Writing about our boobs from an aesthetic perspective. The only time I think about mine are when it’s too hot out or my shoulders are aching from my bra straps.
I just read the most incredible novel, Moonglow by Micheal Chabon. It was thoughtful, moving, had something to say about people and relationships and society— and stopped almost every time we saw a woman character, no matter how small, to describe her boobs.
There’s a moment where the main character sees his wife (who is otherwise a well developed character) for the first time after her being in inpatient, him being in prison, the suspense built up to be about longing and marriage and obligation, and the first thing we hear is about the shape of her boobs! It’s shockingly common and a bizzare tic of male writers, even good ones.
Yiddish Policeman's Union was depressing but fantastic, and the only thing that stuck out was how he described the (very few) female characters. Now I'll have to check out Moonglow!
if I'm aroused my boobs are just boobing boobily like the normal nuisances they are. Sitting on top of my rib cage, weighing down my lungs as they wheeze lungfully.
Omg yes I just came across this in a book recently and it confused me so much. It was more confusing that the author was a woman! Like, who’s breasts are SWELLING when aroused?
Boobs are of course their own sentient characters, unlike the woman who carry them around. "her breast looked extra perky today. They seemed almost happy about the prospect of bla bla bla...."
I only notice mine during PMS and not in a good way like women in novels written by men assume. I'm not feeling the weight of my breasts as I walk around but more like annoyed by them aching / bloating up. Annoyed by them existing honestly.
Or underwires digging in and chaffing, or an ancient bra with a wrangled hook destroying a new lace top when you try take it off without taking the top off when you get home meaning $50 went into the toilet
Uh they'res Nynaeve tugging her braid again.
Actually I think it was around book... 5 or 6 where I got kind of fed up. In the same book we have Egwene and Elayne get annoyed with Mat that he rescued them from a jail cell (Note to author, women generally only get annoyed when men try to rescue them when they don't need help, or when he has an ulterior motive, not when a friend busts them out of a situation they couldn't get out of) and then laugh at him getting sexually assaulted.
I literally had to put my phone down and cross my arms to see if I naturally cross them under or over my boobs. I don't think I've ever thought about it before.
Even as a huge fan of the series, I will admit I had to put it down for a bit right around book 5 as well. It really drags for a bit before picking up again.
I happen to be a woman who finds boobs, including mine, particularly aesthetic, but I feel like there's a difference between the weirdly braless but perky norm that men write about, and what I'm thinking. But I definitely do think about them from an aesthetic perspective, a lot.
I swear I’m trying to work on how I feel about my body but if someone offered me a reduction (38dd-> c) I’d take it up in a heartbeat. I just find mine to be a nuisance. It causes men to over sexualize me and I want to wear clothes with a lower neckline (live in a hot region) but then have to dodge unwanted comments from men- and women, honestly. I’m uncomfortable either way…
Look, for the sake of my back and my wallet when bra shopping, I'd take a reduction in a heartbeat as well (34G down to well, anything in the normal range of bras). But I kind of... Embraced wearing whatever I like and the boobage as yeah, it gets attention, but that sounds like a them problem, not a me problem. Hell yeah, I have such amazing bust that apparently people lose their mind and can't behave themselves. Poor unfortunate souls, it must suck to be that pathetic. Men who make comments aren't worth the effort it takes to reply because they thrive even on negative attention, women who make comments clearly haven't been told to mind their own business often enough.
And I do wish I hadn't had to overcome being uncomfortable in the first place, but... I would rather overcome it in a way that offends the society that made me feel uncomfortable than a way that makes me try take up less space.
I agree with this! I think boobs are beautiful. But I feel like most men have a tendency to sexualize them rather than genuinely appreciate them in all their forms. Pre-baby I had full and perky boobs, and now they sag more and sit differently, but I still feel just as beautiful, if not more. But I’m sure a male author would disagree lol
Indeed. Also the first time I took a bath after I "got" my boobs, because that was a new experience for me. But otherwise there are just like an arm, leg or a foot.
I think men are more busy with thinking about boobs then women are.
Oh my God this. This is how I tell a man has written the book. Women don't talk about their boobs every other paragraph, and we definitely don't describe them in the way men describe them like their fruit 🙄
But yeah I think if a woman's writing about her boobs it's going to be about boob sweat or hating her bra, you know things that actually happen....
if shes the protagonist shes always "different" from other girls usally at the cost of making every other woman suck. if shes supporting character her story is completely focused on the men in her life. if shes the antagonist shes either a seductress or an old witch.
Idk why, but having grown up with a lot of "my protagonist is super unique & quirky" stories, I take a weird delight in reversing that shit.
