'We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative

To be honest. I only scanned the article, it seemed a rather longwinded way to say....don't perpetually make your fictional women victims like they don't have any other role in life.

For me, and my WIP. I didn't consciously set out to make every single one of them villainous. But they are so, in the same way that everyone is villainous to some degree. Their desires and their insecurities drive them to do things of questionable morality and worth. In their own minds it is the right thing to do, nevermind that their perspective is lacking in some important way.

I haven't made the males in my WIP anymore angelic or right either. Each one is hampered by who they are as much as they are helped by it. But it's more often that my males are cast in the role of victim in this story rather than antagonist. Why? The story works better this way. There are no sword wielding bravado's fighting their way out, there is only cunning and strategy. The women have the upper hand in the first move and each character uses their best advantage to gain their goal or not. It is a game of chess after that.

But I found the role of antagonist more interesting with a female in it, maybe because I can more clearly elucidate their deeper motivations. There is always the surface motivation, which is plain to us all. But people aren't really driven by those. There is some deeper yearning and unfed desire which forces the hand. That darker place we don't want to admit to. This is what I wanted to illustrate. I was tired of the oft-used way of illustrating such things with torture and death. It's hamfisted and predictable. So I asked the question...

What if someone's darkness was beautiful and seductive as much as it was frightening? What if, we started to identify with and like the hideous? I'm not talking about the physical attributes of my characters, I am talking about being seduced by their hidden motivations because we secretly share them and wish to express them. I like this idea, so it's what I'm going for in my WIP. Hence the reason why my women are villainous and my men their victims. I didn't promise the men don't like being victims, not everyone seeks freedom from their captivity, some actively seek more of it.

What I got from the article was to be conscious of the reasons why you depict a certain thing. Don't reach for something because it's merely there in the front of your mind. Pick something because it has reason and purpose and each character is well illustrated and given a life of meaning. Don't make women the device of plots, make them characters.

 

But those aren't armor plates. Those are flexible vests that one doesn't need to smash one's breasts into.

We're arguing over the images in the article and I'm sure you and I would agree about the skinny waisted bulging breasted big butted women soldiers in video games.

I don't see anything different in the article's artwork than in your linked image except the soldiers in the artwork are more artistically rendered and beautiful than average.

I doubt they considered replaceability, but pregnancy and child rearing are not very conducive to hunting trips.

This is drifting into territory I'm not defending. Why don't you take another look at the artwork in the article and tell me which of those female soldiers looks to you like she has a busty breast plate.

Who is saying not to?

 

The modern soldiers have actual hard, heavy ballistic armor plates inside those soft, vest-like exteriors; at the moment those are the only type of armor that can stop rifle rounds (which is essential as the most likely weapons the soldiers will be shot with are AK variants that would punch through soft ballistic armor).
The soft, flexible vests ordinary LEOs and civilians wear can only stop handgun and shotgun rounds, so hence soldiers, hostage rescue teams, police tactical units etc. usually wear the heavier, bulkier, plated armor you see in the picture.

Point being, they are still flat with no specially molded plates to accommodate breasts, but the female soldiers don't seem to be uncomfortable in them. Those rigs make women's bodies look pretty much the same as men's yet I don't think that detracts a single iota from their femininity. Furthermore, from where I'm standing, the female soldiers, dressed in the same clothes and armor as male soldiers, are all about their performance instead of looks, but even so I still think those women are just as feminine as some more traditionally feminine women in more traditionally feminine roles.

In essence, I'm protesting the whole masculine/feminine dichotomy you were referring to in your previous post:

To me, the armors (neither the plate rigs the modern soldiers use nor the medieval armor Brienne and Samantha were wearing) don't masculinize the women, turn them into men, or detract from their femininity in any other way.

Also, if you look at medieval breast plates, the men's models, many of them leave enough room for any but the most humongous breasts, so it's not like most women would need the extra space; boob plates are just for looks unless we're talking about basketball-size breasts.

