Writing Links

[naamah_darling]

In no particular order, things that are important or useful or fun.

The Omniscient Breasts, Kate Elliott

YOU CAN WRITE FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A FEMALE CHARACTER AND STILL BE WRITING WITH THE MALE GAZE

Comments

[virginia_fell]

Yay! Glad my rantings were useful. I figured if I just spewed text for a while eventually something would come out that you could do something with. =P

I do think there's a distinction to be made between a momentary view of a character as a sexually appealing being, and limiting the character to that specific role, though.

I agree. I also don't think the complaint is that female characters are allowed to be sexual people; the complaint is when a female character is defined by her worth as a penis hat. I don't think every female character has to be sexual, so I am glad to see women in fiction occasionally not being someone's sexy interest, but the idea of female characters as sexual people isn't the problem. It's the idea that they are sexual before they are people, if they're people at all.

I'm trying to think of a case where the sexualization of a female character might have seemed fleeting but was in fact an incessant string of little details intended to make it impossible for readers to forget "btw you'd totally hit that and so would I but anyway as I was saying..." but I think as a woman it's so obvious to me that I am not sure how to pin down one that was subtle enough that it might seem like it's in a grey area. I think the best I can do is to say that if there are a lot of momentary views of a character as sexual, or if that moment comes at a time when it doesn't add anything to the narrative except to remind the reader that this chick is worth boning, it's part of the pattern.

Heck, sometimes even characters I think are really well-developed and wonderful might also just as well be wearing a sign that says, "BTW you should be thinking about tapping this ass right now." That takes away from the experience for me, even if I love the character enough to stick around in the story.

See also: Seven of Nine from ST:Voyager. Anyone Mila Jovovich has ever played. Trinity from The Matrix. Every woman in a comic book across the entire history of the medium. Any great female character who has woken up from a dead sleep in an apocalyptic setting with perfect false eyelashes and her underarms shaved, even if the men have gotten somewhat beardy. There are a lot of characters in this list that I really want to just be able to enjoy without having to wince and say, "Oh right. She is for men. I almost forgot there for a minute."

[naamah_darling]

Oh god, every time you say "penis hats" I nearly spit water onto my keyboard.

You are kicking ass all up in this thread, and I am really glad of that, because I wanted to address it and have a discussion, but am way too damn tired to do it tonight. You basically said most of what I was going to say. Thank you.

[virginia_fell]

Hurrah! Helpful!

[dulcimeoww]

Uhm... I don't think being a woman is necessarily why it's obvious to you? I'm a woman too, afterall, and it isn't really something that stands out or triggers me in any way, thus my initial problems with understanding the term. Mostly, when I notice a female character with improbably tidy hair or a perfect heaving bosom, I don't stop and think to myself, "That means this character is for men" or, "I should want to sex her a lot right now." I mostly think, "Well, there's the proof that this is fantasy, 'cause I am never going to find a bra that does THAT! Wouldn't it be neat if I could, though?"

I know it's a sidetrack, but it seems really interesting to me that you'd put Trinity into the category of eye candy at all, let alone deliberate eye candy. To me, she was about as sexually appealing as a knife blade but with half the warmth and even less personality. I mean, she was basically a drone in leather just like every single other character, barely emotive with no independent story just like every single other character, and nearly always portrayed in the same greenish tones as the rest of the movie. What's sexy about a greasy, emotionless person who constantly looks like she's going to be seasick? Certainly the actress is attractive, but the character was wholly lacking in charisma, there was nothing beckoning about her. I cannot think of a single frame in which we she was even remotely believable as a sexual creature. What made her stand out to you as deliberate eye candy?

[virginia_fell]

Not every woman will have the same experience I will, obviously, but it's because I'm a woman that it gets to me. Other women's mileage will vary.

Also, I listed Trinity because of the pleather bustier and her magical destiny to fall in love with The One. I cringe every time she's whispering, "by the way... all that badass stuff I did... it's not the point of my existence... my destiny... is to love youuuuu~"

[dulcimeoww]

I see. I was a little offended because I thought the implication was I didn't get it because I wasn't a woman.

Hm. I'd have put down Trinity's utter lack of sexual appeal to the director's decisions, and thus seen them as deliberate. I never saw Trinity as a woman or a person, so it didn't matter to me in the slightest that she walked around with her boobs outlined in plastic detail. The rest of her was plastic, too. Both the bustier and the one true love bullshit struck me as very superficial trappings. I could see being offended that the female character was only there for that, but in the case of that particular movie really EVERY character was only there for that. It was pretty much equal-opportunity cardboard, so it had my blanket disinterest.

[virginia_fell]

I was a little offended because I thought the implication was I didn't get it because I wasn't a woman.

I've tried to be careful about speaking for anybody but myself, but it's my bad if I didn't do a good enough job. I think what I am trying to say is that it's not a coincidence that I am a woman and that I am bothered by these things. There'll be women who don't mind, and people of other genders who do, but for me my experience of being a woman is a major part of why this stuff is difficult for me to ignore.

And yeah, most of the characters were pretty flat. It just made me sad that the way to flatten a female character is to assign her a twu wuv who will determine her fate. That "Most guys do..." line toward the beginning of the movie gave me hope that she wouldn't just be the Final Girl, but it didn't really pan out. She'll fight her way home past Agents and do glorious revolutionary battling and make comments about how men don't even consider the possibility that a woman could be so good at what she does... and then it's like what they do with Bond girls, where all their competence and strength turns out merely to be a way of making them better prizes for dudes.

IMO, Trinity isn't badass because her character is badass; she's badass because it's how she is worthy of belonging to Neo. This is slightly better than getting there just by having the longest hair and fairest skin or whatever, but it feels a bit hollow. She has a thin smattering of traits that I like (no thinner than anyone else in The Matrix), but then there's this... this thing, this reminder that actually nope. Her destiny is to follow her irresistible pantsfeelings to the Chosen Protagonist and faithfully assist her twu wuv while he has plot.

[rickvs]

Thanks for jumping into this thread, virginia_fell.

You've given me a lot to think about, and a couple of new entries to my vocabulary :>

Have you, by chance, read John Varley's "Steel Beach"? Some of his writing-from-a-female-POV rang more true to me than, as you point out, Heinlein's, but I wasn't certain how much I should trust my judgment on it.

[virginia_fell]

Also, RE: her total lack of sexual appeal

I think there are a lot of people who get pantsfeels for a stern lady in vinyl. >:P

[dulcimeoww]

Well, yes, there is that. I just prefer there to be a person under the plastic. I'm a sucker for a well-developed broad, and I'm not talking about her chest. Give me opinions and a sense of humor under that bustier and I'd be fanning myself like an old lady in the back of an unventilated church in July, even if she does smell like gun oil and synthetic placenta.