White Characters Dominating Fantasy Worlds

Because I'm curious to know if anybody has some solid reasoning that proves there's "too many white people" in fantasy / not enough minorities.

 

Looks like I'll have to check back in at a later date when somebody comes up with a reason that isn't "I feel like there's not enough non-white people."

 

But if they do, you won't hear it. It's quite clear in this thread that your goal is to repel understanding, like Wonder Woman (Oh. Sorry. Female character) with those bracelets.

 

Nope. I asked questions, and nobody had any answers or reasons other than "I feel". That's what actually happened.

 

http://booksbywomen.org/viewpoint-ongender-bias-in-the-literary-world/

In a recent interview with the critically acclaimed Irish author John Banville, he was quoted in The Irish Times as saying “I have not been a good father. No writer is.”

Granted, it may be a bit unfair to quote people out of context, but the twitter-storm blew a fury nonetheless. I was heartened to read so many men refuting the outdated stereotype of male writers as feckless, self-absorbed dinosaurs who put art above their personal relationships.

Yet aside from his statement that no writer can be a good parent, there was also the implication that all successful writers are male. This opened up a very important conversation and as one female commenter observed, “Ah yes, there is the unspoken assumption that the true artistis male.”

You see, this author wasn’t saying that there are no female writers; that would be factually incorrect. But what he isimplying is that the REAL writers, the writers who MATTER, are men. It’s not something overtly expressed, but it is made clear nonetheless that the work of male writers is considered as somehow more important than that of their female counterparts. I also grew up believing this myth, as Ireland only seemed to celebrate her literary sons; Yeats, Joyce and Beckett to name a few.

Where were all the women? And now that I am a writer myself, I wonder how much (if at all) things have changed?

VIDA is a non-profit organization founded to raise awareness of gender equality issues in literary culture, and for the past few years they have released figures on books that have been included in prominent literary magazines and journals for review.

I don’t think it will come as any surprise that the figures are overwhelmingly in favour of male authors, as the majority of critics are, in fact, male. Despite the fact that women buy two thirds of books sold, (according to novelist Ian McEwan, “When women stop reading, the novel will be dead.”), magazine reviews are centred on male authors and for the most part, written by male critics.

According to VIDA’s research, the London Review of Books featured 527 male authors and critics in 2014, compared with just 151 women (14 fewer than in 2013.) The New York Review of Books displayed a similar imbalance, featuring an overall figure of 677 men to 242 women, and in other publications it was found that fewer than half the authors reviewed were women. Why is it that the male voice seems to hold more gravitas?

In 2015, the author Catherine Nichols decided to do a little experiment to see if the publishing world really was as gender biased as the figures suggested. Firstly, she sent her novel to 50 agents using her own name and received just two manuscript requests. But when she sent the same material to the same agents, using a male pseudonym, the novel was requested 17 times.

“He is eight and a half times better than me at writing the same book,” wrote Nichols. “My novel wasn’t the problem, it was me – Catherine.”

Many female authors in the past were forced to use a male pseudonym in order to get published and I think they would be shocked to discover that this practice still happens today. Louisa May Alcott published as A.M. Barnard, Mary Ann Evans under the name of George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters (Ann, Charlotte and Emily) under the names Currer and Ellis Bell.

More recently, J. K. Rowling chose the more ‘gender neutral’ option of using her initials for Harry Potter and later published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. In genres such as detective fiction and science fiction, it is often assumed that male authors fair better, or worse still, that male readers would not like to be seen reading a female author.

For years, writers such as Marian Keyes and Joanne Harris have spoken out about being pigeon-holed into the ‘Chick Lit’ market. Female authors (and readers) have taken offence to the term because it devalues and/or dismisses the work of women as something not to be taken seriously. According to Keyes – who has sold 30 million copies of her books – the chick-lit label is a derogatory term used to make female novelists figures of fun.

