Bittercon: Reading & Writing Through the Female Gaze
This panel at Windycon is moderated by our own mount_oregano.
Men and women think and observe the world in different ways, and there is strong evidence that this is the result of hormone-driven differences in the architecture of the male and female brain. Given that throughout history, the majority of authors, and particularly the "canonical" authors who are taught in school, have been male, it's probably unsurprising that the male perspective should have become the "unmarked case." Even women writers, having read so much fiction written from a male perspective, have often unconsciously defaulted to those examples and expectations.
That's not to say that we don't have plenty of examples of the world seen through the eyes of women. Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell are both noted for their perceptive examination of women's lives in their times.
One thing that really sticks to me is Kate Elliott's advice to look at what people's lives tend to be overlooked, even treated as invisible, in the parts of society you're writing about. And I've noticed how that really makes her writing more vivid and real -- it was only after reading her bit scene dealing with a band of orphaned children in the Crossroads Trilogy that I realized how many authors tended to gloss over the children in a novel of war or disaster. Sometimes it can be editorial direction -- one editor of my acquaintance has specifically said that he does not want even any significant jeopardy involving children -- but often I think that, particularly for men, it's easy not to even think about what would be happening to the children in the area, and to focus entirely on the travails of the adult characters.
Men and women think and observe the world in different ways, and there is strong evidence that this is the result of hormone-driven differences in the architecture of the male and female brain. Given that throughout history, the majority of authors, and particularly the "canonical" authors who are taught in school, have been male, it's probably unsurprising that the male perspective should have become the "unmarked case." Even women writers, having read so much fiction written from a male perspective, have often unconsciously defaulted to those examples and expectations.
That's not to say that we don't have plenty of examples of the world seen through the eyes of women. Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell are both noted for their perceptive examination of women's lives in their times.
One thing that really sticks to me is Kate Elliott's advice to look at what people's lives tend to be overlooked, even treated as invisible, in the parts of society you're writing about. And I've noticed how that really makes her writing more vivid and real -- it was only after reading her bit scene dealing with a band of orphaned children in the Crossroads Trilogy that I realized how many authors tended to gloss over the children in a novel of war or disaster. Sometimes it can be editorial direction -- one editor of my acquaintance has specifically said that he does not want even any significant jeopardy involving children -- but often I think that, particularly for men, it's easy not to even think about what would be happening to the children in the area, and to focus entirely on the travails of the adult characters.