It's once again time to bring out the escapists favorite topic: gender issues.
On today's docket we have writing characters. Specifically, why does it matter so much that they're female or male?
Obviously not everyone shares that view, nor do people who feel it's important always make the following argument, but I have seen quite a few individuals who claim how gender needs to be carefully incorporated into pretty much every character (while taking special care not to stereotype or be cliche). To me, incorporating ANY detail about a character because of some personal trait is a bit cliche. You have to assume that the person will be affected by some aspect of their gender (or a response to their gender) in some specific way... because of their gender.
As a fairly overt example of what I'm getting at, let's take Rey from Star Wars. Small gripes aside, I like this character, and overall she's pretty gender neutral. That said, the scene with Finn where she says "I don't need you to hold my hand" is clearly a gender thing when you look at how played out the scene is (it happens twice and then there's a role reversal). It's not a stereo-typically girly thing to say, but that response is based on how women get annoyed by men constantly thinking they need their hand's held. This was weird, because Finn was a storm-trooper with a female superior so that reflex to protect women seems out of place, leading the scene to feel very intentionally incorporated to make her seem like a strong independent woman who don't need no man. Of course, on the flip side, one could say that being a loner your whole life would lead anyone to respond that way to having their hands held in a stressful situation, and Finn's fairly well adjusted personality already defies any logic, but that sort of ties into my next point.
I just think it's unrealistic and an overly complex/specific/limiting approach to feel you constantly need to write your character's through a gendered lens, because you can justifiably make any character be anything if you go far enough down the rabbit hole and people will likely interpret everything through their own lens anyway (warping whatever your initial intentions were) and find ways to justify that perspective. What's more, I really can't point to any specific character and say they perfectly achieve this "ideal" of writing a character that feels carefully crafted around their gender without it feeling like the character isn't stereotyped or cliche on SOME level (I'd be happy to look into any examples of characters you feel achieve what you consider well crafted with gender in mind).
I've been writing a script for a short game that I'm poorly programming. As I write my characters, I feel as though gender doesn't really play a major role in how they're developed in my head.
An example of a character: A military general who is trusted implicitly by her troops. She is an aggressive individual by nature, but fairly soft spoken. She also has a very "big picture" mentality, which is beneficial for military strategy, but can lead to her seeming callous at times and forgetting small details. Despite this, she's a generally caring person, and will drop whatever she's doing when someone is in immediate need. She's what we might consider a "sex addict", but this isn't really seen as an issue or addiction in this particular society, and is understood to be a somewhat common side effect of the drugs soldiers take to enhance cognitive and physical abilities. While it can be detrimental to some, she actually copes with this particular side effect much more comfortably than many other troops, finding it generally life affirming. She has a primary emotional partner (a practice observed by about 35-40% of people) who is of a lower working class than herself (their society, somewhat similarly to America's, has a loosely defined class system that is more implicit than explicit). He is not particularly intelligent or upwardly mobile, but has a good heart and works hard. Some might describe him as silly or childish. She gets frustrated when people bring it up, as they often imply she's only with him because she doesn't want to be challenged by her partner. etc. etc.
Most of my characters are like this, and very few of them have been written with any real considerations for their gender. You can see that the society in which these characters exist is not the same as our own, but to me characters will always have traits that society is going to react to in a specific way. That response will do SOMETHING to shape the character (how it shapes them will vary based on the character themselves). I see gender as just being one of those things, which I may or may not choose to incorporate as an important part of who that character is. Even if I do, by the time I've decided how it's to be incorporated into the character, the final result of how the character has changed due to gender may not even be obviously attributable to their gender, making it largely irrelevant that it was about gender in the first place (at least from the reader's perspective). If I do decide to basically point arrows going from a certain trait to the catalyst for that trait, then it's usually too subtle for most people to notice, or it feels hamfisted. Sure I could try to strike a careful balance, but that's a lot of work for something that will only marginally affect the story's quality in the eyes of the people who'd even give a shit.
So, if I were to write a teenage girl from the United States Midwest with a typical upbringing in 2016, her gender is more likely to play a bigger role in how I write her, but it might not, and I don't think that's an issue.
