It's no secret that even today, most published or produced writers are men. While the fight against that inequality has made great strides over the course of the past century (and there were, of course, plenty of famous female writers throughout history - back as far as Sappho) there is still a discrepancy between the representation of women and men in media, and the way that those characters relate to one another.
While I would never argue that simply being a female writer makes one a feminist writer, it seems fairly natural that a woman would have an easier time writing female characters. Ultimately, humans tend to behave like humans regardless of gender, but this one significant physical distinction (perhaps it would be more accurate to refer to this as sex, rather than gender, as there are of course plenty of people who consider themselves psychologically male but with a female body or vice versa) does cause some inherent differences in the way we experience the world. As a subtle example, women tend to be better at discriminating between subtle variances in color. Then, of course, there is the obvious fact that women, for most of their natural lives, undergo the monthly menstrual cycle, giving their lives a certain rhythm that men do not share.
All of that said, it is my belief that the main reason male writers have trouble writing female characters is that we have a both a social construct that makes artificial distinctions between the male mind and the female mind, and also that, since roughly 90% of men are sexually attracted to women, our feelings toward women are complicated by a number of other thought processes, both conscious and unconscious.
I do not claim to be a master at writing female characters (or a master of writing male characters either, for that matter) but one first step that I think all male writers should consider is making sure that women are well-represented in their work. Certainly, the subject matter of a piece can get in the way of this: a movie closely following an Army unit in the French wilderness during World War Two may not come across many women, or a film like Fight Club, which specifically explores masculinity in a vacuum, intentionally looks at women as alien and unpredictable to emphasize the protagonist's isolation. Yet in most cases, a lack of female characters is largely due to a kind of negligence. For most people, the default human being is oneself. So typically, when conceiving new characters, a male writer will naturally first think of a man.
Alison Bechdel, in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For, uses a character in her strip to propose a test (the character refuses to see a film that fails this test.) The test is extremely simple:
1. The film must have at least two female characters.
2. The female characters must talk to one another at some point.
3. The subject matter of this conversation cannot be a man.
While this is an extremely simple test, a huge number of films and other works fail it. Unless the story specifically calls for an all-male cast or a low representation of women, this test should be considered a bare minimum when writing a story.
The nice thing is that simply complying with this test will jump-start a few other factors that will make your female characters better. Simply by having multiple female characters will force you to figure out how those characters are different. Often, if a story has a single female (usually a love interest,) the woman is simply defined by her relationship to the man, which means that she might as well exist in the heads of the male characters. Once you start creating distinctions between the two (or hopefully more) women, if you're honest with them, they will begin to develop their own ways of interacting with their world and other people, and hey: that's the beginning of a personality.
Clause Two of the Bechdel test prevents the male writer from taking the easy way out and simply duplicating the female character. By putting the two characters up together, we get a close look at the distinctions between them.
Clause Three has a fairly simple benefit that ties into this idea of preventing female characters from simply being mirrors of the desires of male characters - if they are not talking about men, then one can probably assume there's something going on inside their heads other than... well, men.
If this article seems patronizing to any writers (male or female) reading it, that is probably a good sign. Writing complex women is really no harder than writing complex men, as long as you take the character seriously as a person, and if you are a good writer, you've probably already figured that out. Still, it pays to be vigilant against the tide of thousands of years of gender expectations and conventions in fiction.
And, of course, this is just the first step. Complying with the test will encourage you to write interesting women, but it will not get you all the way there. But if you ever suspect your female characters are a little flat or marginalized, it's a good idea to take a step back and make sure you've passed the test.
No comments:
Post a Comment