Malinda Lo
Blog
Jan 10, 2012
Being conscious about gender
I recently read a blog post over at Kate Elliott’s LiveJournal in which she writes about struggling with gender in her novels:
I’m a feminist. I’m an athlete. As a child I was what was then called a “tomboy,” which to me means merely that the things I was told were “boy” things, like playing outdoors, climbing trees, being active, and wanting to have adventures, were the things I did and wanted to do.
I try very hard to write stories in which there are as many female characters as male characters, with as much agency and importance in the plot. Yet I often have consciously to go back through later drafts to make sure that my female leads aren’t being more passive than I actually want them to be, aren’t letting others make decisions for them or devise all the cunning plans (unless there is a specific reason because of experience, competencies, or social roles), are showing leadership, and are present as confident individuals with a strong sense of themselves (as long as that is within character).
Kate is reacting to a post from Mette Ivie Harrison that concludes, “All gender, in my view, is in the end, a masquerade.” (You can read the whole of Mette’s post here.) Kate continues:
I go on about this because I’m trying to understand how these underlying message creep into my ways of struggling with gender in my fiction. I don’t have an answer, nor do I think there really is one except for the constant need to be alert, to be present, to try to keep one’s eyes open and learn and do better. It’s a constant, changing process, just as living is.
Do you struggle with gender issues in your work? Do you struggle with gender issues in work you read? To go back to what Harrison said, where do you find your authenticity?
When I read Kate’s post I was immediately struck with a sense of “wow, I’ve done that,” particularly where she writes about consciously going through later drafts of her novels to make sure her female leads aren’t being too passive.
I, too, am a feminist. And I’m a lesbian. I’ve been thinking about gender as a lived experience for a while, especially because I have plenty of friends who aren’t traditionally feminine. I would have expected that in my writing, I wouldn’t fall back on traditional Western beliefs about passivity and femininity.
In my first two fantasy novels, Ash and Huntress, I don’t think I encountered the passivity problem. But with my next novel, I found myself falling straight into the passive feminine character trap — even when I truly, in my gut, did not believe that character was a passive individual. It was a little startling to me to see it on the page, and I do hope that in revision her character has become the individual I imagined her to be.
In thinking about why this happened, I believe it’s because my first two novels were not set in the contemporary United States. They are both set in secondary fantasy worlds where I have purposely expunged homophobia and (mostly) sexism from those societies. Because of that, the girls in those books are not weighted down with the expectations and traditions that an American girl in the twenty-first century is burdened with. I took great joy in turning those traditions upside down.
But when I began writing a book set in the contemporary USA (Adaptation), I promptly fell into the passive trap. I had never written a novel set in the “real world,” and suddenly I was dealing with all sorts of expectations and traditions about the way girls behave, how they dress, what they do. It was … truly weird. Yes, I found it much weirder to write about contemporary teen girls than magically gifted sages or tomboyish heroines who like to go hunting.
The weirdness might come out of both being fairly close to the experience of a contemporary teen girl (I mean, I was one — not yesterday, but within living memory) and also having come very far from it (by coming out, by being in a community full of gender questioning). In the last year I’ve thought a lot about things I never expected I’d have to think about again: boys, for one thing.
How do girls think about boys, and how can I express that without falling into the passive trap in which the boy is always initiating things? In a related vein, how should my boy characters behave? (In my previous books, my male characters were men. I knew how they behaved. But boys, not surprisingly, are a foreign country to me.) How do I present their masculinity in a way that’s appealing and sexy, without falling into too many “hot boy” traps? (These are common in YA, and involve jewel-colored eyes, broad shoulders, and brooding, not necessarily in that order.)
And clothes. How can a character express her identity through her clothing? In Ash and Huntress, the girls basically wear uniforms — except when Ash goes to the ball. That ball gown is one moment of theatrical costuming that I understood; it was symbolic and it was magical. But in a book set in the contemporary USA, every time a girl gets dressed, it says something about her. And my job was to figure out what I wanted it to say. (I’m not even getting into makeup.)
These are things that most women probably have absorbed as common, everyday behaviors that they do almost without thinking. But as the writer creating a female character, I had to think about these everyday behaviors in a way that felt totally foreign to me. I had to think about them as chock full of meaning.
(To some extent, this is what all writing is about: thinking about the everyday with a different, symbolic lens. But it’s very easy to simply write a story set in the real world without thinking about these issues at all; to just write a girl wearing makeup and a skirt without being conscious of the fact that her appearance speaks volumes about gender, sexuality, class, etc. I’m also not saying that every book must engage with these issues, but my books do. So I think about them.)
That’s not to say that every tiny little gesture a character makes is laden with symbolism (necessarily), but yeah: the way a girl looks and acts and thinks about boys (and girls) is full of statements about gender. This is one of those moments where I think, duh, Malinda, you should know that by now. But putting it into practice, in writing, is a very interesting experience. It’s like un-doing everything you do every day automatically, and re-doing it with purpose. It can be trippy.
Fascinating! You’ve given me something new to think about as I comb through a revision of a contemporary manuscript with a female POV character. Thanks!
