world in which there are no important women, no families to speak of (certainly none of the restrictions that women and parents and families set upon us in real life), and where all the boys are nephews to the older men who take them on exciting adventures.

The question is how to enfranchise women into this gender-imbalanced foundation, with the assumption that the more that women feel truly enfranchised by X, the more they'll write X. Okay, so one reason to read (#1) is the escapist mindset, we read to see ourselves in scenarios we wish to see ourselves in that reality doesn't accomodate, to ask ourselves "Why isn't it this way?". Another (#2) I'll call the explorer mindset, we read to understand other places and people and realities, to ask ourselves "Why is it this way?" #1 is "about" changing reality into what we want, #2 is "about" resonating with real-world experiences. The escapist stories that were forefathers to our modern SFF genre were told by a gender-imbalanced society, and what women related to were shaped by that same society. Enfranchising these women would require considering the interplay between #1 and #2. You want to relate to them but enfranchising them into X means X retains its own identity, and X starts out excluding them. Today's gender balance is different, and now we have different demands, but the same (necessary, IMO) tension between reflecting and creating reality exists. From that tension, problems arise on all sides - from the subgenre imbalances to the problems Maia voiced about the liability of heroines as well as female characters being caught between a rock and a hard place when they are expected to both reflect reality and be empowered in a genre that still carries a lot of gender-imbalanced baggage.

- are men turned off by emotionally aware characters in books because of the cultural pressure for men to bottle their positive emotions?

At the very least I applaud the willingness to ask this question (I'm not going to answer as I'm not a guy), instead of implying that the gender-neutral ideal is one that happens to match the male cool and certainly not threaten it in any way. If you really believe that inter-gender differences are less than intra-gender differences, as I do, then it's just as useful to examine male stereotypes as female ones.

- is the lack of "action" in women's SFF a reflection of the cultural pressure for women to bottle their negative emotions (anger, for instance)?

Honestly, I think you're on target with the issues of enfranchisement and the shelf lives of books. In real life I feel more allowed to be angry than what I surmise women were allowed to feel before. But I do not see this accurately reflected in books. Which tells me it is part of the literary tradition of the genre, aka, the formula.

I don't read romances, I don't dislike it as a rule as part of stories but I don't tend to read pure romances (at this point though I will add a big "Word" to X-Ray's point about GRRM being a classical romantic -- come on people, consider who you're reading!). But anyway, I can tell you what, relative to your post, makes me stop giving a shit -- it's that writing by formula. I think this is what you were getting at? We are kind of at the point where women are allowed to be strong, but according to very specific definitions. Boxes disenfranchise me, putting different "types" of women in what amounts to a beauty pageant with plot point rewards as reinforcement does not enfranchise me. The more we try to solve the enfranchisement issue with formula women, the more the double-standard will simply mutate instead of disappear. I feel suffocated between the cool tomboy, the bitch, the popular chick, the endless array of box women. This does not interest me at all. Human beings do, and I do not think it's false to say in genre fiction that men are allowed to explore the vastness of human existance more than women are. I am hypersensitive to token women and honorary males, I am hypersensitive to women who are agendas, people that are ideas instead of people that have ideas. That is my taste.

As far as I can tell, though I enjoy my share of escapism I am more of #2 than a lot of people on this board, and perhaps that's why I have unpopular opinions (though I hope it goes without my saying so that preferring escapist vs a more realist fiction has no innate correlation to your state of gender enlightenment). I definitely feel ASOIAF is a lot more #2 than people think, and on point of ASOIAF: I was talking to a friend who is a dude, and his opinion is that Martin tends to go into "woman" mode when writing most of the female characters, who are defined by their types whereas men are defined by their past actions. He can feel Martin actively laboring to write Women, and while it doesn't negate his enjoyment of them, he notices it, and not in a good way. The two female characters he said didn't suffer from this self reference/hyper awareness of "type" problem were Arya and Catelyn. These were two human beings who happened to be female, instead of being OMG LOOK STRONG WOMAN! Instead of pointing out through self reference Who They Are, they simply exist. Though I argued that there is reason for other female characters in this setting to be more gender conscious within the story itself (ie Cersei, Sansa, Brienne), I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly that overly aware self referencing constructs is a problem. Clearly that's not what most people are talking about in this thread, but your posts did seem to reflect a frustration for the formulas. I guess this is my long-winded way of saying I hear you. At least I think I do. I can't say if all those women avoiding writing anything but romance feel what I feel, but I am fairly confident in saying that women characters don't as often feel like people first, and I can't help but see that as a hindrance to enfranchisement.

