I'm Sexy or I'm in Trouble: A Post About Being a Stereotyped Lady in Fantasy Literature

DISCLAIMER: I'm painting a pretty broad stroke when I refer to "fantasy" within this post. I'm referring to a pretty specific type of fantasy set in "medieval" settings; the type of fantasy with lots of swords and daggers and black magic wielders. It's usually, though by no means always, written by men who like to write their women with either 1.) big boobed, bodacious bodies and bad attitudes or 2.) slender frames (and big boobs) and demure dispositions. Again, a very broad stroke. If your particular brand of fantasy doesn't seem to apply to what I'm saying, it probably doesn't. And if you're not familiar with the apparent "problem" of women in epic/heroic/s&s fantasy, start somewhere like here or here.

"Help! I need a man!"

Example #1: I just started reading this fantasy/s&s book. In the first chapter, a guy in black kills a bunch of people handily. His sarcastic, scantily clad companion (whose body is every man's dream) helps him escape death by giving him directions out of a castle. In the second chapter, a young (read: attractive in a very feminine way) noblewoman—she's only seventeen—awaits news that her father has arranged a marriage for her. When she finds out that he hasn't in fact done so but has instead seen to it that she will take a trip to avoid some kind of danger, she pouts about her friend getting to get married, cries, runs to her room, realizes that pouting and crying will get her nowhere against her father's will, and then starts combing her hair while trying to think of some kind of solution.

So, here, in the first two chapters, are our "heroines"—a buxom and largely inactive sidekick and a young, self-involved priss. Compare them to the hero, who wields a pair of huge knives and assassinates people with superhuman precision. (Y'know, not that assassinating people is exactly a kosher thing to do, but at least he's active...)

Example #2: During my January 2011 MFA residency, I attended a workshop taught by David Anthony Durham. The subject: Epic Fantasy. I'd submitted an 18-page excerpt from my somewhat epic fantasy novel, No Return; a chapter and a half wherein I introduce Churls, a female gladiator/mercenary haunted by the ghost of her daughter. She's my favorite character I've ever written, bar none, and I tried very hard to make her well rounded. (It was actually a little easier to write her than other characters, and it's not hard to see why. To a great extent, she's based off of my ex-girlfriend and best friend, Amy Martin.)

I went to great pains to put her through just as much a ringer as anybody else in the novel, to prove how fucking tough she was. Thus, I was a little offended to see that the women in the workshop—who liked Churls for the most part—were somewhat bothered that I hadn't shown her defeating her opponent at the beginning of her first chapter. They seemed to think I'd held back because she was a woman.

One asked, "Do you ever show her kicking butt?"

I answered, "Of course. Near the end of the novel she kills someone."

"Why did you wait until the end?" another woman asked. "Why not show it now?"

I went on to explain that Churls was my favorite character, and that I wanted her display of violence to have a greater impact than the other characters' displays. I wanted her moment to really stand out, especially after all the trials she is forced to endure. "I put her through a lot in this novel," I told them.

"Well," said yet another of my female peers, "I hope she's not just some damsel in distress who gets saved by a man."

And that's when I got a little defensive.

What do these two examples have to do with each another?

Well, it's because they've caused me to consider how full of shit I am. It's very easy to be disdainful of the author who's written the buxom sidekick and the young damsel in distress over a marital issue. (How many times have we seen women in both of these positions, appearing as only accessories to men?). But it's even easier to be offended on behalf of womankind while ignoring my own unintentional sexism.

            Why, indeed, did I wait to unleash Churls' rage? My first response as I started to write this post was, sadly, to think that I wanted her to earn the moment, but a brief second of reflection reveals what a crappy sentiment that is. Did I ever feel like the men had to earn their violent moments? No, I didn't. I just thought—not consciously, mind you—Well, they're dudes. Unconsciously or not, I decided that I didn't need to justify a man committing a violent act.

            And that's fucked up. Sure, somebody might ask what's the matter with assuming women are not as inclined to violence as men, but other than the fact that I don't believe that claim (if you doubt, start with a study of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom; you'll see females are no less inclined to backhand a neighbor than males) it continues to place woman and men in constricting boxes.

Men do this. Women do not do this.

Wait. Hold up. Is that really what I did when I held off revealing Churls' full capacity for violence? Did I really believe she needed to earn a traditionally male-dominated role?

            I'm not sure.

            A voice tells me that it's completely valid for me to hold off showing a character's traits in order to lend weight to her later actions. I didn't hide Churls' nature from anyone; when the reader first encounters her, she is standing over the corpse of a young man she killed in a fair fight. I certainly didn't show her regret over having killed an opponent. That's her profession. (And I didn't at any point—as one geeky friend of mine suggested I do—describe the shape of her butt "to make the fanboys happy." Not that I even have any fanboys reading my work...)

You see, it was more important to me to show her reaction after the killing—not because she is a woman and more prone to reflection, but because I thought the act of killing was more powerful as a matter of reflection. I don't think it had anything to do with her sex, frankly. Instead, it had everything to do with making the scene as good as it could be, establishing a character and situation that felt real.