Anyhow, the "boob plates" I was referring to are the title picture and the third one with the African-American woman. Most of the other pictures in the article had normal breast plates, i.e. the same style men use, but I don't think those images were anymore masculine than the first and third.

I figured they at least realized hunting was more dangerous than most other activities and that the males would've had that same preprogrammed instinct to protect their group's women as most modern-day men, so they'd leave at least most of the women behind when there was fighting to be done. But as I'm just a layman, I'm pretty much working on poorly educated guesses here, so if you or anyone else know better, please feel free to correct me.

Sorry, I kinda went off on a tangent there, speaking in general instead of strictly referring to your post, but if we do place my question into your post's context, saying women who do not wear boob plates (which means pretty much all women who compete in historical European martial arts) are somehow masculinized, turned into men etc. is kinda akin to saying they should wear boob plates even if their breast size doesn't require it unless they want to be seen as too masculine/manly. If I read your post correctly, I'd say that's where we disagree, especially since I forgot to mention another thing:

Boob plates are dangerous to the wearer. Should the woman be struck hard in the chest or fall down chest-first, the boob plate can fracture her sternum, resulting in serious injury. If she falls from horseback and hits her chest on the ground... I don't even want to think about what would happen to her. That's why modern HEMA competitors wear armor like this (she's an actual competitor, not just a model for the armor). Pragmatism and logic shouldn't be seen as purely masculine traits (speaking generally again).

 

My comments were in the context of your complaint about the artwork in the link. You claimed the women still looked too busty. It's artwork for fantasy, not artwork depicting a modern military army photo. The images were not the stereotyped female soldiers of movies, video games and Marvel/DC comics. I read your real complaint as, the images were too pretty, I see no reason in fantasy it's OK to make handsome male protagonist soldiers but if the story is about a female soldier she has to be unattractive. That's not equality, it's a double standard.

And you are still defending women soldiers needing to pretend to be men lest they be more vulnerable. Abu Ghraib images demonstrate men POWs are subject to sexual abuse and torture just as women are. But again, this is beyond the subject I wish to get into.

The first image is too hard to see under the overwriting for me to judge. The third just looks rounded to me, I don't see a breast outline or emphasis.

Hunter-gatherers are typically known to be egalitarian societies. As populations grow in size leadership roles develop and the egalitarian traditions fade. And all the people in these small bands tend to have important roles, meaning everyone depends on everyone else.

But is the 'men hunt/women gather' a valid stereotype and if so, is it due to inherent physical differences?

Here are five tribes from around the world whose lifestyles include female hunters and non-Western gender roles.

What do you know, "We Have Always Fought" maybe should have also included, "We Have Always Hunted".

"Boob plates" was your idea and not one I said. I still don't see any boob plates in the artistic images you think you see them in.

 

OK, I'm feeling a need for the definition of a "boob plate."

The photograph that T. Trian linked to shows a plate with a single slight curve increasing from the neckline and maximizing a little bit the waist, then curving back in a bit at the waist.

I could imagine that curve increasing faster, so that more space is avallable in the upper chest. I could imagine providing that upper-chest space with an extra curve, without any mid-chest separation. Or I could imagine the stereotypical lift-and-separate "metal bra" of fantasy illustration.

By "boob plate", which of these are we referring to, and which are unsafe?

The plate in the photograph would, IMO, have enough space for many women, as long as they're not trying to get the plate to try to play nice with a lift-and-separate bra underneath. I think that for a large percentage of women, it's a social expectation that we carry that extra flesh so high on the chest; it requires shaping with clothing to make that happen. But for women that need more space, what shape would be both accommodating and safe?

 

Fair enough. In fact, I think that is probably what she meant, but honestly, the way she expressed these thoughts -- or even her thought processes as she described them -- just made me grit my teeth. Plus, I wouldn't consider rape a trope, unless, indeed, it was used a shallow plot device, but I'm not entirely convinced that's what she meant. Apart from the society where women outnumber men, I just felt like she was shutting out reality in the name of feminism or cliché avoidance, and I happen to think that's stupid -- even though people who've given her the Hugo Award would most likely not agree. Exploring other avenues of story-telling is not stupid, I'd encourage it for sure.