None of this is to say that there aren't female fantasy authors already out there that write stuff other than romance. Other people are more knowledgeable about that and have already covered it.

[JoannaL]

Rapists in PoN (in order of appearance, from memory):

...

Who am I forgetting?

Edited by Xray for spoilers.

Oops , I didn't want to start a discussion of the merits of S. Bakker (and I think it would hijack this thread to answer in length, although I do not take my words back and I am game if there is a threat about him somewhere sometimes and no, I dont think there is a philosophical dimension to rape and yes it is almost always about power and yes I admit that there are also a lot of males that are raped in his books)

My point was that to judge female writing by bad sex scenes is wrong. IMO to write (and read ) sex scenes is always difficult and I have the feeling that while the sex scene written by a male author is just accepted, by a woman author some readers seem to think all the time " how can a woman write this"

as a proof that not only woman are bad in this I will now give an example not of Bakker (I just took him because I know he is well regarded by most and has generally a good writing style) but of the best of the best (in my view and in the view of most of this board). So, we all adore GRRM but is it because of Samwells 'fat pink mast' the 'mouthful of breastmilk' or because of the 'giant of Lannister' or because of Tyrions 'manhood, which was ugly, thick and veined, with a bulbous purple head'? I doubt it. We just accept these scence and move on without much thinking how and why he wrote it the way he wrote it. If GRRM were a woman there would be much more discussion about this.

[Zoë Sumra]

Lady Blackfish - wonderful post.

In fantasy we have a genre that is built on a body of myth that is gender-imbalanced. Let's chalk this up to the fact that the societies that gave rise to these myths and tropes in the first place were themselves gender-imbalanced. Not a big stretch.

The question is how to enfranchise women into this gender-imbalanced foundation, with the assumption that the more that women feel truly enfranchised by X, the more they'll write X. Okay, so one reason to read (#1) is the escapist mindset, we read to see ourselves in scenarios we wish to see ourselves in that reality doesn't accomodate, to ask ourselves "Why isn't it this way?". Another (#2) I'll call the explorer mindset, we read to understand other places and people and realities, to ask ourselves "Why is it this way?" #1 is "about" changing reality into what we want, #2 is "about" resonating with real-world experiences. The escapist stories that were forefathers to our modern SFF genre were told by a gender-imbalanced society, and what women related to were shaped by that same society. Enfranchising these women would require considering the interplay between #1 and #2. You want to relate to them but enfranchising them into X means X retains its own identity, and X starts out excluding them. Today's gender balance is different, and now we have different demands, but the same (necessary, IMO) tension between reflecting and creating reality exists. From that tension, problems arise on all sides - from the subgenre imbalances to the problems Maia voiced about the liability of heroines as well as female characters being caught between a rock and a hard place when they are expected to both reflect reality and be empowered in a genre that still carries a lot of gender-imbalanced baggage.

Quoted for brilliance.

Honestly, I think you're on target with the issues of enfranchisement and the shelf lives of books. In real life I feel more allowed to be angry than what I surmise women were allowed to feel before. But I do not see this accurately reflected in books. Which tells me it is part of the literary tradition of the genre, aka, the formula.

The question then becomes how we can change/subvert the formula without turning away either male or female readers. I honestly hate disenfranchised men as much as women, but we seem to be in the crazy situation where it's either/or. I'd love to move beyond that.

