Female-Centered Stories and Some Thoughts on Man Pain

My husband and I went to a drive-in movie a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't been to one since I was a teenager, and there's a six screen complex not too far from where we live. They show double features of recently released movies and are much cheaper than normal theaters. The main challenge lies in going on an "off night" when there won't be a long line of cars waiting to get in before sunset.

It was a blast (it helps that we went in my new Toyota mini-SUV, which is pretty comfortable). We saw The Secret Life of Pets (which was fun and cute) and the new Ghostbusters Movie. In spite of the lukewarm reviews and my misgivings about remakes, it was an enjoyable movie that made me laugh. It actually wasn't a straight-up remake of the original, but a new story with four characters who didn't feel like female versions of the original cast. The main flaws were that the pace actually might have been a bit too fast in places, with less time for character development. There were a number of cameos and Easter eggs from the original movie that I enjoyed, but they probably would be over the head of younger viewers who haven't seen the original several times over the years. Also, they had an amusingly inaccurate portrayal of what it's like to be faculty trying (and failing) to get tenure at a major research university (female profs wearing spiked heels and having to clean out your desk the day the bomb is dropped instead of finishing out the academic year and fading away over the summer. Right), but movies usually mess up the details of academic life.

I'll admit, most of the reason I decided I wanted to see it was the rancor and derision some have expressed over the notion of making an action movie, especially a remake of one where the original all-male cast went unremarked, with a female cast. Remakes of beloved classics are always controversial, but I don't think for a second that it would have gotten anything like the same amount of negative press if it had been made with a cast of four contemporary male comedians, or (as is more usual today) with a central cast of, say, three men and one token woman (who would, of course, be billed below the guys in the credits).

Stories with male-heavy casts still seem to be regarded as normal and expected. No one's thought to have an agenda or accused of trying to "prove a point" when they write such stories. But have a movie that's mostly about women, and there has to be a reason (and if it's not about something where the characters have to be female and the target audience is female only) then the reason has to be that evil of evils, Political Correctness!

And while remakes always get more scrutiny, I'm guessing that any movie, especially comedies and action movies (where the cast doesn't have to be female) with an all-female cast will have more than its fair share of detractors, not to mention out right haters.

It's a bit like people who insist that a character in a book or movie shouldn't be black, or gay, transgendered, or differently abled, unless the plot requires them to be one of those things specifically. Yet male, white, straight, cis-gendered, or able bodied characters don't need to be justified. Such characters are supposed to be the "everyman" with whom any reader or viewer will relate.

So male-focused narratives still seem to be our default norm. Male actors still get the overwhelming majority of speaking roles in movies, and far more movies have male "lead" characters than female. Male characters even talk more in movies with female leads. Most films flunk the Bechdel Test (this is the test that asks whether a movie has at least two named female characters and whether they have at least one conversation with one another about something that isn't a man). It's much harder to get an accurate count for novels in different genres, but aside from genres aimed specifically at female readers, like Romance and Women's Fiction (the fact that books by and about women and their concerns gets its own "special interest" label kind of says it all, actually), I'm guessing a similar bias exists in most genres of published fiction that aren't aimed at a specific gender.

Men and their relationships, problems and concerns are Important and Interesting to everyone. Women are often presented as plot devices that advance the story of a male character, not as important agents in their own right. And the frustrating thing is, the more we see this presented as the default norm, the more invisible it becomes to us, and the more we notice (and sometimes resent) movies that step outside of this comfort zone.

This is a topic I've run across on a couple of blogs lately, re the topic of the plot element that's come to be called "man pain" or "mangst."

I grew up before the internet, so it was much harder to find people with whom to discuss concepts like the Double Standard, let alone have glib phrases like Women in Refrigerators. This doesn't mean these plot devices didn't exist or people didn't recognize them as problematic at times.

I first became aware of this phenomenon during my childhood (I'm old. Shut up), when we used to watch a show called the Six Million Dollar Man. It was about a former astronaut who had almost died and was rebuilt as a cyborg and had all these superpowers used to fight crime for a fictitious branch of the US government. There was a special multi-part episode called "The Bionic Woman," where the love of the protagonist's life (who had somehow never been mentioned in the plot before this episode) surfaced, and they were about to get married when she suffered a deadly parachuting accident (she was a Strong Female Action Girl type). He got his supervisors to use their technology to save her and make her a superpowered bionic woman, but alas, she rejected her bionics and died. He suffered horribly while this was happening, and the last scene was of him kissing her cold, dead face with a single manly tear sliding down his cheek.