I really do like Scarlett. And yeah, she's much better written than Bella. Can't say anything for Katniss as I haven't read Hunger Games. I didn't like being inside her head. Didn't like Bella either, but Twilight was an actual course book for us! That course now reads Hunger Games, actually, so further generations are spared from the horrors of Bella Swan's boring-ass musings. But yeah, off-topic...

Speaking of them, as I already alluded earlier, to me: shallowly portrayed rape = cliché. Portrayed with depth and understanding = not cliché. But to me rape isn't automatically a tired trope.

I agree, unless avoiding it makes the story or scene unrealistic (in my book, of course. No pun intended.)

Me too. Although, taking in the realism angle again... to generalize, single guys try pretty much every girl they can, so the writer just has to make the female say no. Then there's no romance, but there could be a "danger" of it at the beginning. Not all single guys are like that, but a lot of them are.

Certainly, if the characters wouldn't think about the ongoing sex slavery in their country, they simply wouldn't. But I think if I were a woman in power, I might spare some thought to that, so it'd be better just write a society where it's non-existent. By the way, aren't women already outnumbering men if we talk about the entire population of Earth? Or maybe I'm just remembering it wrong...

I agree, although these situations keep arising from time to time in real life, so I personally like to see them in books too. I think it adds to the authenticity of the work. Of course, depends on the work.

Yeah, I think for the author to be able to do away with it, they can't really put the women into situations where it'd be likely to happen, otherwise it becomes a PG-13 TV show where the woman is captured by the bad guys but miraculously enough no one lays a finger on her.

I agree. It's definitely a good idea to explore other avenues. I'd just be careful not to get too gimmicky with it, or at least in my own case, sacrifice realism for political correctness or some such.

re Boob accommodating battledress. Here's a video about the body armor the US Army has been testing for women. Here's another on women's combat fatigues. Not a single mention of boobs, so they seem to not require extra attention even in women's battledress. Was this more relevant with plate armors? I'm somewhat suspicious about that, but happy to be proven wrong, I guess.

 

Okie-dokie, I see there's been a breakdown in communication somewhere down the line because that's so not what I was saying at all. I'll try my best to do a better job at explaining myself:

First, I'll specify that the only things I griped about when it came to the images in that article were two armors and one earring (although I'd imagine its pair dangled on the other side). All the rest of my commentary has been on a general level, its scope branching outside the article's images and to (esp.fantasy) depictions of the sexes when it comes to warriors.

I believe I first responded to @Mckk's post where she said she was annoyed one of the drawn women warriors was wearing big, dangly earrings. I said I find it likewise annoying that male warriors are usually shown in practical outfits and gear (yes, even in fantasy drawings) and their poses display strength, bravery, aggression, rage, and whatever other warrior-y things you can think of. You get the gist: big, tough warrior dudes.

Now compare that to the usual depictions of female warriors: as a general rule, sex appeal comes first even if that means their chosen outfits and gear make no sense from a practical standpoint. That's usually not the case with male warriors.
So what does that mean? I understand it as the notion that men are serious, real warriors while women are vain eye candy more interested in looking sexy than being real warriors. Which basically implies female warriors are a joke.

That's not really the truth now is it? The usual depictions of male warriors aren't all that different from real male warriors: strong, muscular, very capable, proficient, serious about their work, often pretty grim when they're going to work (to fight).
The real female warriors I've met have been exactly the same. So why do their fantasy depictions have to be so unrealistic? Why are we so afraid of realism when it comes to female warriors when we're perfectly comfortable with at least relatively realistic depictions of male warriors?

