As a matter of fact, I do have a magical effing library

[mcjulie]

So, I read this thing on Tumblr about why a particular blogger over there doesn't like female characters, and she got quite self-righteous about her right to dislike them, and I started to feel all ranty, and this is the result.

Comments

[frabjouslinz]

I keep seeing this conversation, in different forms. I haven't read the post in question (although maybe I read post it's responding to), but I agree with you: refusing to read about women characters because they aren't your version of perfect isn't helpful. Hating most if not all fictional females because they might be in a sexist situation seems unreasonable. We use fiction to figure out reality. Reality is pretty damn sexist. And while poorly written characters exist, male and female, it seems to me that identifying with only male characters is an issue in our society *due* to sexism. A well written male character is not better than a well written female character. In my 35 plus years of reading (I can't claim the 5 before that), I have encountered hundreds, if not thousands, of wonderfully written female protagonists. I have no trouble finding them at all. So ... I find the poster's argument to be invalid.

[mcjulie]

Thank you! I didn't think I could be the only person with that magical library full of great female characters.

[frelling_tralk]

I saw that same argument a lot in Supernatural fandom, it's not our fault that we hate every single female characters the writers introduce, they're just written so terribly!!! And maybe *some* of some were, but seriously all? There were several female characters I really enjoyed, such as a snarky female con artist who sparked with Dean and had a dark family history. Of course she was written out within one season because fandom was so hostile to her, but I can't help suspecting that if she had been introduced as a male then the audience would have been all over that character and woobifying him like crazy :sighs:

[mcjulie]

Sometimes I think "badly written" is too easy of a catch phrase for people to use meaning "I didn't like it." The thing is, "I didn't like it" is taking ownership of your own reaction, while "badly written" sounds objective, while still being too vague to really mean anything. When you say "badly written," do you mean dialog? Story arc? Character concept? Motivation? Do you mean you find the character implausible? Irritating? Dull? Overly stereotyped

[molly_may]

Seriously, what genre is she reading in? I work in a bookstore, and when I look at the scifi and fantasy sections, I see a lot of female characters and female authors. In a post-Katniss and (sigh) Bella world, the Teen section is popping with female protagonists, and while yeah, a number of them might be considered cookie cutter attempts to replicate the success of The Hunger Games or Twilight, there's also a lot of original, exciting voices out there. Then if you want to get into non-speculative fiction, again, there's a ton of great writers out there, writing diverse, interesting women

[mcjulie]

Seriously, what genre is she reading in?

Your guess is as good as mine! But the only characters she mentions by name are Superman vs Wonderwoman.

Edit:
My guess is that she just prefers male characters, which would be fine if she didn't try to wrap it up in an argument suggesting that all female characters suck and/or only deal with sexism.

The attempt to take a personal preference and turn it into some sort of grand, unifying, and above all objective theory of art is one of my pet peeves.

[skellington1]

Wow.

That's a kind of impressive lack of critical introspection, isn't it?

I'd poke at the 'arguments', but you already did that quite well, and I'm having an otherwise decent day and don't want to play too much with that much vitriolic and ignorant hate.

For what it's worth, I generally agree with you -- good characters are good characters, regardless of gender. I can think of a handful, mostly older novels, where the men are fleshed out characters and the women two dimensional, but the women are never protagonists in those; they're window dressing. And the whole book suffers for it -- any book suffers if some of it's characters are three dimensional.

Really, "I HATE THEM ALL BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ENOUGH OF THEM" is a speeeshul kind of argument.

[mcjulie]

I HATE THEM ALL BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ENOUGH OF THEM" is a speeeshul kind of argument.

Very much.

[quixoticfish]

I have a magical library too!

[mcjulie]

hooray!