But anyway, I can tell you what, relative to your post, makes me stop giving a shit -- it's that writing by formula. I think this is what you were getting at? We are kind of at the point where women are allowed to be strong, but according to very specific definitions. Boxes disenfranchise me, putting different "types" of women in what amounts to a beauty pageant with plot point rewards as reinforcement does not enfranchise me. The more we try to solve the enfranchisement issue with formula women, the more the double-standard will simply mutate instead of disappear. I feel suffocated between the cool tomboy, the bitch, the popular chick, the endless array of box women. This does not interest me at all. Human beings do, and I do not think it's false to say in genre fiction that men are allowed to explore the vastness of human existance more than women are. I am hypersensitive to token women and honorary males, I am hypersensitive to women who are agendas, people that are ideas instead of people that have ideas. That is my taste.

, particularly with the sentences I bolded. And quite often, when women in books seem to be people instead of stereotypes (or instead of just being stereotypes - most of GRRM's characters are stereotypes, but they are very much people too), they often change for the worse later on. A female character who starts off living outside the box ends up either just being the-woman-who-is-outside-the-box, with nothing behind the facade, as you said, or ends up mutating into something more like the "traditional" depiction of a woman in male-authored SFF - just the wife, just the home-maker, just the tomboy or bitch.

I was talking to a friend who is a dude, and his opinion is that Martin tends to go into "woman" mode when writing most of the female characters, who are defined by their types whereas men are defined by their past actions. He can feel Martin actively laboring to write Women, and while it doesn't negate his enjoyment of them, he notices it, and not in a good way. The two female characters he said didn't suffer from this self reference/hyper awareness of "type" problem were Arya and Catelyn. These were two human beings who happened to be female, instead of being OMG LOOK STRONG WOMAN! Instead of pointing out through self reference Who They Are, they simply exist. Though I argued that there is reason for other female characters in this setting to be more gender conscious within the story itself (ie Cersei, Sansa, Brienne), I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly that overly aware self referencing constructs is a problem. Clearly that's not what most people are talking about in this thread, but your posts did seem to reflect a frustration for the formulas. I guess this is my long-winded way of saying I hear you.

I've previously described Cersei as the only "gender-conscious" woman in ASOIAF - that she is hyper-aware of how bad a deal women get in the setting. I don't think that this is necessarily a sign of forced writing of a female character; as a one-off, I quite like it. I'd question the Arya thing in that she is, at the moment, pretty asexual. I'd love to see her when she's passed puberty. It would have been a wonderful consequence of the five-year gap. As it is, she may not survive to puberty...

I can't say if all those women avoiding writing anything but romance feel what I feel, but I am fairly confident in saying that women characters don't as often feel like people first, and I can't help but see that as a hindrance to enfranchisement.

Maybe not even a "hindrance" to enfranchisement but disenfranchisement in and of itself.

[Arthmail]

Firstly, on a purely supraficial note, i direct your attention to Mercedes Lackey's new book, the Snow Queen. I saw it in the book store where i was picking up some Morgan and Lynch. The cover art is atrocious, brutal beyond compare. Its like a terrible, terrible, Disney nightmare of awful. One of the worst covers i have ever seen. Now, i can't remember the last time i read Lackey, but this sort of shit does not help female authors, let alone the fantasy genre in general.

Now, in order to understand this matter further, as a male aspiring author, i'm going to try and step into waters that i've never really paid much attention to. Please bear in mind that i am trying to understand a little further here, before you pull out the knives and make me cry for my mommy if i say something you don't agree with.

Firstly, about female characters stuck in boxes. Could it not be said that all characters, in some way, are confined within boxes? Male as well as female. They are templates for the author, the foundation stones of a character, as one does not simply organically grow a character like a tree. Authors build characters (or at least i do), feeling them out, putting up bricks that fit, pulling down others that don't. Its a considerable amount of work to build a credible character, though some are easier than others, and i must admit a particular pleasure when a character goes places that i hadn't expected. That being said, i would argue that all characters are built off of these familiar stock characters. It simply depends on the skill of the author to unbind them, and does not necessarily have much to do with gender imbalance (though one must bear in mind that a male author is likely...likely i say, to understand men more than women.). For example, amongst the male boxes - if you will - there are familiar characters. The quiet but competent soldier, the romantic soldier, the stern but just king, innocent farmboy, the good prince...etc. I do not think that only female characters are bound within these confines, i think they all start there - its up to the author to dig them out, based off that characters experiences, outlook, and actions.