Also, female warriors can be pretty, even beautiful, but must they wear party make-up? Isn't their natural beauty enough? The men wear make-up in the depictions... well, practically never; they're good enough as they are. Aren't women? Must they wear impractical haircuts? Are we so repulsed by strong, capable au naturel women with short hair or corn rows or a pony tail (or whatever style that keeps the hair out of their eyes) that they must be kept an absolute rarity in all forms of art? Why do they have to wear form-fitting outfits and even armors so often in comparison to men? Why must their armors usually be so much less realistic, less practical than those of their male counterparts?
Do a Google image search for "armor class," and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's a thing, for heaven's sake! Not so with male characters.

That, I say, is a double standard.

And seeing what the article was about, I was just a teeny bit surprised to see those female fantasy clichés in two images (all the others were excellent depictions of strong women, at least I think so), but as I said way back, this is not a big deal at all, merely just a small observation and an interesting subject with lots of issues to be discussed.


So, you see, I wasn't objecting to the drawn women being pretty, not at all. I wasn't even objecting to the pictures shown in the article save for the boob plates and earring. I was speaking about depictions of male warriors vs. depictions of female warriors and their differences (mostly in the context of fantasy). I was objecting to the priorities, that showing female warriors as pretty, sexy minxes is a greater priority, than showing them not only as strong, brave, fearsome women, but as strong, brave, fearsome warriors without the usual gendered poses, facial expressions, and clothing/equipment (e.g. boob plates, chainmail bikinis etc).

Yeah, it veers quite far off-topic, but suffice to say that, from what I've understood, female POWs get raped more often than male POWs (percentage-wise at least), and I didn't say women soldiers need to pretend to be men. This is actually a crucial part of my point so I'll elaborate a bit:
Why must the women's otherness be brought into e.g. soldiering? Why can't they be just soldiers on the battlefield? Why must they be female soldiers? Because of certain pretty predictable sex- and gender-related behavioral patterns, trying to stand out on the battlefield is not a good idea, it might cause more than one kind of problems, so that's yet another reason not to make women stand out.

According to my subjective observations, most female warriors (soldiers, LEOs, martial artists, combat sports athletes etc) don't care for gendered representations; they tend to prefer being seen as soldiers, police officers, and martial artists instead of the same thing but with the prefix "female" that draws attention to their sex since they see it as something that's completely irrelevant to their work. They'd rather people (e.g. interviewers) focused on what they do instead of what they are, kinda like people tend to do with men; they are evaluated depending on their actions and abilities while women are evaluated by their beauty and sex-appeal. Generally speaking, of course.

So if an army has a uniform, that's what they all wear, men and women alike, and if the outfits and gear conceal a female soldier's sex, it just means she's no longer "a female soldier" but only "a soldier" whose actions and abilities count instead of looks and sex-appeal. To me, that's how it should be. Moreover, I don't see that as masculinization or as turning women into men, but freeing both men and women from the confines of sex- and gender-related issues, notions, effects etc. and aiming the spotlight solely on their actions and abilities.

Maybe it's me who sees them wrong? I don't think so but in the end it doesn't matter as far as my main argument about depictions of the sexes on a general level (i.e. outside of the article's images' context) is concerned.

I think it's very possible the stereotype stems from physical differences. My point is that such stereotypical behavioral patterns might've made sense back then, but it's high time we moved past that, isn't it? We don't need to go hunting for boars with a rock and a pointy stick; we can shoot it or, safer yet, buy its meat from a store. Anybody can do that, so why do we still cling to these archaic notions of masculinity and femininity that usually only serve to either exclude individuals or push them into a mold they often don't like?
I think masculine and feminine are words we should only use for the broadest generalizations because they so often place men on a pedestal and keep women groveling at their feet. (Btw, anyone can use them as much as they want; that's just my opinion and preference, not a demand)

Thanks for the link! That was an interesting read.


@ChickenFreak, this is a boob plate and it's unsafe. I'd imagine something like this (yes, it's a woman in there) would safely acommodate large-breasted women, i.e. the curve of the plate is a bit roomier. It can even be a simple, slightly curved design along these lines.