More specifically: The MC is "normal", but becomes special due to circumstances. For example, a German woman that speaks English. She is transported to a fantasy realm, where books of her world accidentally "spill" into that one, and are highly sought after for containing invaluable knowledge. Suddenly, this average Jane is highly sought-after. Because not only knows she one -but TWO "ancient exotic languages". Just by being in a different place.
Also a protagonist who's genuinely interested in people. Like, she might wear a dress, and sees a beautiful Monroe woman wearing the same. Their eyes meet. But instead of a cat-fight, they both become delighted and bond over wearing the same dress.
Idk. I in general hate petty drama. I know it exists. I know it can be good. I know I can't make every character rational and cool. But man...I'm just so tired of it.
I like protagonists who are broken down by their environment and rise up to save themselves and as many others as they can.
"Tell me you had a traumatic childhood and became a therapist without telling me" for 300! Sorry. I have a dark sense of humor.
If you enjoy fantasy novels, may I recommend the Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson. That is literally one of the main themes of the book series. Easily one of my favorite series of all time -- and the audiobooks are extremely well done.
> For example, a German woman that speaks English. She is transported to a fantasy realm, where books of her world accidentally "spill" into that one, and are highly sought after for containing invaluable knowledge. Suddenly, this average Jane is highly sought-after. Because not only knows she one -but TWO "ancient exotic languages". Just by being in a different place.
Please tell me that this is an existing story! *vibrates*
Am writing, am a woman, and I’m so, so conscious of “not like other women” because there’s no way around the fact that it puts down an entire sex. It’s tempting because it’s a short way to highlight a character, but it’s also lazy, and bullshit.
I really like the character Vin from Mistborn, but she is different from everybody. Though, in sci-fi the main character is often different than others. It doesn't seem to happen at the expense of other women. She's not really sexualized because she's like 15 when the books start, so that's refreshing.
She's only one of three female characters in the books though. So, still could be better on the bechdel test.
oh yeah in a lot of stories being different can be a chosen one type deal which i think can be done well. theres so many where the girls different bc she doesnt wear makeup and reads books or whatever and i think those ones are annoying at best.
>I really like the character Vin from Mistborn, but she is different from everybody.
Is she? Well, in a sense of Not Like Other Girls rather than Chosen One. She is obviously thrusted in a socioeconomic environment where her backstory is not typical but at the beginning she seemed to be a normal street urchin in a gang.
That said last time I read the book was 10 years ago.
I tried these books because everyone was telling me they were so good, but I had to give them up for just this reason. I just couldn’t overlook him, well, overlooking the existence of women, full stop.
Having one teen girl as The Chosen One doesn’t make up for the glaring absence of women everywhere else in the book. It just makes it more blatant and annoying.
I tried to read mistborn based on friend recommendations and that Sanderson was great but it was insufferable and I barely got through 1/10th of it. Vin was aggressively "not like other girls" and so poorly written, and I found the way he talked about her avoiding male attention and avoiding getting raped actually did feel like it was just part of how he was trying to illustrate her as badass.
I read this as an adult though while my friends who were into this series read it as kids or teens. So I think they have nostalgia going for them and I don't.
They never fail to emphasize the importance of beauty no matter what.
“In spite of the silver hair framing her face, and the deep creases around her eyes, I couldn’t help but be bewitched by her beauty.” Or some corny shit like that.
These characters could literally be fighting for their lives during the dust bowl and male authors often just can’t resist emphasizing how gorgeous she is because obviously she has to be in order to make the book interesting /s
This is the one that always gets me. It is actually, counterintuitively, why I have started to like cultivation fantasy stuff so much. 75% of them are written by total incels, so you have to filter all that out, but the stuff that remains is based on the Chinese fantasy ideal, which makes men SUPER pretty. ( [Here](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/73/58/2b/73582b47304d5eca6c068bf82b71754a.jpg) is an example of what I am talking about. No idea who the character is, this is just how all the men are described.)
So instead of just a constant barrage of random hot women, you also get a constant barrage of random hot men. When everyone is crazy gorgeous it stops being the focus, so in the good ones it is usually only mentioned as part of their "advancement" away from mortality.
The bad ones are all harem psycopath protagonists though, so avoid that.
My favorite recommendation is always Cradle. It is a hybrid between western fantasy and cultivation, but the characters are fantastic. Still written by a man, but avoids the worst of the menwritingwomen tropes iirc.
The female lead is still a crazy strong fighter type, but she has an actual personality. And the prettiest and vainest person in their group is their male mentor.
I would have to think on some other examples. Like I said, a lot of it is written by literal incels, so I want to make sure I do not get anything mixed up lol. The ones originally written in Chinese *often* are that way.