As i said in a previous post, it takes a considerable amount of skill for a male to accurately write a female character. Not that it can't be done, but i know that in my first book its Lord of the Rings-ish, because i was sensitive to the fact that female characters in novels seem to come off wrong, and i didn't want to do that. The second book of the series will be different, with multiple female characters, but its a gradual process for me. Work on my craft, work on making men work, work on making women work. I think i was scarred by Robert Jordan's absolutely brutal potrayal of women in WOT. I have, if ever, only reall met ONE women simiar to ALL of the women in his books, and even then, she was a person - she was dynamic. It was not always bitchy, not always condescending - she had feelings, cares, concerns, and joys as much as anyone else. But WOT really made me hesitate, and its tough to find good female characters sometimes. Especially amongst male authors. With Richard Morgan, i feel that the female characters are there simply to be fucked. (And i use that word specifically, because thats what it feels like to me with him - though i love his books in every other way). With Joe Abercrombie, his first series was thin for female characters except Ferro, who was the uber bitch that i could not like. Catelyn Stark is a decent example, though i never liked her. If i were to have to choose the best female character that i have seen, i would say Lady Jessica Atriedes in Dune. She was strong, as a fighters/strategist/person, and remained so the entire book. She was a mother, and acted as one, but she was also one of the strongest female characters in literature - i would argue. But honestly, i would rather read a male author that did not have female characters - out of a fear of doing poorly - than to read someone like Robert Jordan and utterly cock it up.

GRRMs female characters are awfully self-aware, and i don't know how i feel about it. I mean, it makes sense for some - Cersie, Brienne i guess, considering how she is formed physically, but is this an inaccurate description of females in medieval times? Especially of female characters that are trying to be more than their society usually allows them? I suppose hyper-aware is a bad thing, but i have read some awful fantasy were the female character is all fire and brimstone and whatever she wants, but still exists within a male dominated society. Is that any more likely? Possibly. I suppose, that for myself, i mostly agree with your statements - i just want to read about what the character is doing, not have them agonize endlessly about how life threw them a bag of turds because they weren't born with a penis - as an aside, i personally despise GRRM's liberal use of that prhase with Cersei, its stupid and boring, along with most of his sexually referenced bits (purple head, myrish swamp). Its poorly executed, in my mind mind.

I think that what it comes down to, is that we as a society have not moved far enough beyond male-centric society. In the US, you still have the Republicans fighting equal back pay for female staff of the same skill. Women still predominantly cook, while men BBQ. Women clean the house, men do the yard work. Men look to marry their moms, its said, and its hard to disagree in most instances. This is reflected in literature. Mercedes Lackey's book, though i have not read it, seems a prime example of this. They say to write from you know, and sadly, a great deal of male/female experience is derived from the last thousand years of domesticity. I mean, if you look at genres of movies that come out - there are guy movies, and chick flicks. It seems a generalization, but the fact that it sells in massive amounts is some proof that the generalization is accurate.

As long as the societal molds remain, the literary molds will reflect it. But there are exceptions, and there is room for them. Take for instance the Resident Evil series of movies. Strong female character, male plays the support role. But of course, for every Resident Evil, there is Pearl Harbour - where you HAVE to have a fucking romance thrown in, despite the fact that it probably does not make sense. Ellen Ripley, from the Alien franchise, is another example of an extremely strong female lead. I loved those movies, but it was as you said, because the character seemed real. I would actually argue that Aliens advanced the idea of strong female leads (without needing to mention it), by a thousand years, while Resident Evil was almost a digression. Ripley wore normal clothing, not super model clothing, and she sweat, swore, and bled as much as anyone else. She was competent, caring, and a complete ass kicker. Probably one of the most memorable female characters in movies.

So it can be done. There is room for it. I suppose that what is needed is female authors with the skill to do it, though having discussed this topic now, i am tempted to look at doing some work of my own.

[Galactus]

About "boxes".... Someone put it like this (speaking of race, not gender, but I think it applies)

Jones, a black man who lives in Chicago and likes rap.

That´s a stereotype.