While searching for those images, I made an observation that speaks volumes:
Photos of real women wearing those dangerous boob plates were extremely rare. The above example is the only "civilian" one I saw (judging by the guy in the background as well as the impractical style of the armor, my guess is it's a pic from some festival or LARP event, and the woman in question is wearing the armor just for looks, not as protection in a fencing match); all the others were either from unrealistic movies or they were computer-generated images and drawings.
Except for that one boob plate pic and something like 2-3 movie stills, all photos of real women in plate armor were of the realistic, safe, unisex kind. Makes sense since women who compete in HEMA /are serious enough about their hobby to pay the hundreds, even thousands for full mail, generally know what they're doing and that showed as a practically complete absence of boob plates of any kind; their armors were all business.
And they looked badass. I snapped that last pic at a medieval fair where the woman jousted and fenced with men, rode through rings of fire, and generally kicked ass just as much as the dudes.


Anyway, I think there's a reason why men don't generally wear armor like this. However, that same reason applies to women, real female warriors, so I think it's time art started to reflect that more often, just like it does with men. Art should allow women warriors to retain their dignity instead of reducing them to tacky, sexy jokes. Alternatively, we should also reduce male warriors to tacky, sexy jokes, but I'd rather we chose the former option and treated female fighters with a little more respect.

 

Been following your posts on this thread @T.Trian - so so so agree! Btw those pics of women in unisex armour - they have a sense of majesty about them that I really like. More than once I thought they looked rather beautiful!

Btw the boob plate in real life looks really ridiculous. Funny I never thought that when it's in art. The last male 'sexy' one must be how ridiculous the women look in impractical armour. Only we've grown so used to the female version we barely notice - and even consider pretty just cus we expect it.

 

@Mckk, I know what you mean. The words that spring to my mind are "dignified," "strong," and the previously mentioned "badass."

 

See, that's not my experience. Maybe it's the regions where I've lived, maybe it's my area of study and later my profession, maybe I don't give off an available vibe, maybe I'm oblivious to come-ons, I don't know, but this just doesn't happen to me, and it doesn't seem to happen to most of the women around me. So it doesn't strike me as unrealistic for a man and a woman to occupy the same story without even a breath of romance coming up.

Also, a story can start with men and women already knowing each other, so even if we were to assume that every single male/female meeting in every fictional world has to get past the romance question, it's reasonable to assume that that stage has already passed.

I'm sounding cranky, aren't I? I apologize, in advance, because I may get crankier, though I'll try to suppress it. I think that you're saying that all of these things are in the world and are realistic to include. I'm saying that, yes, they're in the world, but it's a whole big world out there, so is it so unrealistic to NOT focus on them? Does every single story about a woman have to be primarily about being a woman? Does every woman have to be there primarily to represent her gender?

To grab one example out of the fictional world, let's look at the West Wing episode "Two Cathedrals". President Josiah Bartlett is reminiscing about his secretary, Mrs. Landingham, remembering when he first met her, when he was a teenager and she was his father's secretary.

That mosaic of memories doesn't ignore the issues of being a woman. Mrs. Landingham challenges Josiah to ask his father why the women that work for him make less than the men. That was a piece of the reality of being a woman in the United States in the middle of the twentieth century. It was realistic.

But that was just one element of a story that wasn't "about" being a woman, but was instead about Mrs Landingham, the person. About her challenging Josiah, about her view of his responsibilities as a "boy king", and his view of her view, his response to a challenge... The writers dropped a woman into the world, and gave her a pivotal role in a story that wasn't all about her being a woman.

To put it another way, I don't see the story as being about "OK, this is a female character. How can we inject some female issues in this story?" But instead, "OK, what part of the world would Mrs. Landingham want to make right?"

But would you think about it every day? Every time that you had a meeting about other issues? Is it really unrealistic to have a conversation between a man in power and a woman in power where the question of sex slavery doesn't come up? There's sex slavery in our world, too, but I very often think about, and talk about, other things.

There are plenty of other things that could come up--poverty, hunger, the plague, that disease that's killing all the fig trees, the tension on the northern border. Why is it the female character's problem to worry about sex slavery, to mention it in every single conversation?

