News Women mock bad male writers

In The Realm of the Senses

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That's pretty funny. I don't know if I do a fairer job of describing men or women ... last week I described an overweight thirtyish woman as "...her weight settled in her ankles."

I have no business doing that ... but I made myself laugh and probably won't change it even though it's mean.

Look at this one:

She had the quick compensatory mind of a woman who was not quite beautiful, but appeared so after a few drinks, when the light was just so, and the birdsong in the trees echoed across the chasm between her face and true beauty

Doesn't that sound like women who aren't beautiful have a certain type of mind? Why would this be? That doesn't make sense. Actually the whole thing is funny...

This one is funny too:

Let’s be realistic, as a middle-aged woman in tech, no male author would describe me, ever.
 
@Amber, please don't change that ankle line. It is magnificent. Humour can come from anywhere--why can't it be derived from a made-up character?

Regarding the post: I'm not saying that they might be portrayed poorly, but throw a wide enough net and you will catch exactly what you're fishing for. An additional thought is that people have a greater tendency to complain about the bad than to spread the good.
 
I saw that and found it puzzling. Those are made up extracts aren't they rather than genuine extracts from books written by men. In which case its a perception of a perception. Now if they were genuine extracts that would be funny - a bit like the bad sex awards! As it stands it all comes across as a bit anti-man.

Plenty of male authors write the female POV extremely well, and vice versa.
 
When writing my own novel I found that i had this problem with peripheral female characters. With peripheral characters I am trying to capture someone's essence without giving then much in the way of plot, but the effect can be that a personality is being extrapolated from someone's physical apearence and that they have no depth. Which is true, I suppose. These are sacrifical pawns. So the main problem might be when all females in a novel are no more than sacrificial pawns.

I also find it much easier to write girls than women.
 
You're right about the way weight settles in ankles @Amber. Probably oedema. I can just picture them, and that's your job, to paint me a picture.. Truth of observation, truth of feeling. It doesn't necessarily come across as unkind. Oliver Cromwell and his 'warts and all.'

I've described a character's mean little gimlet eyes, and lardy pigeon jowls. But he's mean.
 
You have a fine mind.
You do indeed.

@Amber, please don't change that ankle line. It is magnificent. Humour can come from anywhere--why can't it be derived from a made-up character?
I completely agree. I don't think anything should be off limits to humour. The important thing is always the target of the joke, not the incidental details of the people who populate it.

As it stands it all comes across as a bit anti-man.
I don't know. I just enjoyed the parody. And I don't think you have to look very far in mainstream fiction to find examples of what's being parodied (see the link at the end of @Kirsten's article). I didn't find it anti-man, but rather anti-stereotyping (although of course my saying that proves nothing and carries the weight of only a single opinion).

--

I'm going to make a few observations, none of which are aimed at anyone above, although my thoughts have been informed by what's been said. Civilised, lively debate is always welcome, and I'm certainly not trying to take a shot. But I am going to voice an opinion that may not be universally shared.

During the Black Lives Matter campaign last year, there was a backlash on social media, the gist of which was, 'Yes, black lives matter, but all lives matter!' Which seems like reasonable logic on the face of it. But to make such a statement misses the implicit meaning of Black Lives Matter, which is that black lives matter as much as white lives. The playing field was never level to start with, so appealing to universal ideas of equality does nothing but devalue the original grievance.

Sexism is real. Glass ceilings are real. The objectification of women in fiction is real. Two thousand parodies on Twitter of perceived bias by some male authors is funny, and real.

And we're talking about it, aren't we? That's something that strikes me as positive.
 
OK, here's my take on a new man in my heroine's life:
I mean, why would an accountant need a 3-litre engine? But there, I never did get boys and their toys. But it makes a nice manly roar as he guns the engine to impress me.
 
I saw that and found it puzzling. Those are made up extracts aren't they rather than genuine extracts from books written by men. In which case its a perception of a perception. Now if they were genuine extracts that would be funny - a bit like the bad sex awards! As it stands it all comes across as a bit anti-man.

Plenty of male authors write the female POV extremely well, and vice versa.

Anti-man, anti-woman isn't reserved for men and women respectively.