How do I present their masculinity in a way that’s appealing and sexy, without falling into too many “hot boy” traps?
That is a money shot, though I have little issue with ‘broad shoulders’.
(Maybe that’s because I’m like ‘Oh, I like those, and it seems fairly standard and impersonal’ whereas with say ‘muscular thighs’ I’m like ‘too far sir! We aren’t yet acquainted!’)
I find character descriptions of both girls and guys, for different reasons, so complicated! You are right that it’s hard, and there’s so much baggage.
In my latest I’m writing about three different girls, all of whom I wanted to show as presenting definitely ‘girly’ in three distinct ways–one very into clothes and fashion, preferring dresses and skirts because a particular interesting way of expressing herself appealed, one beautifully made up and always in designer clothes because being perfectly turned out is a form of control for her, and one much more casual and likely to be in jeans, but also the one most likely to wear pink or revealing clothing because presenting in that way seems fun to her, gets her approval, and also gets her attention and sometimes fun times.
There’s so much baggage all over the place, and the tomboy shouldn’t be seen as better than the princess, or vice versa. No wrong way to be a girl!
I guess, like with everything, what one does is think. And then think again.
No worries, SRB, my boys all have broad shoulders.
One of three does not the money shot make! Er, I’m totally mixing metaphors here.
I think that it’s astonished me how much I now have to think about femininity in my fictional girls. For me, it’s kind of helpful to think of the femme identity among some queer ladies, which reappropriates traditionally feminine trappings for their own decidedly untraditional lives.
Malinda, Thanks for this intriguing post. It teases at the edge of something I’ve wrestled with lately – the authenticity of writing about the girl I wish I had been versus the girl that I actually was.
Once a story is removed to a fantasy or science fiction world, it feels legitimate to re-create gender and behavior, along with the rest of that world’s parameters. But if I tackle “real (adolescent) life”… ugh, I was pretty messed up as an adolescent. Heck, it was the 80s, in mid-Michigan!
If I write a closer sensibility to the girls of now — well, that feels like a bit of trespass on my just-turned-teen daughter’s life.
Again, I don’t feel tripped up in the context of the future, or of fantasy. But now and “real” is dicier ground. When my children were young, their identities didn’t interfere with what I wrote… it’s odd to me that they do now. I presume this too shall pass! ~ Best, Maia
Gender confuses the hell out of me sometimes. It’s interesting to read about your experiences with it in writing.
This post was fascinating – I really appreciate that you explain that writing responsibly about gender is a struggle, and that cultural constructions inevitably inform even people who have moved beyond blindly accepting societal gender norms. This line was especially thought provoking: “How do girls think about boys, and how can I express that without falling into the passive trap in which the boy is always initiating things?” As a (female) reader and viewer of TV and movies, I struggle with why I’m so much more compelled by narratives where the boy initiates things. When a girl takes the active role in the romantic relationship, it always creates a jarring moment – I recently read Karen Healey’s Guardian of the Dead, and when Ellie kissed Thomas, I’ll admit, I had a moment of shock. On the other hand, I tend to blindly accept the male taking the lead. So how do I as a reader move away from those very culturally created responses?
And why are there no easy answers, darn it!
Ooh, I was in a diner yesterday, with a bunch of high school students, and it was so unnerving. The guys are so huge, but their faces are all flabby and unformed, and the girls are so loud and aggressive, and undistinguishable from each other in their faux-fur trimmed puffy coats and leggings.
Maybe an idealized version of teens is better than the reality. But I’m pretty sure that the idea of females as passive is mostly just in our heads and has very little to do with the way teenagers actually behave. I think one thing few YA authors write about is the ‘guy community,’ the way guys act and interact with other guys, which really has very little to do with the girls that most writers obsess over. Maybe that’s why the loner-guy is so popular, because once he’s out of his community he’s weak enough to be manipulated into girl-style-romance.
Another piece of this to remember is that (at least when I was a teenager in the navel-gazing Dawson-and-Felicity-WBNetwork era) teen girls actually do spend a lot if time contemplating their own symbolism, especially where boys are concerned. He said he liked my blue shirt the other day–so I’ll make sure to wear blue on his birthday. He smiled at me yesterday–maybe if I look skinny enough tomorrow he’ll ask me out. He likes so-and-so and she wears weird accessories–I’ll wear something like that, and it will make him like me. Every decision is magic; certain items of clothing or makeup or particular hairstyles become talismanic. The boys, of course, don’t have a clue that all this is going on (when I was eighteen, I cut off seventeen inches of my hair, then went to visit a close guy friend. I tossed my hair for three hours before I gave up and told him why.).
This post reminded me I wanted to read one of Elliott’s book. Just added spirit girls to my Spirit Magic to my library queue.
Though back to aren’t there different levels of femininity. Case in point when I was going to school last semester, A LOT of the female students would dress up and wear club heals around campus. I was looking like what and why, even back in the day I would’ve never ever done that. I was just never that girl. If an author created a female lead like this one that I’d assume would order a salad on a date, I would simply have no interest in her actions. Though that would be on the very extreme end of the femininity spectrum.