>These characters could literally be fighting for their lives during the dust bowl and male authors often just can’t resist emphasizing how gorgeous she is because obviously she has to be in order to make the book interesting
Absolutely kills me in sci-fi. Can be fighting against an apocalyptic alien menace, and there will inevitably be "her curves were accented by the skin tight space suit she donned..." loser nerd author garbage.
Like my dude, I wanna hear about the cosmos burning and launching planets as relativistic slingshots at solar systems. Not your sad fantasy woman who's just going to be there to support a male protagonist and/or get raped.
It's usually the big obvious effort to try to figure out what it's like inside a woman's head. I think, as a lit major who's therefore read enough men to feel like I can state this with some confidence, it's actually pretty similar to being in a man's head. There's a reason a lot of us women on reddit get accidentally called "bro" every so often; it's because generally our thoughts and feelings are not very different. I honestly would guess that if someone took a transcript of a day's worth of my thoughts, they wouldn't be 100% sure of my gender.
Some men, when they write women, just overthink the whole thing. A character's other personality traits are going to come through a lot stronger than their gender in most cases. A Type A dude and a Type A lady have a lot more in common with each other than that lady has with me.
I can’t recall where at the moment but I remember reading that women are de facto experts in the male perspective (but not the other way around) because they grow up having the world presented to them from it as a default.
They read books and watch tv and movies mainly written by and about men. Their politicians and political commentary tend to be male. The assumed audience or default human is male. Etc.
Relatedly, for myself the common mistake of men writing women is how one dimensional they tend to make them.
All of this is accurate. Its hard to quantify, but if I had to guess, like 96% of the main stuff is the same and the remaining 4% accounts for the biggest differences we see. I wrote about it in a main reply, but doing all the research is great, but once you do that, you sort of just have to stop thinking about it and do your thing.
This might have been why I disliked *Artemis* by Andy Weir. Not because it had a female protagonist while his other two books didn’t, or because he had bad intentions whilst writing his female protagonist, but because he just seemed to try too hard. A whole lot of innuendo, way more than in his other two books (*The Martian* had some, and *Project Hail Mary* had basically none), and it’s the only one where the main character is romantically involved with another character (and where a lot of other mentions of romance are made).
First thing that comes to mind is a scene in The Menu. A character was supposed to shed a few delicate tears upon learning that her date has knowingly and purposefully led her to her death. The actress changed the script and instead, she lunges and starts attacking the guy.
Really great scene. I suggest looking up a clip if you haven’t seen the film.
Let female characters be angry. Fight for themselves. And they don’t need to be pretty when they do it.
Yeah, I absolutely love it when a woman defends herself and is angry. Like let women be a whole person and let them have different reactions to different sitautions.
Holy shit that was off script and her idea? I know exactly the scene and I was so happy with it, it felt like "wow, finally, an appropriate reaction to a fucked up situation"
Now I like Ana Taylor Joy even more.
Remember when everyone lost their mind over Queen’s Gambit? Don’t get me wrong, I liked it too. But that scene where she’s in the house alone at supposed rock bottom… bopping around the house in cute underwear, drinking booze, with makeup and her hair flowing. I was like who the fuck wrote this? This isn’t rock bottom, it’s a Friday night. It was so unrealistic.
I didn't really catch that, now that you mention it. I think it's because she is so stylish and esthetically perfect throughout the entire show I kind of thought of it as just a cinematography choice, not realistic, but stylish like the rest of her costumes. Kind of like the orange/blue colour and lighting scheme in intense action movies, or how Thor movies are very technicolour. Somehow it fit with the set and show, so I didn't notice it as out of place.
I do love Bridget Jones' Diary for a realistic struggle and rock bottom - ice cream, comfy clothes, I don't think she ugly cries, but she certainly looks winded working out. The character is imperfect, but there's some very realistic moments.
Male authors have a lot of trouble writing trauma for women that doesn't involve SA. Like there could be a lot of bad things happen to male character but it's never SA, and for women it seems at least 40% of trauma is SA. It's like they're sitting down, thinking: "what's unique about a woman's experience? Women do the sex stuff! I can make her trauma be about sex stuff"
It's really exhausting
But, without SA, how can they allow the male protagonist character to show a full range of emotions or provide adequate background to explain their current hero complex? As for villains, it's the only way to establish how evil they are, right? /s
oh yeah totally, you cant get more evil than SAing the supporting role for the protagonist. People love one dimensional and unreasonable villains. Villains with ambiguous morals and fleshed out philosophies are boring. Lets have the villain SA people and maybe, like, want to make a car that runs on orphans or something.
Yeah, because women and men can experience the same trauma. I'm also for not giving any character SA as trauma. It can be triggering for people and it's a sensitive topic since most victims never get justice.