Jones, a black man who lives in Chicago, likes rap, is a afraid of spiders. Secretly enjoys romance novels. Has a crush on Josephine his co-worker but has no idea how to express it, who is trying to quit smoking, loves icecream and wishes he lived somewhere where he could own a horse and learn to ride, who wears contact lenses because he doesen´t want people to notice his deteroriating vision....

See the difference?

The closer you get to know a character, the less likely is it that the character would feel "boxed". Stereotypes are all about reducing people to a few simple traits. The more you get into someone´s head, the deeper you get to know them, the less stereotypical they become, almost by neccessity.

[Zoë Sumra]

Firstly, on a purely supraficial note, i direct your attention to Mercedes Lackey's new book, the Snow Queen. I saw it in the book store where i was picking up some Morgan and Lynch. The cover art is atrocious, brutal beyond compare. Its like a terrible, terrible, Disney nightmare of awful. One of the worst covers i have ever seen. Now, i can't remember the last time i read Lackey, but this sort of shit does not help female authors, let alone the fantasy genre in general.

I have to point out here that Lackey doesn't get the best critical reviews in general.

Firstly, about female characters stuck in boxes. Could it not be said that all characters, in some way, are confined within boxes? Male as well as female.

<snip>

It simply depends on the skill of the author to unbind them, and does not necessarily have much to do with gender imbalance (though one must bear in mind that a male author is likely...likely i say, to understand men more than women.).

Agreed re. stereotyping/templating. That doesn't explain why female stereotypical/boxed characters are generally more poorly constructed than male stereotypical/boxed characters, which is, I believe, more strongly related to your point after my snip. It's not necessary for every male SFF author to write women well. It's more of an issue when we find it difficult to come up with a list of more than a half dozen male SFF authors who write women well.

But WOT really made me hesitate, and its tough to find good female characters sometimes. Especially amongst male authors. With Richard Morgan, i feel that the female characters are there simply to be fucked. (And i use that word specifically, because thats what it feels like to me with him - though i love his books in every other way). With Joe Abercrombie, his first series was thin for female characters except Ferro, who was the uber bitch that i could not like.

I agree with the Morgan view, most particularly with your use of "fucked". Ferro, to me, wasn't an uber bitch, but a man in a skirt. She wasn't female, she was androgyne. I suppose this is is partly the point of this ongoing discussion!

I mean, it makes sense for some - Cersie, Brienne i guess, considering how she is formed physically, but is this an inaccurate description of females in medieval times? Especially of female characters that are trying to be more than their society usually allows them? I suppose hyper-aware is a bad thing, but i have read some awful fantasy were the female character is all fire and brimstone and whatever she wants, but still exists within a male dominated society.

In the particular context of a fantasy world based in a detailed manner on the mediaeval period, like ASOIAF, there is certainly an argument for lack of female empowerment. Note previous mentions of Cat being a brilliantly written woman, despite her not being empowered in the traditional sense. ASOIAF doesn't disenfranchise the reader so much in that way, because complexity of character in GRRM's writing isn't necessarily related to position.

This does not, though, explain in the slightest why science fiction women share both the poor depiction and the raw deal. When writing SF, the world is the author's construct in social as well as political ways - the excuse, if you will, of historical inaccuracy does not hold, and far less so does the reasoning behind creating cardboard cutouts instead of fictional people.

I suppose, that for myself, i mostly agree with your statements - i just want to read about what the character is doing, not have them agonize endlessly about how life threw them a bag of turds because they weren't born with a penis.

Agreed, which, again, is partially the point. Women in badly written SFF don't get to do things. Things are done to them, or they are dragged along with events. They are not agents, they are acted upon.

I mean, if you look at genres of movies that come out - there are guy movies, and chick flicks.

And female readers of SF and epic fantasy, as opposed to the ones reading supernatural romance and fluff-fantasy-lite, tend to a) prefer the guy movies to the chick flicks and also bemoan the scarcity of decently written women in those. Lack of action stories involving real women is a problem in all media, not just books.

