Re: Female characters

David Friedman wrote:
One obvious reason is that there are women who want to identify with the character and like the idea of being a warrior, but I think there are others--certainly that wasn't my reason.

My reasoning for writing a female warrior (well, hunter) went something like this:
1. Competence is cool.
2. Edged weapons are cool.
3. Competence with edged weapons is extra-cool.

It wasn't very sophisticated, I'll admit. And I wasn't so much thinking about subverting gender expectations as clinging to a delightful mental image of a Tinkerbell-sized faery fighting crows with a dagger.

Which eventually led to a book in which 95% of the characters are female, and the only significant male character is the heroine's love interest, but again that came out of the nature of the story rather than a conscious effort to Affirm Female Empowerment, or whatever.

All of which is to say that I agree with the idea of coming up with characters as characters first and foremost, and not getting caught up in trying to assert or subvert traditional gender roles. I find a lot of self-consciously feminist stories to be just as preachy and annoying as any old-fashioned attempt to Keep Women In Their Place.

male readers... are likely to retain the feeling that women are particularly vulnerable and to be protected, and that makes situations where they are at immediate risk more poignant than the same situations with male characters.

Interesting. That's not a feeling that has ever affected me when reading about women warriors. But then, I'm a woman, so perhaps that stands to reason.

Mind you, if the woman warrior is, say, carrying a baby or escorting a child when attacked -- THEN I get the poignancy. But I'm pretty sure I'd feel the same way if it were a male warrior doing the carrying or escorting: it's the child's vulnerability, not the adult's, that gets me.
--
R.J. (Rebecca) Anderson
http://rja.mirrordance.net/
http://synaesthete7.livejournal.com/
.

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