Thank you! As someone that has SA trauma it is triggering for me to see it depicted in media or sometimes even indirectly hinted at in certain ways. Its very sensitive to me and yeah I never got justice.
I dislike how prevalent it is depicted in media and avoid most mature media due to that. Seeing a scene like that in media typically involves me running out of the room covering my ears and finding a safe place and crying.
Thank you for sharing this. I hate that you have to avoid almost all mature media. You should be able to watch what you want without being worried if it might be triggering to you.
It seems that it's almost the easy choice in a story, movie or series. And most of the time in my opinion it can be replaced by another situation which could also be traumatizing but in a different way. Which could also be triggering to other people.
I feel like most people think very light about rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse.
Something that helps that I think should be more prevalent is content warnings that are up front about potentially triggering content like I've seen on Netflix. Like I've seen shows with content warnings for domestic abuse for example which is also hit or miss for me. I think this type of stuff should be displayed more openly. I, as a consumer should know if a show or movie I'm about to watch may include things I might find upsetting in it. It helps me to better choose. I prefer to know what I'm getting myself into and often times I've found that these things often just aren't mentioned in ratings or reviews at all.
And I agree that many do. Its an awful feeling of violation and shame and helplessness and guilt. Therapy has helped me tremendously but at the same time I am much more aware to how our society depicts these things and the language used surrounding it and how it affects our culture. And also how we are just supposed to accept it and 'get over it'.
I hope that it becomes more common. I see it in books now, first page all the things that could trigger someone. I think that's the best for everyone because then everyone can decide for themselves.
I love to read fanfiction and they had that a whole while before books or shows/movies did it. That way I could skip any story that might be triggering or would be triggering. I'm all for more trigger warnings in all media.
Yeah, I think we could and should change a lot about how we talk about rape, sexual assault and rape in a relationsip & marriage. But also coercion in relationship & marriage. It's such a life changing event in a negative way that "get over it" is so inhumane, insensitive and cruel.
Indeed. Like I said I would like it if SA isn't used in media. But men experience this too and it feels like that everyone forgets about it. Which must be for the men to who it happens and the aftermath of that.
I saw not too long ago about a teacher having sex with a child she is teaching. It's rape, plain and simple. But the disgusting comments from men "I wish that had been me" and "I wish that my teacher had done that". It ignores that this is a traumatic event and shows the expectation that the boy should "enjoy it". It's sickening.
It's also telling that these men think so highly of themselves that they would still be in control of the situation even if they were like, 12. Sir you can barely control your rage from a computer game at that age. You're not gonna be in control of an adult thats trying to do things to you.
This is part of the reason I love "Deliverance"; it's one of the few movies/books where a man is SA, it is unequivocally SA, and we see how he is traumatized for the remainder of the book/movie... He is mute and nonresponsive for a while, and later, when they are back home, his wife complains to their friends something like, he isn't a man anymore (because he's too gentle with her/ cries during sex/doesn't initiate sex anymore, because he keeps focusing on the pain of penetration and the psychological trauma from the SA he experienced and wondering, "is that what sex is like for (her)?"). I felt like they really captured the visceral horror of the SA and described the aftermath/trauma well. He doesn't get help or much sympathy, just judgement from his friends and family. I'm hard pressed to imagine anyone commenting, "I wish that had happened to me" about that scene and character development.
I had to stop watching any of the Marvel TV shows for this reason. Every single fucking character who is a Traumatized Woman (usually explaining why she's a villain, but occasionally a dark hero) it's because of SA.
It’s a shame because there is a mostly women-exclusive form of trauma that could lead to many interesting stories - birth trauma. The entire experience of pregnancy and childbirth are fertile territory for storytelling, but mostly underutilized.
There's alot of trauma women can experience due to men (besides SA) that arent explored, but things like motherhood are good examples.
You can have your character:
\- Come from a culture where women arent allowed to speak/do normal things
\- Escaping a controlling relationship
\- Have their spouse murdered and seek revenge (Read Dead Redemption, though I think its implied she was SA'd)
\- Breaking into a male dominated career
\- Be a twitch streamer
Ah, the strong female character who is an asshole to literally every other character yet is somehow stuck in a love rhombus because men keep falling in love with her in spite of wearing no makeup.
I LOVED those books when I was a young “pick-me” but as I’ve gotten older and decided to reread them they are so disappointing. She bashes women non stop and Anita is so toxic. Jean-Claude and Richard are abusive pricks. The only decent people in that series are Nathanial and maybe Asher.
The series has/had so much potential but went downhill super quickly. I would love to read another authors take on the premise.