I watch TV shows from the seventies and the eighties occasionally. Okay. I'll admit--it's mostly Columbo. I have an addiction to Columbo and I will binge watch it from time to time.

The point is, if you watch it, you'll see how blatant the sexism is and since a good number of them were filmed in my lifetime, I can think back and remember, the sexism depicted was "almost" perfectly acceptable to me. It wasn't so unacceptable that the entire TV watching world rejected Columbo. The entire TV watching world still hasn't rejected Columbo. Hopefully they never will. They did their best with the tools they had at hand.

Another show I sometimes watch, although I don't have a lifelong history with it, is Midsomer Murders. There's a little sexism in that too.

Yesterday I was called a "know it all woman". I laughed because there isn't anything better than being called a know it all woman in this world. Sexism is alive and well and while part of that is certainly some man hating, it's part of the whole. It's part of what's happened to women. Women struggle with it, the hating as well as the love and where we fail is in supporting one another, not in loving or supporting men.

I try not to think about it too much but I had a childhood of sitting in the back seat while the men 'talked' and standing in the kitchen while the women 'gossiped' and while that isn't everyone's experience, it was and is still common enough.

I do know a man who writes from the female POV very well. He's unique. Let's not pretend men who can step into the shoes of women are common.
 
During the Black Lives Matter campaign last year, there was a backlash on social media, the gist of which was, 'Yes, black lives matter, but all lives matter!' Which seems like reasonable logic on the face of it. But to make such a statement misses the implicit meaning of Black Lives Matter, which is that black lives matter as much as white lives. The playing field was never level to start with, so appealing to universal ideas of equality does nothing but devalue the original grievance.

Very astute observation. You're exactly right.

Sexism is real. Glass ceilings are real. The objectification of women in fiction is real. Two thousand parodies on Twitter of perceived bias by some male authors is funny, and real.

Heee... yes. :)

And we're talking about it, aren't we? That's something that strikes me as positive.

Yes and everyone is still alive.
 
When writing my own novel I found that i had this problem with peripheral female characters. With peripheral characters I am trying to capture someone's essence without giving then much in the way of plot, but the effect can be that a personality is being extrapolated from someone's physical apearence and that they have no depth. Which is true, I suppose. These are sacrifical pawns. So the main problem might be when all females in a novel are no more than sacrificial pawns.

I also find it much easier to write girls than women.

This makes sense to me. You almost want a stereotype for peripheral characters and a lot of the time stereotypes create quick easy images and impressions which have the potential to stay with us -- so they're effective. I imagine it can be a little harder for men because it can be more of a challenge to figure out what might be offensive ... don't think about it that often. I challenge myself with my writing but not so much with characters I can't claim to know anything about or know enough about -- I am too afraid of offending and so stay away from them almost altogether.
 
I challenge myself with my writing but not so much with characters I can't claim to know anything about or know enough about -- I am too afraid of offending and so stay away from them almost altogether.
I'm not so frightened of offending, more of failing completely. My one and only completed novel was criticised, rightly, for having flat and unoriginal characters (including the baddie, who was of course (shoot me now) a woman, and a love-crazed one at that). As I move forwards with my writing, I don't want to repeat those mistakes. I'm only interested in new mistakes. And I've become hyper-sensitive (calm down, Rich, calm down) to making my characters seem real.

I discovered the idea that you can apply method acting to writing. It was a good discovery.
 
On a slightly (but not totally) unrelated note, I have as part of my writing (specifically a totally un-publishable short story I've had a lot of fun writing) been thinking about the male and female brain, it was prompted by investigation into the question as to whether the male brain is more obsessive than the female brain, and why that might be. I was thinking specifically in relation to chess and snooker (two heavily male dominated activities where physical strength/ aggression offer little to no inherent advantages) and came across this article World Snooker: Steve Davis says women will never match top men. Anyway, it got me thinking about whether this (that the male brain is more prone to obsessive behaviour) was true in writing. Are males more obsessive in their pursuit of writing goals? In my experience, I have found that women write more obsessively than men, but realise I am dealing with a statistically irrelevant sample size.
 