I know, I know, you didn't insist that she mention it in every single conversation.

But how often does a male character have a conversation that focuses on a topic directly related to his gender? If he was having those conversations, All The Time, wouldn't it get tired? If all male characters did that, and most stories were primarily populated by females, wouldn't you hesitate to add a male character because, "Oh, I don't want to focus on Male Issues; this is about a museum heist. I'll make the curator another woman."?

I'm not saying avoid the reality of being a woman. I'm saying that the introduction of that exotic thing, a female character, doesn't require the author to pour out a whole bucket of female-focused issues and plot points for her to deal with, as if she can't deal with anything else.

Are you referring to the "women outnumbering men 25 to 1"? I think that our society is not quite that skewed.

They do come up in real life, but don't other interpersonal situations also come up? If two male characters have a conflict, that conflict can be about a thousand things. Race, class, education, nationality, priorities, politics, the best hunting dog, the right glass to use for champagne.

If a male and a female character have a conflict, why is that conflict so often about gender? And when two female characters have a conflict, why is that conflict also so often about gender-stereotyped things? (Clothes, appearance, who wants the guy, career woman versus stay at home mom, etc.)

But there are a whole lot of stories that don't involve sustained captivity situations.

And that's where I feel frustrated--at the idea that it's "gimmicky" for a story about a woman to be about something other than being a woman, while stories about men can be about anything, without being accused of being a gimmick.

I'm sure that's not what you're saying, but I'm not sure what you're saying.

Or maybe we just disagree on what the essay writer is saying. I hear her as saying that there's a whole huge library of plot ideas, and when you introduce a female character, you don't have to go to the "girl stuff" shelf and stop there. And maybe you hear her as saying that you have to put police tape in front of the "girl stuff" shelf and avoid it at all costs.

 

I did come off a bit narrow-sighted there, didn't I? Of course there're all kinds of stories, situations, realities, etc. so I should've specified I was limiting "the realism factor" to the situations I'm most familiar with, but we aren't that homogenous, are we?

About guys coming onto women a lot. It's not unrealistic for them not to, but since it is so common I tend to find it very realistic when it's portrayed in a story... Except it's not common for you or for the women around you . And I doubt it's an entirely cultural thing, perhaps it could be regional, like if there's a fairly homogenous group of people who share a similar upbringing? And there're guys who are shier, but then you find out a few months later he's actually been crushing on you and was just too scared to say anything (yeah, I suck at reading "subtle" signs too). And then there're guys who've not been initially head-over-heels interested, but if you throw the suggestion in the air, they're often game. However, I think maybe this is more common in bigger cities... guys were shier in my old, smaller hometown but when I moved and started to study and work around the capital city region, men seemed to be more open, for example my husband's male friends were quite different from the male friends I had had. So this is where I'm getting my frustrations when I'm reading novels that depict a usually modern setting with usually young-ish, single people of compatible sexual orientations -- and then nobody is interested in each other.

I wouldn't say every single male and female, though, 'cause that'd be absurd. One example that comes to mind is that if the girl reminds the guy of his sister, it's unlikely he'll try anything.

No, I do agree there's a lot out there to write about. But I think I'd be looking for that reason for the characters not to hook up at some point. You'd probably, maybe, find it plausible that a straight man and a woman, stranded aboard a lost ship for 100 days never ended up doing anything? And the guy has a fairly average male sex drive, and the woman considers him attractive and is worried she's gonna die a virgin. So I think I really would expect them to do it, and if he was like "nah, she's not pretty enough. I'll just stick to my hand," I'd consider him a bit of an exception.

I think I should've said everything can be realistic/plausible if done well. I could buy the seemingly absurdsest things if they were presented plausibly, in a way that shows the author can really get into their characters' heads. So if Hurley wanted her characters not to feel a pull towards each other, she'd write that plausible explanation there. And come to think of it, romance doesn't have to be the default starting point anyway.

One could argue, though, that the female character was used as a tool to make the bad guys bad, to show an injustice.