Even my own novel, The Heirloom, is constantly referred to as a ‘romance’. Yes, there is a love story in there, but there are also greater themes like religion, history, identity (the protagonist is adopted), adultery, and there is even a great big war in the middle of it! Yet as a writer, I feel forced to choose from a very narrow list of genres in order to reach my readers, and so I end up slotting it into the ‘Women’s Fiction’ category. I may as well stick a sign on it saying ‘Men, Keep Out!’

But it is not surprising that we have ended up where we are, when you consider how women have been, quite literally, written out of history, which has traditionally been recorded by men. Try and think of a famous historical female artist for instance, or a female composer? They don’t exactly roll off the tongue. Things haven’t improved much in recent times either.

ARTnews Magazine revealed the gender disparity of post-war and contemporary lots up for sale at the New York evening auctions, and the results for 2015 and 2014 were the same: 92 percent of lots were by male artists, while women comprised a mere 8 percent.

#WakingTheFeminists began as a response to The Abbey Theatre’s ‘Waking The Nation’ programme for the 1916 commemorations in Ireland, which featured only one play written by a woman. Female playwrights and actors across the world united in their anger over the blatant gender inequality displayed by the theatre, but this has since spilled over into other spheres where the female voice is continually silenced, overlooked or simply ignored.

So what does this all mean for the future? I feel we have made some progress in regards to gender equality in the arts, but only because women have fought tooth and nail to have their work treated equally. When you are raised in a patriarchal society that minimises the achievements of women, there is a certain amount of acceptance of the status quo.

We earn less pay for equal work and despite the fact that more women read and write fiction; it is the male author who is the most celebrated. The quality of female literature has been no less outstanding, despite the fact that the recognition has not been there, and book sales bear this out. I have even more admiration for women because they have had to work twice as hard for less than half the plaudits.

It’s about time that we were afforded the same consideration and respect as men, both professionally and personally. Awards like the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction are providing a platform for female writers and I think initiatives like this will go some way towards redressing the imbalance.

I think it’s time we laid to rest the traditional and well-pedalled image of a male writer smoking cigars and drowning in bourbon; writers are just regular people, men and women, some with children, some with full time jobs, whose stories are equally valid and need to be heard. Your profession does not determine whether or not you will be a good parent and your gender shouldn’t determine whether or not you will become a good writer.​

 

If the day comes, someday, when you actually want to understand, come back and read the thread.

 

The day's been here and already passed actually. Like I said: I'm waiting.

And I'll just continue to wait until somebody provides some solid reasoning that proves there isn't "enough" minorities.

 

For this?

 

For this?

"And I'll just continue to wait until somebody provides some solid reasoning that proves there isn't "enough" minorities."

Couldn't take the article seriously when it said women earn less pay for the same work. That isn't true and has been debunked repeatedly.

 

All right, then. Unless and until I hear the creak of a mind opening, I'm off the specific subthread that I've been on.

But I'm curious about what I said further back in the thread--about the idea that challenging cliches for the purpose of challenging cliches can have value. Like I said, I wasn't aware of the extent to which I had internalized the "male rescues female" cliche. I don't think that it's an essential part of classic literature that it's my job to defend and promulgate (do I mean promulgate?). But it's stuck in my head, like my fondness for Hostess Ding Dongs.

Is it worthwhile, perhaps as an exercise and perhaps as part of the stuff that we're writing "seriously", to deliberately search for those cliches and smack them with a stick?

For example, while I keep steering the Highly Flavored Novel away from rescues (though it keeps on steering back!), the HFN doesn't pass Bechdel. It was going to, and then that plotline went away. Is it worthwhile for me to deliberately seek an opportunity for a role that I automatically cast as male, and make it female, so that Bechdel passes?

I'm mainly curious about opinions from people who don't regard Bechdel or the purpose of this thread as a cause for shuddering and turning away, but I realize I don't own this thread.

 

Original Version:

^"All right, then. Unless and until I hear what I want to hear, I'm off the specific sub-thread I've been on."

 

Change that, promptly. Do not cast your words as if they are a legitimate quote from me. I'll be reporting it in about five minutes to get it changed, if you won't.