We had a family friend. His wife was the midwife who delivered me. When he died, his wife got a...surprise, finding she was now the owner of a.....locomotive engine on a siding. He had *cough* neglected to mention this purchase.

Nothing new under the sun, means common humanity is our qualification to write, and the rest demands research. Nobody can claim it as their right, to go through life not being offended. Well, they can always try I suppose, if they've got no sense of perspective or humour whatsoever, and best of luck to them with that, hehehe.

Now. Salman, do you want to change your mind about this yet. You know, fatwas and all? Salman? Salman?

“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.

If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”

 
The way I see it, if you put your head above the parapet and publish something you are almost bound to offend someone.
Kingsley Amis said "If you can't annoy somebody with what you write, I think there is little point in writing."
I'm not sure I'd take it quite that far, but some people do seem to have very thin skins sometimes.
 
“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.

If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”

Salman Rushdie I guess? Brilliant.

I think I only care about offending certain people about certain things. There are groups of people I take pleasure in offending.
 
On a slightly (but not totally) unrelated note, I have as part of my writing (specifically a totally un-publishable short story I've had a lot of fun writing) been thinking about the male and female brain, it was prompted by investigation into the question as to whether the male brain is more obsessive than the female brain, and why that might be. I was thinking specifically in relation to chess and snooker (two heavily male dominated activities where physical strength/ aggression offer little to no inherent advantages) and came across this article World Snooker: Steve Davis says women will never match top men. Anyway, it got me thinking about whether this (that the male brain is more prone to obsessive behaviour) was true in writing. Are males more obsessive in their pursuit of writing goals? In my experience, I have found that women write more obsessively than men, but realise I am dealing with a statistically irrelevant sample size.

no idea

You'd have to define obsessive to start ... what do you mean by it?
I'm not even sure men's brains are different than women's brains and if there are whether it's because of genetics, hormones, socialization or a combination of all three ...
 
no idea

You'd have to define obsessive to start ... what do you mean by it?
I'm not even sure men's brains are different than women's brains and if there are whether it's because of genetics, hormones, socialization or a combination of all three ...

Just to add - male brains have definitely evolved differently from female brains over the 7 millions years of subsistence & evolution, hunter versus nurturer and gatherer. There are many good books on the subject - ie, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus; or Why Men Don't Listen and Women can't Read Maps. I'm not saying we shouldn't practice equality in all things, but we should take into account the fact of the matter. Read Steve Pinker's books - hard work but top end info - The Stuff of Thought, How the Brain Works, etc.

But it's also fact that though such statistics lean towards a majority view, but there are all the shades between. I'm sure there are some men who listen, and some women who actually can read maps, and I've definitely met some people from Pluto.
 
@ChrisLewando I've no idea where this idea that women can't read maps has come from but I find it really annoying. If you've never used a map and compass before or navigational chart then yes, of course it's confusing, but in my experience people pick it up quite quickly, both male and female.

Sat nav though is the best invention ever!!!
 
Salman Rushdie I guess? Brilliant.

I think I only care about offending certain people about certain things. There are groups of people I take pleasure in offending.

Hehehe...some people positively NEED offending.

Just saw This article Why can't men write women? Plenty do and can of course.

All cleavage and clunkiness – why can’t male authors write women? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

She breasted boobiliy to the stairs, and titted downwards Howwwllllll

@Kirsten 'If you want your children to grow up clever, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more clever, read them more fairy tales', said Albert Einstein. Good one, Albert.
 
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While the criticism of male writers being poor at describing female characters is justified, in some cases, does this mean that female authors are brilliant at describing how men behave? One of the problems with politically correct arguments is that they become highly charged, and no one looks at the issues that are raised from the opposite point of view.

Disclaimer: I'm being mischievous here—on the basis of some of the arguments on how to write about the opposite sex, could it be said that a only a transsexual author could ever create a story that's perfectly balanced?! :rolleyes:
 
I had an entire post written but my browser shut down. Oh well. That’s what I get. I only had a few hundred things to say.