Yeah, she'd probably have other than feminist issues, too. Like she'd want to end world-hunger or something. My everyday problems don't always stem from being a woman either. Like this morning, it was bucketing down, and my socks were soaking wet and my feet were freezing. Not a "female problem." Although, I did have a female problem 10 minutes later as after I had changed to dry clothes, I realized I had forgotten my long-sleeved shirt upstairs. I couldn't go out wearing just a string top. Chances are, I wouldn't be wearing that damned thing if I wasn't a woman. So I draped myself into a sweaty hoodie and slunk through the corridors until I was in the safety of my desk...

I think it'd make sense they addressed it at some point if it was an issue, but yeah, as you said, I didn't suggest they'd talk about it all the time.

Yeah, if the world was ruled and populated by women, women would've never been subhuman in their society and only recently acquired more or less equal rights, then it'd make sense they wouldn't discuss solely women's issues all the time. Hell, they might talk about paying men the same wages as they're paying women. They might realize it's not fair to conscript only men, while for women military service is optional. etc. etc.

I'm not advocating that either. Of course, I do feel a tad shitty that I'm not addressing sexual harassment in the armed forces in my and T's WIP after watching a documentary like The Invisible War, but you can't cram it all in there.

I admit, that was a bit tongue-in-cheek. But in my other workplace, women outnumber men pretty much 25 to 1 but there's only one female manager, and she's in Human Resources. More women does not always translate into women have more power, and that issues of sexism didn't spring up. We had a training day, and I was teamed up with two men, one of them my direct boss/middle manager. We had to write up some notes on the flipboard. Guess who was offered the pen? I accepted it of course, but I also asked them (humorously) if they gave it to me 'cause I'm a woman and they assumed my handwriting is better. "Um, yeah... We kinda did."

Well, quite often it is about a woman too...

It's a prevalent occurrance, I think, being singled out due to your gender. You're a female soldier, not a soldier. A female pilot. A female boxer. So then, doesn't it make sense it comes up quite often? Of course not all the time, and I wouldn't saturate a story with women going on about chauvinism in the world. Like I wouldn't saturate it about them talking about nuclear weapons, cheese, or animal rights.

I disagree. Anything can be done in a gimmicky way so as to avoid clichés, even if said cliché would've actually made more sense -- I ran into this several times with my male MC as according to T, he was often acting in an odd way for a guy just because I was fighting tooth and nail against clichés -- and it got to the point of gimmicky. We are talking about women right now, but it's not limited to just women.

To be honest, that's a bit how I feel about it even though I doubt she meant it.. I think I got that feeling when I read the bit about her frustrations when she was thinking about possible plot twists. I wonder if she nowadays approaches stories that do discuss such issues with prejudice. It's not relevant, but it did cross my mind.

 

Okay, so we're conditioned around notions of who people are. And most of us believe that off-balance hierarchical models of identity are unfavorable and that something more balanced is better. Cool. Maybe this will come off wrong but I don't care that women have always fought, really. I mean, it's interesting because the "women fight" tropes that seem radical are in fact, according to Truth, not radical. We just believe silly things. Okay. But what's more interesting is the subversive ways in which power structures are subverted/inverted. I have known "fighter" women all my life who will never pick up a gun. War isn't the best metaphor for warrior spirits, or something. Physical and sexual violence aren't the best symbols of shadowy inner selves, necessarily, although they're easier to grasp for their extremes. A single mom is a fighter; a deadbeat dad is a deserter. These may not be flashy stories but they're within the imagined social norms and can teach us to break out of them. If we believe that a woman holding a bazooka (and of course, wearing a bikini?), is the only true symbol of feminist liberation or whatever, then I don't know... we have boring imaginations.

I'm clearly not making any singular, clear point. Sorry about that.

 

It is a tad hard to follow, yes.

The article is more focused on how our cultural images shape our beliefs, as opposed to reality shaping our beliefs. Just the fact you read the article and think about bazookas and bikinis reflects how women warriors are now being portrayed, not how female warriors actually are. And you read the beginning of the title, "we have always fought" as the key to the article, when the article was about the second part of that sentence, "challenging the narrative."