 

I think the wider issue is that many of the lower rung fantasy secondary worlds have nothing but white people in them. As in, "all humans in this world are white". And then it extends to non-human races/species in some cases. If it's set in one area of the world and everyone's the same race or ethnicity, that's one thing. If there's some continent spanning adventure and different looking people aren't even alluded to, that's an entirely different one.

It should also be pointed out that neither medieval Europe (never mind ancient Europe) nor China were racially homogeneous. Medieval Europe, for example, had Jews, Roma, and--along the Mediterranean--Arabs and Berbers and subsaharan Africans. Not to mention you get merchants and sailors from various distant lands. If one takes "medieval" into the early stages of the Age of Exploration, things get even broader.

This ties in with something I've mentioned in other threads with regard to medieval fantasy: you can't just copy surface details and pop history ideas.

 

Fixed that for you.

 

That could work Did you ever participate in the "Genderbend Your Characters" thread? It's been a while since I've looked there.

Now, in my own work, the messages about gender that I'm trying to convey don't lend themselves very well to gender-bending, but I've found it also works well enough to find a way to turn a Conversation About A Man between my two female protagonists into a Conversation About A Man between one of my female protagonists and my male protagonist instead Could that work for you too? It's not the final step (there still need to be conversations between my two female protagonists about other topics), but it's a start (the conversations between my two female protagonists about other topics aren't drowned out by conversations about men)

 

Nope. You still strongly imply that it's a quote from me.

 

Fixed it again.

 

I think Bechdel is most useful when looking at media as a whole. When looking at an individual work? I think not passing the test may be a good reason to have a long look at your characters and story, sure. But I'm not sure it's a reason to change characters unless your long look revealed an issue.

Like... if your story only has two characters in it and one of them is male, the story fails Bechdel. But that doesn't mean the female character can't be the protagonist, can't be strong and have her own important goals that she works toward, etc.

That said - for sure I think it's useful to look at our work from just about any perspective we can think of! But I think we should be judicious about making changes. In the case of your current project? I think you've definitely got a strong female character but I can see how she could turn into a damsel in distress or a pawn or whatever if you aren't careful. But it sounds like you're being careful, so... yay!

 

You're making it very difficult to have an actual discussion about this by quoting a woman writing an article on a site for women about how women are oppressed. When I asked you to defend your assertion, I was hoping you'd come back with statistics and studies that demonstrate valid and repeatable patterns of behavior. Something a little more objective and fact based, you know? So, I don't really know what to say. I don't think we're ever going to agree, so I won't bang my head against this wall.

 

Which is why I did so. In the post.

Would you like to read it?

 

I've found that failing the test is a lot harder to do than passing

Doctor Who fanfic: 2 female POVs, and I passed the test in the first 3,000 words

YA horror novella: 5 female POVs, and I passed the test in the first 1,000 words

Novel-in-progress: My first-person narrator is a man, and one of the two female main characters is unconscious for the first half of the book, and I still passed the test in the first 10,000 words

Short Stories: I've written four – 2500 words, 3800 words, 5000 words, and 5500 words – and the only two that failed were the two shortest (one of which only had 2 characters)

I also wrote a novelette from a male POV where a female character told him about an off-screen conversation with a female character that would've passed if it had been onscreen. Does the conversation itself count, or do we have to actually see it on the page as it's happening?

 

Would you like to read this part again?: "You're making it very difficult to have an actual discussion about this by quoting a woman writing an article on a site for women about how women are oppressed."

 

Do you tend to have female main characters? I tend to have male (the problem with m/m romance!) and that means that any conversation I can report on will have a male at least in it. And since he's the main character, it's likely that if there's a conversation going on it involves him somehow...

Definitely easier for movies with ensemble casts (and pretty amazing how many of them still don't make it), books with female MCs or at least female POV characters.

 

I actually would, but the author of the article you linked provided no sources, which leaves me skeptical about everything she says. Primary sources or bust, dude. Second hand descriptions of "studies" are bullshit, and you should know that.

 

Interesting.