I enjoyed this post. It made me really think about the gender issues faced in reality as well as fiction. It puts a lot of weight on a writers shoulders, don’t you think? Especially if the writer (or character) wants to change general thinking by having a character (or being) outside the norm.
But perhaps that’s just me.
“How do I present their masculinity in a way that’s appealing and sexy, without falling into too many “hot boy” traps?”
Broad shoulders are pretty much out unless you’re talking about post-highschool or football players. They generally don’t happen until early 20s unless the kid is pumping some serious iron. I’d go with clothes, attitude, and actions.
Pretty much every teen boy wants to be cool and to be tough. They want that because it’s hands-down the path of least resistance to seeing teenage girls naked. The ones with the most success are the ones who can manage it without looking like they’re trying too hard and can manage to think clearly through all the testosterone.
The girl who is passive, who wants attention, who wears heels and who eats salads doesn’t deserve your derision, folks, or your neglect. Or your belief that her story isn’t good enough. She needs your ears and your eyes and your open mind just as much as anyone else would.
I’ve been criticised for making women too passive and marginal in my novel. I was looking for characters to represent the cultures of Europe, America, China and (sub-Saharan) Africa. Instinctively, I made Europe a woman and the others men, so I accept the criticism about women being under-represented. But do we really need to (over-)compensate and make women characters more ‘active’ than we might instinctively do so? Why is being passive bad? (Christ was passive, as were Socrates, Gandhi and Mother Theresa.) Why do women need to be more like men? Thinking is just as much an activity as ‘acting’, and far more important.
Sorry, just to edit my last point a bit.
The point of being a feminist isn’t to deem that only one kind of woman is real or interesting or worthwhile or etc etc etc. The point of being a feminist is to support the choices of all women, regardless of what those choices may be, so long as they don’t infringe upon the health, choices, blah blah, of another, while also helping to rid the world of circumstances that make a woman feel like she needs to wear heels and eat salads if she doesn’t want to.
Maybe she wants to. Maybe there’s nothing more empowering in her mind than stomping down a city block in four inch heels and doing that makes her feel like she can take on the world (I know it does for me). Maybe she just likes salad.
It doesn’t make her any less interesting. It doesn’t make her any less than a girl who wears chucks and eats cheeseburgers.
@ Samantha Rill — I don’t think it puts a lot of weight on a writer’s shoulders; at least, not any more than is already there. I just believe that a writer should be aware of the words he/she is using when writing. Every word matters. But I don’t believe in writing novels in order to “change general thinking.” I think that too often leads to didacticism. It’s a fine balance to maintain, and it is challenging, but that’s okay with me.
@ Christina — I agree. Femininity is very complicated. That’s why I’m very interested in radical femmes.
@ J.B. Hughes — I think that “passivity” is certainly a cultural construct, and it tends to be devalued in Western cultures more often. That is definitely a truth that can be very frustrating, especially if you’re writing about a non-Western culture. In the case of current American YA fiction, though, “passive” has a particular meaning (that is often correlated with girls), and that’s what I’m talking about in the post above.
There is definitely a difference between a young woman who chooses passivity as a tool and a young woman who is socialized to be passive against her own nature, and to the point where she feels intimidated to contribute to her own life. I am definitely often unnaturally passive and it galls me.
Oftentimes, I feel like in order to write female character honestly, I need to include passive characters, characters who aren’t assertive, characters who are socialized to not speak up to defend their values, who are taught that having opinions, standing out, or being the best is bad. Because I was definitely made to feel that way in my formative years.
I think that when you’re writing modern American characters, addressing those issues can mean writing characters who fall into those traps– as long as you’re aware that that is what you are writing. Because then it’s the character falling into the trap, and not you falling into the trap, and it can be a compelling part of the story. I actually love stories where characters who start out passive find that one thing that they care enough about that they’re willing to stand up and kick ass where they could never bring themselves to before.
Suzanne above mentions being much more invested in stories where the male character (in a hetero pairing) takes the initiative. I think this has less to do with the “male” taking the initiative and more to do with the love interest, whatever gender, taking the initiative, because if we identify with the protagonist, we also identify with that feeling of longing to be desirable to someone else.
I’ve been interested in women’s issues and representations of gender for some years. In my explorations of SF/fantasy, and issues surrounding literature, I have discovered people addressing these issues both behind the literature (in explorations such as your blog and the new Stella award for women writers in Australia) and within the literature as it appears you have in your books.
I am interested in following through on a discussion, both in articles and possibly in the form of ‘letters to the editor’ in a special Gender issues section. If anyone is interested in contributing, please go to the web address I’ve cited to look at my publication to get a feel for Dark Matter before emailing any contributions.
Bon Voyage to all of us,
Dark Matter fanzine editor
Sorry – the web address didn’t come up. The web address for the National Library Archive (of Australia) and the specific page to download Dark Matter fanzine is:
http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-123161
Oh, I really like Tea’s comment re passive main character/active love interest and the attraction of being desired. It just made sense of a whole lot of things for me.