I was so mad. There was this great woman character with superpowers, a rarity in the 70s, and they killed her off because they couldn't possibly detract from the male protagonist's importance by having him be married and sharing the limelight.

Evidently, my feelings weren't alone, because the producers brought the Bionic Woman back to life (she was really in a coma, see) and gave her her own show, but with a convenient case of Amnesia so she was no longer involved with the Bionic Man character. Her show had a successful run. As for the Bionic Man's man pain? It was conveniently dropped and forgotten when it was no longer relevant to his arc.

Unfortunately, I've run across this kind of thing over and over in the decades since, and most of the time the writers in question don't bring the female "plot device" back for a book, movie, or TV series of her own :(

In the defense of the creators of the Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman shows, the 70s were a different time. The modern incarnation of the women's movement (or "Women's Liberation" as it was called back then), was younger and pretty controversial in many circles, but there seemed to be at least some interest in expanding viewerships by showing women in new and different roles in books, movies, and television with shows like Charlie's Angels and Wonder Woman (and of course, they tried to avoid alienating male viewers by having the female characters be very attractive and most often sexily clad) but many of the old prejudices and assumptions about gender still went unexamined. As they do today.

I wish the whole man pain thing would, if not die in a proverbial fire, at least be rarer, or examined with a more critical eye. I'd love to see more books, for instance, where a male character gets into one of those "her suffering is all about me" jags and be brought up short by the woman in question (or at least have someone ask him, "Are you so hung up on this because you're sad for her and miss her, or is it mostly because you're experiencing tedious masculine guilt because her death symbolizes your own personal failure?")

Men are cool. Men are important. Their relationships and feelings are interesting. They are half the human race, after all. But there is no shortage of stories about them. It would be nice to see more books, movies and TV shows where they share the limelight, or maybe even take on the support roles for a change.

New Dog Progress Report

Austin is settling in nicely. He's an energetic, active young dog with a personality that is far more border collie than cattle dog. He's getting on well with Flick and Wiley and shows a lot more ball fanaticism than any dog I've had so far. Flick loves playing ball. It's FUN, and tossing a tennis ball on a rope at the end of an agility training sequence is a definite motivator. But for her, part of the fun is playing a little keep away at the end. Bite, bite, giggle. Come and get it if you can.

You're going to throw that, right?

For Austin, the ball is very serious business. He runs after, brings it back,  tosses it down at my feet, and backs away. If I don't throw it again, he'll nudge it towards me. He doesn't want me to interrupt him with treats in the middle of BALL. Just throw the damned thing. Ball is not a game. He pretty much ignores other dogs when he's playing ball at the dog park. Yes, I finally have one of THOSE boring (to everyone else) dogs.

It's a bit weird, but that's how border collies are a lot of the time. His only issue so far is a bit of cat obsession. He's fascinated with Leo and Merlin and will chase them. It seems more herdy behavior than serious "I want to eat them" predation. But it's still upsetting to them, and intense herding can drift into more predatory behavior. So we're trying to find a way to redirect this obsession.

I've done a bit of jump and tunnel work in the backyard with him so far, and have bought the materials to make a small wobble board for him. He definitely is fast and is going to need to learn how to collect and pay attention to his body when he jumps so he doesn't knock bars. I've ordered a copy of Suzanne Clothier's natural jumping book on Amazon.

He's a nice dog, though, very affectionate. He's pretty level headed and cerebral for a 1.5 year old male BC/cattle dog mix.

More Stuff On Diversity in Fiction

My friend and critiquing buddy Nick Mena has just interviewed a couple members of our critiquing group, Nyki Blatchley and Daniel Ausema, about diversity in their own work and in general.

Relatedly, Nyki has just included a post on his own blog which discusses one the most profound and important reason for including diversity in one's work: realism.

Coincidentally, author Malinda Lo said something very similar in her own blog today.