But you redeemed yourself with deadbeat dads and single moms.

This was from the additional link I cited above, TH-GH: The World of Women Who Hunt

It's not that women could hunt if they wanted to, or women are oppressed by men. The issue is, how are we indoctrinating our youth? It's sort of an, 'you are what you read'.

The value of the OP article, as I see it, is posing the question, are you re-writing the stereotypes and have you even looked at the question? If you think the idea is we need to write muscular women with bazookas because women are just as capable, you missed the point. If on the other hand, you question the narrative the next time you read it, that women were gatherers and men were hunters and it had a basis in biology, then you understood the point.

It's not that we don't have biological differences. Clearly childbearing and body size had an effect shaping that culture. But you'll end up with no foundation for your beliefs if you jump off the cliff from there into, 'that explains everything that logically flows from it'. Intuitive conclusions are not worth as much without testing those hypotheses, without looking for specific evidence to confirm or refute the conclusions.

And in this case, Kameron Hurley points out that one narrative in particular is demonstrably unfounded.

 

Oh, that point! I like that point. Yeah I question narratives a lot, have been doing that. Was looking for something more interesting than only that, because I've read bell hooks and Audrey Lord and have organized in radical communities and stuff. I'm pretty sure I get all that. Yes, don't cause harm if you can choose not to. This tumblr blog I've found really good for these kinds of things too: http://thewritingcafe.tumblr.com/tagged/female characters

Edit to add: But for the record, I'm mostly a semi-smart person trying to sound like a really-smart person. Maybe a disclaimer I should add before saying arrogant/pretentious/dismissive/stupid things? Don't let me off the hook either way? :-l

 

I'm just as unclear about this post, but I meant this, "you redeemed yourself with deadbeat dads and single moms," so you needn't worry.

 

I have a love/hate relationship with Tumbler, but I started to read this compilation... I wish they gave examples of bad strong female characters... Or bad female characters conceived, say in the past 5 years, in literature (when you call something a current problem and refer to Tolkien, I think we need to discuss one's definition of 'current'). The big names like George RR Martin and Suzanne Collins have created lots of well-rounded female characters. Clearly Kameron Hurley is doing this too (and isn't afraid to make the woman fight for a man in power... Surprised me a bit, to be honest. A woman wanting to uphold patriarchy? The horror!), so are Elizabeth Moon, Brandon Sanderson, David Weber, Tanya Huff, Anne McCaffrey, Veronica Roth (ok, you might argue Divergent isn't the best example, but it's led by a pretty kick-ass girl!) Patricia Briggs, Mike Shepherd, Jean Johnson (not my cup of tea despite the mil sci-fi setting, but hey, a kick-ass female lead!) to name just a few, and if one says they don't know these names, they aren't SF/F fans or readers.

There's actually a lot of great stuff being released nowadays by established and new authors for readers who want female protagonists who aren't one-dimensional, dependent on men, or fighting in heels (although I'm sure someone like Ronda Rousey could fight in heels like nobody's business, it's just not very smart). Today, SF/F fans can find more and more diverse stories to read, stories that in addition to multidimensional female characters also include minorities -- and more and more interesting titles are coming up all the time. Just looking at the mindsets many writers have here on this forum shows that we aren't stuck in some kind of dusty, Tolkien-esque rut. Looking at the amazing manuscripts I've gotten to beta-read, there's a load of awareness in many of those SF/F titles in progress. Not saying there isn't work to be done, but that things are already looking pretty good.

 

Bringing the shortcomings of media (books, TV, movies, music, etc.) to light is one step toward correction, toward bringing the cultural influences back toward reality rather than having the media move reality closer toward the stereotypes.

Words make things that went unnoticed visible.

 

Ginger, this was beautifully put. Can I add it to my cool quotes file? Though I'm gonna have to credit it to your user name 'cause I don't know your real name.

 

Sure,