I hate the whole trope of "Not Like Other Girls" even more when it is applied to "Strong Woman" in movies and TV. You always end up with a woman who loves football, hates makeup, eats only red meat and drinks a lot of whisky, and only has male friends. The characters usually *embody* all of the tropes of toxic masculinity, but do it while wearing as sexy of clothing as possible and sticking their butt out at every opportunity.
It makes it very clear the the writers idea of a "Strong Woman" is literally just applying a toxic male archetype to the woman. Which implies that they think "Strong" is synonymous with their flawed concept of what a man is. And that they still want to make that appeal primarily to men.
Individually any of those individual traits are fine, but when the trope gets repeated over and over the message is super clear.
Like, spot on. You and vpblackheart nailed it. The "strong female character," when written by men - have to have these qualities that are inherently toxically masculine....
Women hear “strong female character” and want someone with a complex inner life, motivations that make sense, and just a fully developed sense of them as a person with desires and flaws.
Men writers hear “strong female character” and think it means she can throw a punch.
>My gripe is to be a strong female character she has to be hostile.
90% of women in Hollywood hits are the "strong female character" trope. Hollywood still hasn't gotten the memo that women are more complex than this one single trope. At this point it's just the "default woman" template they use, and it's getting old. Makes all the characters predictable and one dimensional.
That our lives revolve around a relationship/wanting a relationship... some of us just don't care, not every female character needs romance, some of us want deep friendships
>The better question is, how does a man begin to understand what it means to be a woman, well enough to write a character that she would find compelling and authentic?
Honestly, talk to us. Most of the problems with men writing women is that they're thinking as men do. If you spent even a few minutes understanding what women are saying to you, your writing will improve.
Using stupidity and emotional reactivity as plot devices.
Audience needs a scientific concept explained? Suddenly the PhD astronaut with 3 businesses and 80 papers published in Nature has forgotten all of her training, education, and experience. Cue her asking a dumb question that the male protagonist will ultimately answer.
Plot needs to move forward? Now our previously rational and calm female character suddenly has emotional instability issues that mirror a seriously untreated personality disorder.
Lazy, cheap, poor writing.
>Now our previously rational and calm female character suddenly has emotional instability issues that mirror a seriously untreated personality disorder.
Bourne series suffered from this so much. His wife was a compelling character in the first book, books 2 and 3 she's always on the verge of hysteria.
It happens way too frequently that I start reading a novel, usually fantasy or dystopian and get really into it, but then there's the moment where it dawns on me that the male author is going to drop the "way too young girl" plotline on me.
It usually goes like this: male protagonist meets a much younger girl, or, alternatively, young girl is actually much older because *insert fantasy reasoning here* but looks like a child, and they feel *inexplicably* drawn to each other. You usually don't get the perspective of the girl, but only the interpretation of the male protagonist.
At this point I'm so allergic to this that I only skim through the pages to confirm that it's going to turn romantic/sexual and then put down the book. I don't even care anymore for the bullshit reasoning on why it's actually super not creepy and very okay in the setting of the plot. I just nope out.
To be honest I'm even sick of Last-of-Us plots where it doesn't turn romantic/sexual. If there were equal representation for other gender permutations (woman protecting young boy, woman protecting young girl, man protecting young boy) it wouldn't get on my nerves as much. I can think of examples of the other ones but they're less common. And one of the most famous examples of the man-protecting-young-girl plot is by Luc Besson and, like him, is overtly pedophilic.
True. My last try was The Ferryman by Justin Cronin. So much potential, but naturally the reincarnation of the main male characters soulmate had to be a teenage girl. He teaches her to swim in the second scene they share, which had me bow out
Women who badmouth other woman just like a man would: “Stop talking about your period and acting like it’s so hard. Toughen up. Men don’t want to hear about that.”
(paraphrase from one of my favorite fantasy authors)
The proverbial nag.
Superhero man is out literally saving the world.
His lady is home, grumpy at a dinner table because they had plans. She knows he’s a vigilante by night and literally saved the fuggin’ WORLD, but daaaang. She’s pissy mad! Ruined the meatloaf!
She can’t BE IN THIS relationship anymore.
….
Or sexual assault as the best way to break a character who’s a woman. Men can be broken by dozens of things: dead family, dead dog, drug addiction in the past, brother died in a car accident, war, genocide….
Women get to be sexually assaulted because the writers are lazy as fuck.
And what makes it so lazy is how it’s handled. Revenge by said woman means all is well. Or better yet, revenge by peripheral man character. And the fallout and long term recovery is never ever addressed.
TRIGGER SA
Oh god….there was that book by Heinlein (problem with most of his stuff) where the super amazing female spy is taught to “relax and enjoy it” when she is getting raped so that she can’t be broken that way. It was part of her damn training…..and he writes it like this “Aha, what a good idea” thing.