We live in a complex world that has a variety of people in it and always has. There's no reason to suppose that this wouldn't be true in a fantasy or SF world as well (unless, perhaps, you're writing a dystopia where everyone is cloned or something). The idea that only one *kind* of person (or culture) has experiences worth writing about is as ludicrous as it is offensive.

Diversity in Fantasy 2015

My friend and critting partner Nick Mena is interviewing some writer friends on his blog Sanocho Pot this month. It's worth checking out.

Here's a link to his interview with me last year about my own novel, which is now being queried.

http://sancochopot.blogspot.com/2014/02/diversity-in-our-writing-projects_16.html

Straight, White, Able-bodied Cismen as Default Characters in Fantasy

Imagine that you're writing a story and your protagonist is a young soldier who has blond hair and a female sweetheart back home. The lady love never makes an appearance as a character, but your protagonist thinks about her on cold, rainy nights when he's hunkered down in his bedroll. All he really wants is for the war to be over so he can get back home to marry his girl and start a family. His blondness isn't central to the story either, but it's an unusual hair color in his setting. No one discriminates against him because of it, but other characters sometimes comment on it, and he's proud of his golden locks.

Now imagine that one of your readers offers the following feedback about your story: "The character's hair color and implied whiteness were irrelevant to the plot. I don't see why you had to mention them at all, unless you were trying to make a political point. You should just let the reader imagine the character as he or she chooses to." And then another reader chimes in with: "I don't see how the protagonist's heterosexuality was relevant to the plot. I'm no bigot, but I don't care what a character does with his junk. It really bugs me when writers make characters heterosexual for no good reason."

Conan--little doubt he was meant to be white, cis, able and straight

Ridiculous, of course. No one would say this. But this is precisely the sort of comment writers of characters who are not white, straight (and for that matter, cis-gender, able bodied or male) often receive from readers, critting partners and people commenting on the issue in forums and such.

So there's a double standard in fiction. If a character is white, straight, able bodied, neurotypical and cis-male, he's considered an everyman--the type of character any reader can relate to. Departures from this everyman model are acceptable for "issue" stores where the departure from "normal" itself is central to the plot. But such stories are supposed to be focused on a niche market, so for stories where identity is not the major focus? Make the protagonist a normal, generic, default human being.

I find this attitude troubling for a myriad of reasons. People come in many varieties, and while one's identity does not drive all, or even most, of a person's personality traits, it is nonetheless an important aspect of who he or she is. Even if a fantasy culture isn't racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist etc., a character's  race, gender, orientation, and ability status are not going to be invisible to that person or to the people with whom he or she interacts closely in the story.

So why in the hell should it be invisible to the reader?

Some reasons given include:

--But you'll turn off readers who aren't like that character. And most readers of fantasy are white, straight, male, able bodied, etc.

Even if this assumption about "typical" fantasy readers is true, there are plenty of readers who are not any or all of these things, and many of these readers are hungry for books that feature characters who just so happen to be like them in some ways. With isolation, depression and suicide among LGBT kids and teens still an issue, a story that lets someone know that he or she is not alone can have an immensely positive effect.

--So you're saying readers can and should only relate to people from the same demographic group as themselves? How narrow.

I'm not saying that at all. As a white, straight woman, for instance, I've read and enjoyed plenty of books with male (and non white and non straight) leads and will continue to do so. Getting inside another character's skin is part of the reason many of us read. But this begs the issue of almost never seeing characters like oneself in stories unless it's presented as a big deal. And anyway white, straight, able-bodied cismales should also have the opportunity to identify with characters who are different from themselves.

--Well, aside from this, some people really do believe homosexuality is a sin. QUILTBAG characters are very offensive to some people.

The same people who believe it's a sin to be gay often believe that premarital sex and worshipping other gods are sinful. But fantasy is not exactly devoid of characters who fool around on and off camera and it's certainly not short on the sympathetic or neutral portrayal of non-Christian religions (whether real-world or made up).

--I don't care what characters do with their junk, and I really don't care for sex in stories or for romantic subplots or for characters who think about these things.

