Sexism and the Single Writer
A memestorm currently shaking some big trees in the literary blogosphere is Joss Whedon’s essay on global sexism. Wait–”sexism” doesn’t go far enough. How about “world-wide tendency of societies to consistently abuse, denigrate, and dehumanize women since the very bowels of history”? That may just cover it.
Whedon talks about the horrific “honor killing” of seventeen year old Dua Khalil, whose murderers recorded the deed with their cell phone video cameras and uploaded it “to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.” He also talks about the upcoming movie Captivity, whose trailers make it look like nothing so much as a snuff film fantasy: a woman is kidnapped, tortured, and killed in pornographic detail. Which spectacle is supposed to entice us, a supposedly enlightened, egalitarian western audience, to come see the rest of the movie. Because it’s cool.
These two things, Whedon says, are of a kind if not on the same scale. They slot neatly onto the shelf marked “Brutalizing Women Is Entertaining.” Which can be next to other shelves–”Women Are For Sex,” “Women Are Property,” “Better Dead Than Female”–found on a bookshelf labeled “Women Aren’t People.”
Reactions to his essay have been varied. Personally, I think it was a mistake for Whedon to speculate about “womb envy,” as it has distracted much of the discussion from the very important question he offers it as an answer to:
What is wrong with women?
I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.
How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it.
It’s a good question. But it’s only important to answer it in the service of answering an even more important question: How do we get humanity to stop buying into?
As a writer, I ask myself that a lot. I’m religious enough, or superstitious enough if you prefer, to believe in the spiritual idea of vocation, that each of us has something we are called to do with our lives. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. My husband’s life work is computer programming. My father’s field is medicine. To the extent that we feel called to do these things, I believe they are what we were meant to do. They are why we’re here. I’m not going to go into who or what I believe is put us here–that way lies religious argumentation–but I believe it put us here with a purpose.
It has the potential to be a high-pressure idea. What good is my writing to the world? Words can change minds. Am I supposed to change minds with my writing?
How do I do that?
For many writers, their words are their pulpit. This works out well when they are script-writers, sermon-writers, writers of philosophy and debate. There are arenas in which preaching is exactly what you’re expected to do.
Not so much fiction. Aside from that fanatic core of readers who agree with you and prize message above medium (think of all those millions who don’t care how shoddily Left Behind is written), most people don’t appreciate their entertainment turning into a lecture. I mean, that way lies pretty much everything Sheri S. Tepper has written since 2002. (The Fresco, I’m looking at you.) That way lies two-dimensional villains who make straw-men out of those who disagree with the author, and Mary Sue protagonists who expect applause for knocking the straw-men down.
How does a novelist get under his reader’s skin and sow there seeds of change, without offending the reader’s sense of fair dealing?
I’ve only one idea. And its effectiveness is debatable. But as ideas go, I think it’s at least pointing in the right direction.
When writing to combat bad assumptions, don’t propagate those assumptions.
Really. Because it’s insidious. Raised on Disney’s puffy-sleeved heroine warbling “Someday My Prince Will Come,” how guilty am I of writing female characters that wait and wait and wait for their princes? What about violent motifs such as glamorized on-stage sexualized brutality, women sacrificed purely to give heroes a motive or a backstory? How about relationships between the sexes?
Too much analysis has the potential to paralyze a writer. But it’s worthwhile, I think, to keep an editorial eye open for whether the goals towards which my “good guys” strive actually model a world I want to live in.
What do you think?
June 1st, 2007 at 11:37 am
I think that brutalization and objectification of women is part of this reality that we’re dealing with, and it *needs* to be addressed in fiction.
The problem is when female characters are, as you say, victimized just to give the male characters an excuse to be heroic. If you’ve got a female character who has no personality or character concept…and she’s just a victim, then this is a problem.
I didn’t mind “Grindhouse”, because I didn’t see violence against women as a form of entertainment. If anything, the villian was set up as an excuse to make the *women* look heroic. He was portrayed, not just as a bad person, but as a complete baffoon. There’s a qualitative difference between using violence against women as a theme to be dealt with and using it for entertainment.
Your awareness of these issues is probably going to prevent you from making “mary sues” and “straw men”. Especially since you know what it’s like to be a woman. At least you’re asking the questions.
I don’t really buy into the idea that men and women envy each other’s reproductive organs…unless they’re transgendered or just curious about how the other half lives. I don’t have any answers as to where sexism started.
I’ve met a lot of women who are sexist against women. I’ve run into more of these than women who have trouble getting along with men. I think it’s an example of internalized oppression to view members of one’s own sex with disdain and mistrust. When I look at how women are portrayed in the media, I can see why women have been trained to see themselves and other women as inferior.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
The problem is when female characters are, as you say, victimized just to give the male characters an excuse to be heroic.
On that note, I can’t believe I forgot to link “Women In Refrigerators.” I have now linked it.
It’s a complex issue, and I take comfort from your response. However, awareness of these issues didn’t keep me from writing a leading lady in The Drowning Boy (draft 1 going on 30) who comes to Seattle in order to wait and wait and wait around for the leading man. Her functions then comprise A) backstory and B) attempted assault target for the antagonist. Urgh. What was I thinking?