Ellen Ripley, from the Alien franchise, is another example of an extremely strong female lead. I loved those movies, but it was as you said, because the character seemed real. I would actually argue that Aliens advanced the idea of strong female leads (without needing to mention it), by a thousand years, while Resident Evil was almost a digression. Ripley wore normal clothing, not super model clothing, and she sweat, swore, and bled as much as anyone else. She was competent, caring, and a complete ass kicker. Probably one of the most memorable female characters in movies.

She is certainly the exception to the rule. (But, again, note how you came up with a just couple of examples from movies.)

About "boxes".... Someone put it like this (speaking of race, not gender, but I think it applies)

Jones, a black man who lives in Chicago and likes rap.

That´s a stereotype.

Jones, a black man who lives in Chicago, likes rap, is a afraid of spiders. Secretly enjoys romance novels. Has a crush on Josephine his co-worker but has no idea how to express it, who is trying to quit smoking, loves icecream and wishes he lived somewhere where he could own a horse and learn to ride, who wears contact lenses because he doesen´t want people to notice his deteroriating vision....

I certainly feel it applies.

Do you think that the lack of decent women in male-authored SFF is due to the authors failing to pay proper attention to character and that simultaneously all of the characters to whom they fail to pay attention are female? It's a bit of a big coincidence for me. Analogies to the position of women in the majority of SFF would be either:

a) Jones just carried on liking rap and that was it, or

Jones gave up all the romance novels/arachnophobia/desire to own a horse/etc. after he

b)i) married Josephine or

b)ii) got a little older and decided to settle down into happy stereotypehood.

[Arthmail]

I was just speaking in context of fantasy, for the most part. As for science fiction, you are absolutely right. Its the 28,000th century. We can cure all forms of disease, have FTL ships, and have thinking nanites...but women are still within their boxes.

I am thinking, specifically, of Woken Furies by Morgan. The woman that is a alien expert to open the gate, is unhinged. My credibility was strained by her on more than one occassion. The first big "are you fucking kidding me?" came when, after Kovacs had helped to heal her mind after a goodly amount of time in prison, she needed to fuck him in order to cleanse herself. I was like, you have to be kidding me. I am 29 years old, i have had some fair success with the ladies, and i have yet to have a girl ask me to fuck her. Not that its not something that happens, but...ah, it just came off wrong.

Ferro was a man with a skirt, or something. She was paper thin the entire series, but i'm also not a fan of the constantly angry character, that everyone else just puts up with. Had i been Logen, or Bayaz, i would have told her to stop bitching or fuck off.

I guess, at the end of the day, you are correct. Women in SFF do not do things, they have things done to them. I talked with my girlfriend and her cousin about this last night. Now, neither of them are science fiction and fantasy type readers, and do not spend a great deal of time dwelling on this idea, but they have noticed it. Generally, male writers are just not as adept at writing female characters.

It's almost sad, really, when you look at it in a broader context. Male writers tend to shy away from interesting female characters, and many female writers force themselves within a box of their own choosing. When you examine movies like Underworld, and Resident Evil, its all about hot chicks kicking ass. I always thought Ripley was sexy without having to try and wear tight outfits. Of course, that is all a reflection of a man-centric movie industry.

As for books, i am trying to think of strong female characters that were well drawn and dynamic. I mean, in RA Salvatore's books, the only person really that was not a caricature was Drizzt, while the dwarf, the human barbarian, and his only female character were all pretty much cookie cutter.

-Lady Jessica Atriedes (Dune)

-Catelyn Stark (ASOIF)

-Cersie

-Most of the females in Steven Pressfields Gates of Fire. Now the entire series was about the Spartans at the Battle of Thermeopylae, so the female characters are understandibly scarce, but those that were there seemed strong, realistic. Spartan society, in any case, was an anomily in ancient times with how the woman of the society were treated. They were about 1500 years advanced of anyone else.

-Any female character from Clive Cusslers Dirk Pitt novels. Bwahahahaha....kidding.

This is sad, though i am probably certainly forgetting some of the books from my collection. But there is certainly a trend amongst male authors to write extreme cookie cutter female characters. For instance, though i love David Gemmell, aside from the Troy series, his female characters are thin. Those female characters that he does have tend to be great generals, who have a tendancy to sleep with every man they can find.