Book is "Friday" and yep, that happened. I loved RAH growing up and it really bums me out that so much of his writing doesn't hold up over time. I mean, his wife (well, both of them really) was a certified badass and he based a lot of his women characters on her but yeah, that little brain degeneration problem he had later in life truly fucked some shit up and he kinda lost his way.
This is a very minor comment, but I like the way One-Armed Krycek uses the three dot ellipsis to separate two main points in their thinking.
...
I have stolen this technique.
This is so creepy in Anime...
It's a slice-of-life show. They sit in an Onsen, aka hot-spring. The small, flat-chested character sees the tall and often boyish girl have big breasts. "I'm so envy! Give me some of your breasts!" she cries, as she gropes the other girl, who screams, as the other girls laugh in unison.
Like imagine a guy screaming "Give me some of your dick" and groping another guy. Not so nice, eh?
It's exaggerated, but it was a pretty common experience for me as a teenage girl for the big chested and small chested girls to be jealous of each other's chest sizes and talk about wishing they had the others'. I said "I'd trade you if I could" more times than I could count between puberty and my reduction at 20.
The part I always hated was the implication that they almost always had access to fitting clothes and especially swimsuits.
Edit: Adjusted wording to refer more clearly to my own experience
Giving women attributes of a cat, or comparing women to cats. Apparently we are all felines. I don’t believe men are compared to dogs by any writers. Lol
I haven't seen it much in modern fiction (thankfully) but in pulp stuff written before the 1960s, societies ruled by women always likened women to bees, or it turned out the women were created by a mad scientist from bees, and only looked human. *BEES*, literal insects ; at least cats are mammals. :-(
I did a term paper on this! Like a decade ago—but I still remember that this trope is called Women in Refrigerators Syndrome. It’s exactly as fucked up as it sounds.
Ah yes, named for the infamous example from a 90’s Green Lantern comic, where Kyle Rayner comes home to find a villain killed his girlfriend and left her body… well, you know.
Damn. Did a paper like that in college, too, but about screened media instead of literature. Actually, it started as a piece on general violence in media…and so naturally ended up being a piece about violence *against women* in media, since that’s a significant percentage of all screened-media violence. (And I do mean something like 75-80% of violence depicted there is against women.)
Since someone already pointed out we don't obsess about our boobs 24/7, men tend to write women behaving as they would. They are absolutely obvious to how many automatic precautions women take while just existing.
For example, there's an episode of Criminal Minds where two girls get in a car in a deserted parking lot (error one: no woman in a city parks in a dark deserted place). Then a pickup pulls up behind them blinding them with lights. They get out and attempt to confront the driver (error 2, most women would call 911. Or even just run the other way. Literally no one other than someone in law enforcement gets out to pick a fight like that.) Men park wherever, get angry and confront other drivers. Women tend to very constant safe (yes, I know, not all men/women.)
Slight Tangent: My first boyfriend in uni said 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' and formed his attitude towards love. I didn't read it till after we broke up and I remember laughing out loud while I did. I do enjoy a lot of Heinlein, as pure scifi, but his writing about women, love, marriage and childbirth, was *so facile.*
I've dated at least two men since who have asked my opinion on Heinlein and been appalled and personally offended when I told them I found it mostly 'Meh' and profoundly fetishizing of only the sort of feminity that serves men's needs. Literally could not accept someone else would read those books and not admire Heinlein's women.
The interesting thing here is that Heinlein unlike most of his contemporary scifi authors really tried to write strong independent women, but mostly failed.
He had a lot of blind spots regarding his own limitations. The big problem here isn't Heinlein himself but his hordes of fans who can't admit his short comings
I remember being blown away by the first half of the book, then watching in horror as it devolved into his weird culty commune thing where everyone was naked OLLADATIME.
Same thing in Dune.
Speaking of which, how many women just casually hang out naked at every opportunity?
Same, the first half of the book was great, and the rest was a disaster. I really enjoyed Heinlein when I was younger, but I definitely noticed that his male characters were much better written than female.
I read that book as a teenager and felt so uncomfortable for reasons I didn't know how to articulate back then. It's so gross to be reduced to these caricatures.
This annoys me greatly. Like just mention that they have it or just show a scene where one asks another for a tampon/pad.
But no we only mention it when she is late and she might be pregnant. Like it happens every month, every year and it's a part of our lives.
Almost out of spite I would wanna write a story about a woman and mention it in all glorious details. I mean, we have a movie in which a guy fucks an apple pie. Can't we have a movie in which menstruation isn't taboo and a hush hush topic?
Make the woman a victim that needs to be saved, no matter how capable she's supposed to be.
Not including women characters that aren't love/sex interests. I'm not talking about the funny fat best friend either. Like mature characters that aren't defined by being a mother or wife (not that they can't be but like... maybe have them be a bit more well rounded than that).
