Men Writing Women

[doug anderson]

I'm interested in a nuts-and-bolts discussion of this issue. I'm a member of a writing group of five, 3 of which are women, so I'm getting pretty good feedback. Nevertheless, I've never felt as confident writing women characters as writing men.

I'm also aware than there is a tendency of writers to consciously telegraph feminist issues, particularly in film and television writing, where women must have certain attributes in order to be PC: e.g.; they work out, they know self defense, work as supervisors of men, work in professions that a few years ago would have been difficult for them enter -- but these things have become so obvious that it seems that male writers in particular have traded one set of cliches for another.

I have women characters in a novel in progress and I have already overdone it. I have an African-American nun who runs a shelter for trafficked women. She is also a PhD, MD and has a black belt in Krav Maga. I started laughing at myself, and immediately removed the black belt. It seems that I was redressing the balance, but going off the end.

What is most useful to me is the subtle, non PC things that men miss in writing women. I've already learned some of them from my group, but am open to a creative discussion of the issue.

I look forward to your posts.

[Jon Loomis]

Strippers exist, and they're interesting. I've always kind of liked strippers, myself, and that weird subculture is fun to explore. If Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard can write about strippers, by God, so can I.

[I. J. Parker]

Will do my next book in the series about prostitution. There will be lots of women in it, all of them different.

I have been exploring via historical research in print. The "fun" is limited. How do you explore strippers in a current setting?

[Jon Loomis]

How do you explore strippers in a current setting?

With a credit card and a Johnny Walker on the rocks.

[I. J. Parker]

I thought so. And what fun: it's tax-deductible. :)

[Jon Loomis]

'Zackly.

[doug anderson]

Any profession, anything that exists, is fair game for writing. I personally think most strippers and prostitutes are sexual abuse victims who've come to understand their bodies as a form of currency; but they nevertheless are real people with real lives and some of them are great people. When I was very young, I played drums in strip joints. I was underage, but nobody ever asked for my I.D. Some of them had contempt for men and some were sweethearts. I was seventeen, and there was one prostitute who worked the clubs who became very protective of me. I'll never forgotten that little act of courage, as if she were preserving some little part of her soul that would be untouched by what she did. To NOT write about this woman would be to diminish a needed appreciation of her.

[Jon Loomis]

I have a good friend who's an ex-stripper (excuse me, exotic dancer) who is no victim of anything, thank you very much. She got into stripping because she needed cash to pay her tuition (a RISD grad who also did a lot of modeling for figure drawing classes. Lucky classes!) and didn't want to go tens of thousands into debt for a BFA. I have another ex-stripper friend who, at the time, was a single mom who made ten times as a stripper what she made in her day-job doing phone sales. She was a victim of the legal system and a dumbass ex-boyfriend who never paid child support, but otherwise had her head on straight and saw the job for what it was--a job.

[doug anderson]

I have no doubt there are perfectly healthy women doing that. But I know some who have been through a real horror show growing up.

[Jon Loomis]

Yep--I know a couple of those, too.

[Dana King]

Which goes back to a point made previously, I forget by who. We can't make too many assumptions about anyone based on a couple of superficial items about them--job, marital status, education, etc. A character can be or do whatever, they just have to be a "real" person. No two strippers (prostitutes, cops, teachers, junkies, pilots, retail clerks...)are the same.

This has been an excellent and thought-provoking discussion, Doug. Thanks for starting it.

[John Desjarlais]

Very good guidelines to keep in mind, thank you. I think I'm guilty of only one of those items, and that's the one about being a looker and a butt-kicker at the same time. My Selena can take care of herself, having grown up in a family with three brothers and having received some self-defense training in the DEA. But you're right - with her smaller size, she still can't deck a big guy with a punch. But she would try - after disablng the fellow in the jewels with her Guiseppe Zanottis.

[minervaK]

I don't usually have problems with a good-looking women being butt-kickers; it's extremely thin women being butt-kickers that I find hard to accept. I do realize that in modern western culture extremely thin=beautiful for the female gender, but that's a stereotype that needs exploding, badly.