I give up. I am in the second book of my series while my proof readers take knives to my baby, and this conversation has inspired me in terms of my female characters. So thanks for that. Perhaps when (when, not if...keep the dream alive), i get published, you can tell me how i did. I just need to remember to have them do things, instead of having things done to them, hey?

[Galactus]

I think there is a kind of double-bind of expectations at work too.... Let me see if I can explain it, men are read as "strong" unless they are specifically shown to be weak, while women are read as "weak" unless they are explicitly shown to be strong.

[Korr]

I was just speaking in context of fantasy, for the most part. As for science fiction, you are absolutely right. Its the 28,000th century. We can cure all forms of disease, have FTL ships, and have thinking nanites...but women are still within their boxes.

I am thinking, specifically, of Woken Furies by Morgan. The woman that is a alien expert to open the gate, is unhinged. My credibility was strained by her on more than one occassion. The first big "are you fucking kidding me?" came when, after Kovacs had helped to heal her mind after a goodly amount of time in prison, she needed to fuck him in order to cleanse herself. I was like, you have to be kidding me. I am 29 years old, i have had some fair success with the ladies, and i have yet to have a girl ask me to fuck her. Not that its not something that happens, but...ah, it just came off wrong.

Ferro was a man with a skirt, or something. She was paper thin the entire series, but i'm also not a fan of the constantly angry character, that everyone else just puts up with. Had i been Logen, or Bayaz, i would have told her to stop bitching or fuck off.

I guess, at the end of the day, you are correct. Women in SFF do not do things, they have things done to them. I talked with my girlfriend and her cousin about this last night. Now, neither of them are science fiction and fantasy type readers, and do not spend a great deal of time dwelling on this idea, but they have noticed it. Generally, male writers are just not as adept at writing female characters.

It's almost sad, really, when you look at it in a broader context. Male writers tend to shy away from interesting female characters, and many female writers force themselves within a box of their own choosing. When you examine movies like Underworld, and Resident Evil, its all about hot chicks kicking ass. I always thought Ripley was sexy without having to try and wear tight outfits. Of course, that is all a reflection of a man-centric movie industry.

As for books, i am trying to think of strong female characters that were well drawn and dynamic. I mean, in RA Salvatore's books, the only person really that was not a caricature was Drizzt, while the dwarf, the human barbarian, and his only female character were all pretty much cookie cutter.

-Lady Jessica Atriedes (Dune)

-Catelyn Stark (ASOIF)

-Cersie

-Most of the females in Steven Pressfields Gates of Fire. Now the entire series was about the Spartans at the Battle of Thermeopylae, so the female characters are understandibly scarce, but those that were there seemed strong, realistic. Spartan society, in any case, was an anomily in ancient times with how the woman of the society were treated. They were about 1500 years advanced of anyone else.

-Any female character from Clive Cusslers Dirk Pitt novels. Bwahahahaha....kidding.

This is sad, though i am probably certainly forgetting some of the books from my collection. But there is certainly a trend amongst male authors to write extreme cookie cutter female characters. For instance, though i love David Gemmell, aside from the Troy series, his female characters are thin. Those female characters that he does have tend to be great generals, who have a tendancy to sleep with every man they can find.

I give up. I am in the second book of my series while my proof readers take knives to my baby, and this conversation has inspired me in terms of my female characters. So thanks for that. Perhaps when (when, not if...keep the dream alive), i get published, you can tell me how i did. I just need to remember to have them do things, instead of having things done to them, hey?

This post actually reminded me of something I first noticed when reading Snow Crash (and never thought much about afterwards until now). Specifically about YT's encounter with Raven.

When authors do include a tomboyish female character, sex is generally written as the last thing on their minds, and never ever comes up. In the occasions where it does become an issue, like in Snow Crash, it's actually quite jarring. We're so used to these characters being asexual that it's quite a strange gear shift to accept. Stephenson doesn't handle the situation with YT ideally, revealing only quite late in the story that YT is actually not an asexual virgin but quite the opposite, but there still wasn't really a good reason for it to make me as uncomfortable as it did the first time I read it. I expect it wouldn't have bothered me as much if it had been a male character in the same position.