Then you're probably pretty strapped for reading material. I can't think of many works of fiction for adults where the orientation of at least some of the characters is not apparent. And in any case, orientation is not just, or even primarily, about what one does in the sack. Even The Lord of the Rings, where no ever had sex or got horny on camera, made the orientation of many of its characters pretty clear. Aragorn and Arwen, Faramir and Eowyn, Sam and Rosie, Gimili's "courtly love" for Galadriel (and Merry and Pippin both married off camera, as detailed in the appendices). None of these relationships were central to the plot, but they were still an important part of the story. The only characters we're unsure about, really, are Bilbo and Frodo, since they never married or had a romantic attraction to any other character. I'm thinking they were actually asexual and aromantic, which are orientations also.

--I prefer to imagine characters the way I want, without having the details of their appearance and ethnicity crammed down my throat.

Fine, we all have our preferences. But it's a rare story indeed that makes no reference at all to the appearance of any character. While mirror scenes and detailed description of a person's nose shape often make readers want to toss a book across the room, the way a character looks can be important. And even in a fantasy world with a different history from ours, people will likely notice physical traits that relate to ancestry. The fact is, our media has overwhelmingly presented whiteness as the default norm. Most readers will imagine characters as white unless it's made clear that they are not. Whitewashing of characters in cover art is also commonplace and another issue that can sway readers' perceptions.

In any case, I can't help thinking that this argument (and the previous one) is because the person in question really wants to imagine characters as straight and white because he or she is uncomfortable with departures from that.

--Forcing diversity in novels is just PC posturing. I hate it when writers try to cram their sociopolitical views down readers' throats.

The concept of political correctness is a straw man that is commonly invoked as a silencing or derailing tactic. I'm not sure why the concepts of inclusiveness and equality have been so mocked and derided, to be honest, or why they've become so politicized. Speculation about the nature of liberalism and conservatism in modern society is beyond the scope of this essay, but it saddens me that some people are so attached to their political identity that they must categorically deride and reject anything that they associate with the party they don't usually vote for in elections.

I'll also add that I don't think it's possible to write a story where one's values, even one's political values, don't bleed through at least a little. The standard fantasy plot--intrepid outsiders prevailing against overwhelming odds--is hardly neutral from a sociopolitical standpoint. Nor is the decision to only portray straight, white, male, able-bodied characters as default norms in a story.

--so you're saying I need to dwell on the race and orientation of every person in every scene in the book? Bob ran past a guard, who was both black and gay, on his way through the gates. That's stupid.

Of course I'm not saying that. I'm talking primarily about protagonists or secondary characters with whom the pov characters have extensive interactions. Like anything else in writing, the perspective of the pov character should determine what is revealed. With an omniscient pov, the writer has more latitude, but revealing unapparent details about minor characters is not usually the best approach. However, if your fantasy society is diverse, I think it's important to find ways to show this to the reader as an aspect of your world building.

Whitewashing of characters in cover art is commonplace in fantasy.

--Fine, we need more stories with characters who aren't white, straight, able-bodied cis-males, but I personally am white, straight etc. What if I try to write a character who isn't like me and I do a bad job of it?

This is a legitimate worry. Stereotyped or unsympathetic portrayals of under-represented people can do more harm than good, and as a white, straight woman who has enjoyed many of life's privileges, I make no claim to any special wisdom here. But one of the reasons that readers are so critical of less than perfect portrayals of characters who aren't the default everyman is because they're so rare. The desire to create an archetypal female, gay, black etc. character can actually lead to very unrealistic portrayals. The best way to write people who differ from yourself in various ways is to know a lot of people, read books written by and for different people, do research so you know which stereotypes are particularly offensive .

I am hoping that this concern might become less of an issue if equality becomes more uniform across society and if diversity becomes more common in storytelling. No one really worries about portraying a straight, white male in a stereotyped way (or worries much the appropriation of various European cultural tropes) precisely because there have been so many portrayals of people and cultures from these demographic in fiction. There are, however, centuries of inequality and injustice sitting on our shoulders as writers. We should never allow ourselves to be blind to that.

On an up note, I think acceptance of inclusiveness in fantasy (and fiction in general is growing) and that people from historically privileged groups are becoming more accepting (even desirous) of this. One cheering statistic is that comic companies appear to be becoming more inclusive of LGBT characters in comics aimed at teens. Attitudes as a whole seem to be shifting in society, with younger people on being more accepting of diversity overall, but many older people also modifying their views. I'm hoping that objections to characters who step outside of the one-time "default norm" will also fade with time.