I could be wrong, of course. I'm just as prey to my culture's prejudices as anyone else. Perhaps, in my attempt to cast Churls in a complicated role—a mother, a fighter, a woman whose attraction to a principal male character is frankly (and often explicitly) sexual—I have reduced her merely to a reaction against the "buxom accessory/damsel in distress" stereotype so common to fantasy literature. In that case, all I'm doing is revealing how deeply that stereotype has wormed its way into my head, right?

No. I call bullshit on that assertion. The recognition of a harmful stereotype—and the reaction against it—is fundamental to moving forward, to fighting for a woman's right to assert herself as a primary actor instead of an accessory to a man.

I guess what I'm saying is I'd rather be the anti-stereotype, fraught as it may be with thinly disguised concessions to prejudice, than the stereotype that the author never examines.

Aside:

I hope all of this is not coming across as self-indulgent. Anyone who reads this blog often knows that I wrote a novel and that I can't stop talking about it. ("Hasn't he written anything else?" someone might ask. And the answer is, "Kinda.") But I do think about what I've written a lot. I examine it for hidden meanings, and compare it to what other people have written. I get caught up in certain issues...

Recently, a friend I've had for ages looked at me and said, "Wow. You're kind of a feminist, aren't you?" My reaction was along the lines of "Well... yeah."—as if any other response makes sense. Standing up for the right-to-be-whatever-you-fucking-want of slightly more than half the population of the planet needs a fucking label?

Of course I'm a "feminist." Aren't I?

            Well. Confirming that would require some looking, wouldn't it? And not just into the things I say, but into the things I do, day in, day out. What do I focus on when I see a woman? Do I actively turn my eyes away from images that serve only to hammer home the point THIS IS WHAT A WOMAN SHOULD LOOK LIKE? Do I over-explain things to women on the assumption that they'll have a harder time understanding than men?

            Some of these things will take years to examine and to change. Were that I had a few documents to examine, something crystallized in time...

            Oh, yeah. I guess if I'm looking for an answer I should look at how I (and others) treat women on the page.

           

"Of course this armor
is practical"

Okay, the aside aside: Having stated that I'd rather be the reaction against the stereotype than the stereotype itself, I think it behooves me to explain what I think is wrong about using the stereotype at all. Of course a writer can argue—as Peter Orullian has (sorry; can't find the link to the specific interviews)—that he or she is using stereotypes so that they can subvert them later, but I think this is kind of crappy craft. I also think it reveals a deep and abiding prejudice in the same way my "she has to earn it" thinking does.

            Let's examine my first claim—that using a stereotype is crappy craft. What exactly does using a stereotype do? Well, first off it establishes an instant identification without having to do the legwork: Oh, he's the emotionally wounded ex-mercenary character with a troubled past. Oooooohhh, I get it. Second, it basically establishes a likely character arc: That guys gonna help somebody despite his selfish instincts. Cool.

            (Now, granted, the reaction-against-said-stereotype-character-character may be equally easy to pin down: Oh, he's an emotionally grounded soldier with a known past. I bet he's gonna fuck everybody over. Still, call me crazy but I think there's a greater range of responses in opposition to a stereotype than there is within the stereotypical framework.)

            Beyond crappy craft, though, how does establishing a stereotype reveal underlying prejudices if the author intends to subvert the stereotype later?

            The answer to that is simple: The author is revealing that his or her characters are not strong enough to stand on their own from the beginning. When it comes to (many) female characters in fantasy literature, I think authors reveal not only how little faith they have in their own ability to portray the full range of "femininity," but also how little faith they have in readers to immediately comprehend a female character that is not a sex symbol or damsel in distress. No, all "atypically" female qualities must be introduced slowly.

            I say fuck slowly. (Haha.) If the reader suffers a bit of culture shock when a woman in a story farts, then I say great. Ladies fart, everybody; it's high time you knew.

Back to Example #1: The buxom and largely inactive sidekick and the young, self-involved priss.

Oh!—a bit of info I nearly forgot: I'm not using the author's name because, as I said, I'm only at the beginning of the book. The author is in fact quite a fine writer on a sentence level, and I don't want to judge him/her too harshly yet. He/she still has a chance to convince me that his/her use of stereotypes is justified. That's never happened before, yet hope springs eternal...

But assuming the author doesn't justify the use of his stereotypes, it becomes not a question of if you can write such characters—for clearly there are women who, because of societal pressure or inclination, find themselves in the role of sex object or damsel in distress; just as there are men in the same situation—but why the author would write such a character in the first place. What attachment does the author have to these women?

It's tempting to psychoanalyze, of course, but I won't. All I can say is that I don't understand it. I don't want a woman who always needs saving from a man—not as a friend, not as a partner, not even as an acquaintance. I don't want to know any woman who is willing to act as a secondary to me.

The same applies to women in fiction. Any female character better stand up for herself at some point, even if it's just to assert she needs help, or I don't want to read too much about her. Any author who regularly paints his women into a Disney corner (and doesn't justify breaking her out of it) won't sell a book to me (yes, my copies of books are usually secondhand).

As I think I made clear, there is obviously some realism in such characters, but I read (and write) fiction to be inspired. I only have so much time in this life, and I won't settle for female characters who buckle under societal pressure. It's a cliché at this point, but a good one: Well-behaved women rarely make history. I wrote Churls as a way to express my appreciation for someone who in nearly all ways outclasses me, for a woman who is rewriting history as she lives it, and I wish more fantasy authors took the time to do the same.