I think the sexual side of characters gets wasted or ignored altogether too much in genre fiction. Not romance plots -- I've already explained that I hate them and why -- but simply integrating sexual behaviour and thoughts into the character. They can say a lot about someone's personality, and will allow the reader accept sex scenes more naturally. That's one of the things that Martin does so well. His characters have dirty thoughts and sexual memories on-screen, preparing us and letting us know that nothing is off-limits for the futures of these people.

Regards,

Ryan

[Deedles]

Not going to get into the complexities of the argument, of which there are many. I would add that Cordelia in the Barrayar series is very much a powerful figure, who plays to her strengths and is believable.

[Sheep the Evicted]

I also don't want to get into this argument too deeply. However i will say that i will never discard a book because it was written by a women but i will seriously consider discarding it if the main character is a women, especially if its from her first person POV. I have had too many bad experiences with the Anita Blake and Kushiel series'.

As for Ferro i agree that she was very poorly drawn. Even though she was a character with a hell of a lot of screen time she never really came alive like some of the other "secondary" characters, for instance Dogman and West. I don't think it had that much to do with her being female but rather with her always being angry and less than human. Ardee i thought was very well realised, she had her flaws and her strengths- especially the way she was using her beauty to toy with Jezal.

[Kat]

And female readers of SF and epic fantasy, as opposed to the ones reading supernatural romance and fluff-fantasy-lite, tend to a) prefer the guy movies to the chick flicks and also bemoan the scarcity of decently written women in those. Lack of action stories involving real women is a problem in all media, not just books.

You make a good point about other media, but some of us read both fluffy-fantasy-lite and SF and epic fantasy, as well as watch both chick flicks (I love Sex and the City ) and action movies. And in the end, even though I'm not super fond of supernatural romance (I dislike vampires), I was reading a Kelley Armstrong book last week and found myself thinking, "Ah, finally, lots of female characters who interact with each other." Even though I'm a self-aware feminist reader, I still sometimes forget what I'm missing when I read a bunch of epic fantasy written by men. Or watch action movies. (Edit: And science fiction movies which present a very skewed version of science, like there's only that one token female scientist. I mean, I realize many parts of science are still dominated by men, but it's not that dire of a situation.)

[Galactus]

"Ah, finally, lots of female characters who interact with each other."

Bechdel's Law, no?

Goes something like: "I won't watch a movie unless it contains A) More than one woman.

Who have a conversation with each other.

C) About something else than a man."

Problematic as an actual guide for watching of course, but I think it kind of puts the spotlight on ow rare this actually is.

[Lyanna Stark]

Ran,

Phedre's detached description of it and the flowery language of Carey just won't do it for me I am afraid. I never even finished the first book, but dropped it some 75% through since it grated on me too much.

The scenes that most stand out to me is the scene where Phedre gets tortured and then her sort of non reaction to it. Yes, it is not described as directly pleasant, but not as something that is utterly awful either. I guess after 75% of the book, I was still looking for her deep trauma based on her anguisette personality. The fact that you feel pleasure from pain should just be something that upset you more, imho. Yet it doesn't, much, at least it didn't at the point where I gave up on it. I mean, I was almost mentally screaming for a reaction of some sort, and that was what really upset me. "Oh SORRY I happened to burn you with a red hot poker, but why don't I give you this REALLY pretty necklace which is really expensive and it will be alright, ok?" It just doesn't do it for me. Maybe I am an extremely vindictive sort of person, but I would not take it so well that someone tortured me because they got "carried away" and then just said "sorry", basically.

Also, regarding the prettiness, I have read too many fanfics were everyone is pretty, I guess.

I just find it so much more believable when people are more realistic and not so extremely good looking. It smacks of self insertion and Mary Sue-ness when people are too pretty.

Goes something like: "I won't watch a movie unless it contains A) More than one woman.

Who have a conversation with each other.

C) About something else than a man."

Problematic as an actual guide for watching of course, but I think it kind of puts the spotlight on ow rare this actually is.

The fact that I can only think of two movies that actually fulfil this is sad.

One of them being "The Hours".