I just saw another post lamenting the silly - but unfortunately common - idea that boys can't be expected to read books about girls, even though girls commonly read books about boys. (In fact, we're often required to, for school.) I've written about this before. So has the excellent Shannon Hale.It strikes me that part of the issue may be that ( Read more... )

I just read this very interesting blog post about female warriors and how to realistically write a fantasy world in which they are common. Its approach, which I find useful and thought-provoking, is to examine why so many cultures through history don't have lots of female warriors. To summarize ( Read more... )

So today, while reading Zoë Marriott's blog, I realized two things:

1. Zoë Marriott does not look the way I have always pictured her, which is, I suddenly realize, like Zoë from Firefly. Now it makes sense! I was like, "Why did I just assume she looked like that?" But obviously it is a mystical Zoë connection.
2. Zoë Marriott has made a Pinterest ( Read more... )

Recently, there's been stuff said about the treatment of women in DC comics. Stuff that seems to have some real truth behind it, and for that reason is quite depressing.

For example, female characters whose creators call them "liberated" but who are shown acting - and perhaps more obviously, posing - in ways that seem much more about the straight ( Read more... )

. . . and werewolves! If only.

I've been thinking, again, about women in fiction. Probably most or all of you are familiar with the Bechdel Test, but if you're not, it's a test for movies that can also be applied to books. To pass the Bechdel Test, a work must:

1. include at least two female characters (sometimes taken to mean "with names/lines ( Read more... )