These are just my thoughts. How do you think gender should be approached in writing?
On today's docket we have writing characters. Specifically, why does it matter so much that they're female or male?
Obviously not everyone shares that view, nor do people who feel it's important always make the following argument, but I have seen quite a few individuals who claim how gender needs to be carefully incorporated into pretty much every character (while taking special care not to stereotype or be cliche). To me, incorporating ANY detail about a character because of some personal trait is a bit cliche. You have to assume that the person will be affected by some aspect of their gender (or a response to their gender) in some specific way... because of their gender.
As a fairly overt example of what I'm getting at, let's take Rey from Star Wars. Small gripes aside, I like this character, and overall she's pretty gender neutral. That said, the scene with Finn where she says "I don't need you to hold my hand" is clearly a gender thing when you look at how played out the scene is (it happens twice and then there's a role reversal). It's not a stereo-typically girly thing to say, but that response is based on how women get annoyed by men constantly thinking they need their hand's held. This was weird, because Finn was a storm-trooper with a female superior so that reflex to protect women seems out of place, leading the scene to feel very intentionally incorporated to make her seem like a strong independent woman who don't need no man. Of course, on the flip side, one could say that being a loner your whole life would lead anyone to respond that way to having their hands held in a stressful situation, and Finn's fairly well adjusted personality already defies any logic, but that sort of ties into my next point.
I just think it's unrealistic and an overly complex/specific/limiting approach to feel you constantly need to write your character's through a gendered lens, because you can justifiably make any character be anything if you go far enough down the rabbit hole and people will likely interpret everything through their own lens anyway (warping whatever your initial intentions were) and find ways to justify that perspective. What's more, I really can't point to any specific character and say they perfectly achieve this "ideal" of writing a character that feels carefully crafted around their gender without it feeling like the character isn't stereotyped or cliche on SOME level (I'd be happy to look into any examples of characters you feel achieve what you consider well crafted with gender in mind).
I've been writing a script for a short game that I'm poorly programming. As I write my characters, I feel as though gender doesn't really play a major role in how they're developed in my head.
An example of a character: A military general who is trusted implicitly by her troops. She is an aggressive individual by nature, but fairly soft spoken. She also has a very "big picture" mentality, which is beneficial for military strategy, but can lead to her seeming callous at times and forgetting small details. Despite this, she's a generally caring person, and will drop whatever she's doing when someone is in immediate need. She's what we might consider a "sex addict", but this isn't really seen as an issue or addiction in this particular society, and is understood to be a somewhat common side effect of the drugs soldiers take to enhance cognitive and physical abilities. While it can be detrimental to some, she actually copes with this particular side effect much more comfortably than many other troops, finding it generally life affirming. She has a primary emotional partner (a practice observed by about 35-40% of people) who is of a lower working class than herself (their society, somewhat similarly to America's, has a loosely defined class system that is more implicit than explicit). He is not particularly intelligent or upwardly mobile, but has a good heart and works hard. Some might describe him as silly or childish. She gets frustrated when people bring it up, as they often imply she's only with him because she doesn't want to be challenged by her partner. etc. etc.
Most of my characters are like this, and very few of them have been written with any real considerations for their gender. You can see that the society in which these characters exist is not the same as our own, but to me characters will always have traits that society is going to react to in a specific way. That response will do SOMETHING to shape the character (how it shapes them will vary based on the character themselves). I see gender as just being one of those things, which I may or may not choose to incorporate as an important part of who that character is. Even if I do, by the time I've decided how it's to be incorporated into the character, the final result of how the character has changed due to gender may not even be obviously attributable to their gender, making it largely irrelevant that it was about gender in the first place (at least from the reader's perspective). If I do decide to basically point arrows going from a certain trait to the catalyst for that trait, then it's usually too subtle for most people to notice, or it feels hamfisted. Sure I could try to strike a careful balance, but that's a lot of work for something that will only marginally affect the story's quality in the eyes of the people who'd even give a shit.
So, if I were to write a teenage girl from the United States Midwest with a typical upbringing in 2016, her gender is more likely to play a bigger role in how I write her, but it might not, and I don't think that's an issue.
These are just my thoughts. How do you think gender should be approached in writing?