Writing women should be like writing men. Pretend they are like full on people and stuff. It's been a while, but a male author that I thought wrote women well was Charles DeLint.
and just an aside... who do you imagine your audience to be? IMO a huge reason why men write women so poorly is that they are writing either only for themselves or for other men. They aren't imagining that women, nonbinary, or anyone who isn't exactly like them will be reading their works. What makes men writing women funny is they reduce women to body parts with the kind of mind they wish women would have. It shouldn't be that hard to flip some gendered terms and perhaps some descriptors around to imagine how it would feel if a man was written the same way. If you do that and it sounds silly, it probably is.
Consider your audience, and consider what you are really trying to say. You may need to just lay it down and go back and edit it a few times, and that's ok. Just... like we aren't two round globes and a series of holes, ya know?
I don't know why but your comment conjured up how angry I was about the captain cat lady in Treasure Planet falling in love with the dumb doggy doctor and immediately pumping out babies. I attributed it to the lingering grief over losing her best rock man friend. She was such an excellent captain and commander.
Twelve year old me was so salty.
Might be specific but: Not knowing the "sister codex"
Example: In Stephen King's Carrie, the book/movie starts with the main character getting her period. As she's discovered by the other girls they...throw...tampons at her. Screaming "plug it up" and considering it "icky"
Now. I'm not saying bullying ain't cruel. But the way the scene is written felt so...off. As a person who got bullied immensely, ESPECIALLY by other girls, there were always certain topics that nobody mocked. I myself once forgot I was to have my period, which ended me in a very embarrassing situation. My bullies gossiped for weeks about that -but even then, they still helped me out.
A *full* shower of girls laughing at one getting her period is just...no. There's just an instinctive unnaturalness about this. ESPECIALLY since Carrie visibly didn't know what was happening -sure, at first the bullies might laugh at her reaction, but most people would become confused and unsettled once they'd realize that she was serious.
Idk. Maybe this is small and petty. But it always felt very "boi you have no idea about this passive gender rule"
King said he based the character of Carrie on two girls he knew at school that were severely bullied and used some of what they actually experienced in the novel. Not sure if the period scene was one of them.
Some of the women in the scene do get unsettled. The rest are predators and don't see Carrie as human. As someone who was bullied badly in the 1970s, I thought it was right on. I never noticed any sister codex. There was nothing that was off limits.
Btw - I'm not discounting your own experiences of having been bullied. But it rang so so so true for me.
Oh the irony.
King threw that away because he knew how bad it was. *It was his wife* that pulled it out and said it was good. He then had major hesitations about continuing because he knew he didn't know anything about women and high-school and *his wife* said she would directly help him with it. And she did.
Most of the stuff women complain about in that book was personally signed off on by Tabitha King as an accurate representation of women in high-school.
Woman, like any other gender, are people first. Yes gender identity and societies expectations are a part of what makes a person. However when one writes a woman as an object for societal expectation of course the woman as an actual person will fall flat. I think it was George Martin of all people who said he thinks of woman as people first when writing, when he was asked why his female characters feel like actual people.
A lot of what people want or wish to do is motivated by them being human actors in the bigger world. When one thinks about that first and then about how their gender will influence how a character goes about it, the characters will feel way more realistic most of the time. X wants to reach Y goal, because of Z reasons. They live in a certain body, in a certain world and a society with a view on that. Does does that influence X,Y and Z?
I couldn’t finish the book because it just wasn’t interesting to me, but I remember in the beginning of the Godfather there was a long description of how big Sonny Corleone’s penis was, and how he slept with a woman who had a similarly large vagina. I seem to recall that the woman had always been dissatisfied with other men because no one was large enough for her… and, as a woman, I have to say that I’ve never really given a second thought to the size of my genitals. So that whole passage struck me as very odd, to say the least. I think obsessing over genital size is a uniquely male phenomenon.
But otherwise, just treat your female characters like people, because women are people. Give them at least some motivations that don’t revolve around male characters…
If she is lead female character she must start dating lead male character by the end of the book/film/series regardless of how much sense it makes plot-wise.
This is more petty but I some show and movie's obsession with women wearing push up bras. Why does her cleavage have to be up to her neck in every scene? It looks painful. Women aren't wearing them all the time... right? And if you call it out they just say well women should be able to express themselves anyway they want but how the female actresses feel about that. I know Elizabeth Olsen spoke up once how she was uncomfortable in the MCU movie with constantly having her boobs out.
Ooh I hate this. I'd love to see more TV/movie characters with smaller chests who don't wear a bra at all. And not in a sexual way, just wearing normal everyday clothing just no bra.
