Asimov doesn't write women well? That surprises me. The only book I've ever read of his is Nemesis, and the female main character in that novel is my favorite literary character that I've ever read - I identified with her more than with any other character I know of.
The only gender issue that REALLY irritates me is the trend lately (especially in the fantasy and sci fi genre) that any female character has to be physically impressive and good at traditionally "male" things and run around waving a sword/gun/light saber, raring to fight, in order to be considered a "strong character." Women can be strong characters without physical strength, IMHO.
Nemesis is kind of an outlier - honestly, it's probably Asimov's most successful attempt to write humans, much less women. He's very, very prone to writing people as plot-generating logic machines - which works more-or-less fine in short stories, but kind of badly in novels
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I've read a few of his short stories, but didn't notice the lack of humanity - now that you point that out though, it's quite different from Nemesis. And it's not necessarily that his characterization of people is the best, just that I admired the fact that he wrote a main character who was female, who was not physically impressive in either looks or strength, and was extremely intelligent
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I do see what you mean, and I don't think you're wrong in any particular - but one thing I think is worth pointing out is that the stereotype of the woman as "the brains/heart/etc" and the man as "the muscle" isn't uncommon. Intelligence (and to an even greater degree, intangible strengths like "will" and "character") are often pushed onto female characters, in complete lieu of anything physical.
Granted, it's totally not an improvement when you just make the woman a thoughtless bruiser - but it can often be fallout from a poor attempt at a genuinely positive statement.
That's true, I hadn't looked at it that way - that can also be seen as a step too far in the right direction, but it's better than some novels written by men (Hemingway comes to mind, and a lot of sci fi is guilty of this) where men do all the action and women are just the brainless and personality-less background. :P
There's a balance somewhere between bruiser and brains for female characters, but male authors often have a hard time finding that balance. I guess I have to at least appreciate the effort, LOL. XD
I think the best way to think about this kind of gender imbalance is to look at the portrayal of both genders, and decide whether the male and female characters are equally realized - i.e., neither the female characters nor the male characters are more stereotyped or reduced to a stock function than the other.
The only gender issue that REALLY irritates me is the trend lately (especially in the fantasy and sci fi genre) that any female character has to be physically impressive and good at traditionally "male" things and run around waving a sword/gun/light saber, raring to fight, in order to be considered a "strong character." Women can be strong characters without physical strength, IMHO.
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Granted, it's totally not an improvement when you just make the woman a thoughtless bruiser - but it can often be fallout from a poor attempt at a genuinely positive statement.
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There's a balance somewhere between bruiser and brains for female characters, but male authors often have a hard time finding that balance. I guess I have to at least appreciate the effort, LOL. XD
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