Women do write men better than men write women. We can spend all day long saying that this isn’t so, wishing it weren’t so, because it’s a terrible thing to say, on the surface. We can say it’s man hatred but it’s not. It isn’t men’s fault (Not usually) in any direct sense. The point of me saying something quite possibly offensive is not to blame or to say men can’t write women but to recognize a real phenomenon. It’s difficult to escape it if you don’t recognize it. It’s difficult for a woman to escape it, it must be harder for men.

Women write men better than men write women because the point of view of men has always dominated Western culture. The reason it’s not great that there have been less female writers than male writers isn’t only because there were women who deserved to be writers. It’s because we don’t have as much historical information on how women thought. We don’t have what literature written by women represents—the thoughts, interests, beliefs, and point of view—of women. When you consider this has happened and is still happening in every single field of study and discipline then that’s how much men and women don’t know about women.

You could say writers don’t use pop culture or historical references when writing about women. But I think it’d be difficult to say that we don’t draw on our culture not only when writing but as our personalities form. But it’s even less linear than that. Women draw on their culture to decide who they are, who they can be, and how to present themselves. So then you have both men and women quite possibly and most definitely starting out with some erroneous ideas, ones slanted in the interests of men because their point of view still dominates. How can they not learn some wrong things? Women are very well educated in the male point of view for this reason. They are less educated in their own. Then when you factor in the likely family and social structure and the hard cold truth that although many women work there still exists an odd imbalance of work at home, I think it’s fair to say that the male point of view still dominates.

The price of not having an equal voice in culture or in medicine or in any occupation or field of study isn’t only the faulty assumptions the lack of a feminine presence represents but the lack of information testing those assumptions would provide us. We literally don’t know and its not only men who understand the male point of view better but women. We have heard so much of it. It’s comfortable and homey.

There are words like man hater and shrew which probably aren’t ever in our best interest to use. I’ve used them myself and I’ve been called both. They’re not incredibly fair or insightful words or phrases. They mostly mean we don’t understand. Although, often, only in that moment.

Men have only been inundated with the female point of view via their individual relationships and how often are women told or advised to take it easy with the words? To, watch their tone. To, find better ways of expressing their point of view? Whatever men have wanted to do, thought about doing, there is a man somewhere who has put their voice to it. Women have to wait their turn, calculate the odds, make more sacrifices, be different than their contemporaries and the women who came before them.

The impact of a dominate male point of view isn’t resolved by a few decades where women are able to write and get published. This has happened in my lifetime and even now its still harder for women to get published in many genres and easier to get published in all of the obvious ones. Writing is an art, it should be easier for women and I think it is. Imagine if I wanted to be a rocket scientist. What a very real thing that would be, every single day.

But it isn’t so easy for women that I don’t feel safe saying that the predominance of women in the business side of publishing doesn’t mean the interests of men have fallen to the wayside. Women weren’t taught it’s okay to follow the interests of their own point of view in the same way that men have. It’d be insulting to say we don’t know our own point of view. That’s part of the problem. We get insulted and it stops us from being totally honest with ourselves or one another. Having our own thoughts, interests, and opinions is the easiest part, we can’t fail at that. We have them whether we know them or not. Putting them first and differentiating between a real and valuable interest in what and how men think and feel—valuable if only because we surely have men in our lives who we care about and can benefit from understanding—is less likely. It’s been my observation, because I have proof of none of this, that men are much more comfortable putting their best interests first and unless they are unusual don’t actually have a horse in the race in terms of changing the predominant cultural point of view which is still dominated by men.

After typing all of the above into this white box I realize, there are even people who say there aren’t any differences between men and women. Maybe. I don’t know. We can measure physical differences like brain size and muscle mass and formulate theories about evolution which seem quite likely true. Those differences interest me less than knowing whether we would be more similar in terms of behavior and temperament (even in physical characteristics) if the imbalance in power never existed. I notice that sometimes people say there are no differences between men and women beyond the physical and I think it’s a shortcut, a means of not having to think about the issue or have it dominate or trouble us. Denial is as good a means of escaping artificially imposed limitations as any other. But I also think it’s slightly disrespectful to themselves when women say it. They’re doing what women have always done and pretending something real about themselves isn’t real and they’re doing it because it makes life among men easier. It’s almost hard to blame them.
 
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In The Realm of the Senses

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