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Post by roostertree on Jul 28, 2014 14:05:34 GMT -5
To markh, regarding sexist clichés: "Male writers — and I say this with all love and respect — often want to make a woman either the angel or the whore, make her the witch, or put her on the pedestal." ~said by Natalie Dormer, who plays Margaery Tyrell on Game of Thrones, while on a SDCC panel on 'women who kick a$s.' The quote is from a recent The Mary Sue article of the same name.
So maybe don't do that.
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markh
New Member
Posts: 9 
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Post by markh on Jul 28, 2014 17:40:54 GMT -5
Thanks for your reply roostertree!
That is an interesting insight.
Well, since I don't agree with that quote I guess I'm OK.
What's wrong with being an Angel or a Whore?
How about a Prostitute with a Heart of Gold?
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Post by roostertree on Jul 29, 2014 13:28:18 GMT -5
What's wrong with being an Angel or a Whore? How about a Prostitute with a Heart of Gold? Because no one is any one thing, & men, generally, have a long history of reducing women to one of those things. Each of the three aspects you mention is a wish-fulfillment fantasy on the part of the writer. For the writer, it mary sue's the (typically male or male-fantasy lesbian) love interest/story counterpart of the female angel/whore/PwaHoG character. |
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Post by addlebrain on Jul 31, 2014 20:01:13 GMT -5
Guess I'll chime in.
You can take a very pragmatic approach to it if that helps. Perhaps think about it like this: in the prehistory era of human life we had evolved to fit into specific roles. Females had evolved to be specialised at social, familial roles while males had evolved to be specialised at the physical act of going out and finding food, or fighting off enemies. But that kind of thing is the same as any other animal. Everything changed when we developed these jumbo mega brains. They unlocked our potential (and that's the key word) so that we could operate beyond all of our other evolutions. Everyone has potential; sexism and other isms ignore and work to remove that potential.
Fast forward a million years or so and people are still struggling with the idea that we can be more than our physical form suggests. Sexism is one way that that persists. We need to overcome that instinct by using the critical thinking that our brains allow us so that we can know more than just what we see.
The idea of nudity was mentioned in the other thread. A scene can be more than just "a person is naked," or worse, "a person is naked and that's hot!" To be a good writer or artist, you need to know that there is more in the scene than just nudity. Everything surrounding that moment contributes to what happens in the scene. Which characters are nude, how did they end up in this situation, how do they feel about the situation etc. etc. A scene with nudity (and even plain old pornography) can be sexist or not sexist depending on if they can recognise that the characters involved are there for more than just "being naked for sex appeal."
THIS PART AT LEAST IS IMPORTANT
If you want to keep things simple; write a female character that people want to be like. That's the essence of a super hero. People want to be them. If you're giving the character traits that people want other people to have rather than traits that people want for themselves, then it might not work so well.
Aaaaanyway. I'm not sure if that helped or not. I have a tendency of making things more convoluted than they need to be I think. It's all a blur to me anyway. Maybe someone else with a clearer idea can say something.
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