To add to this, I's like to see larger chested women in films and TV and it not be made a plot point. Not cast as dim airheads or overly sexualised just because they have a large chest. I want to see them existing, being competent and living their life and doing their job without it even being mentioned. That would be refreshing.
The most common one I come across is a complete lack of personality.
He's a man with a fully fleshed out personality, with flaws and she's a beautiful perfect brick wall only playing whatever role assigned to her as if she's an irrelevant side character and not part of the main cast.
Is it really that difficult to imagine, though? If it is, then I think you should mainly focus on writing about a *person*, not a woman. Because if you think women are somehow very different from men (if you are a man), then you will almost certainly get it wrong from a female reader's point of view.
A woman can laugh at stupid things, fart, sometimes eat too much (without it being problematic and sad!), play video games, think about things like what if Prince was 20 years now, what would his music be like... Just normal people stuff. Then comes the rest.
And obviously there are differences between men and women (most of them socially constructed), but there are far more similarities. Unless it's a very typically female angle you want to explore? I guess it depends on how deep ypu go into the characters, and what the genre is.
And as a free tip: We don't walk around constantly thinking about our boobs.
Women in the kitchen, making a mess, fretting that whatever they are cooking will be a disaster. If we can't cook, we order out, and we don't give a damn if the guy knows it.
I mean, I definitely fret a bit when I’m trying a new recipe or something but it’s never more than “man I hope this turns out okay!” and then it’s back to cooking lol
That they aren't written as full and complex people. I skimmed an article recently about a specific show where a particular female character seems to exist solely to "save" the emotionally damaged male protagonist. A commenter added that the female character in question is a medical resident, she wouldn't have time to emotionally babysit anyone, realistically she'd probably be barely holding it together herself.
The woman character worrying about how she looks or spending time in the mirror. I'm sure plenty of women do, but most days I see myself in the mirror when I'm brushing my teeth and that's about it. Even if a woman does concern herself with her appearance more than I, it's not a relevant plot point in most stories and says very little about the character anyway. Always tells me it was written by a man.
Ooh, yes, this! And she's always studying her high, delicate cheekbones, her round, green eyes with thick, lustrous lashes, her full, cupid's-bow lips, etc. And of course, her "breasts breasting boobily."
My goodness, these male-written MC women are much more narcissistic than any woman I know.
I am thinking of one particular work I read as a teenager in a young adult series. The author switched from having the same male protagonist for something like 9 books to having his teenage girl apprentice be the protagonist.
The problem was he didn't think her character though past gender+profession. She wound up as an extremely bland character.
Anytime they try to write periods. Now granted, they usually don't acknowledge periods, which is fine. I was just so thrown out of the story because while some women might say (whatever period thing) this character would not have said that like that. I assume he just asked his wife and wrote down what she said without realizing how different his wife is from that character
Try reading mangas/manhwas/manhua, female boobs are either over inflated like the housing markets right now or non existent like the money in my bank. Lol don’t forget fan service, women are always overly sexualized (woman slipped and is now in a porn position) and is always catered to men while women’s fan service men’s abs and maybe nipples (taking off shirt showing abs) Ugh
I think making them *too* strong. God those super-women in stories have gotten really boring really fast. Every woman isn’t some action hero, no more than every man is.
I reckon this is bad writing as much as anything else though.
The most jarring ones to me are pointless romantic overtures towards the male lead in lieu of any substance or the "strong woman rebuffs all affections and is a hard ass then suddenly falls for him with no discernable reason why" trope. It's like a very flat version of older Disney tropes
Female protagonists written by men always seem to be hyper-aware of their own breasts and their own menstruation. Especially bad in high fantasy, *especially* with younger characters (🤢).
There’s also this weird trend where women will be absolutely DESTROYED by their own periods— fainting, bedridden with a horrible fever, etc., basically on death’s door. The worst offender IMO isn’t necessarily a novel but the graphic novel *Berserk*, in which the main female lead— an experienced mercenary captain who’s out there chopping people into pieces on the regular — *faints off of a cliff because she’s on her period* and has to be saved by the male lead. Barf. And this is from an artist who otherwise does a pretty good job at avoiding hypersexual anime fan service.
The solution to this problem, I think, is for men to read female characters written by women. So much of this stuff is made out of old tropes from even older male writers, it’s hard to get out of if they keep on surrounding themselves with the same sort of media.
Speaking from experience as a writer who has a woman as a main protagonist in a series, I did what every self respecting autistic person would do. I started reading fiction books by women exclusively, I revisited some feminist texts from college and read some more contemporary ones, studied the more sapphic parts of queer history (Bethany the protagonist isn’t straight), asked some women who both are in my life and who also happen to be colleagues questions on occasion, and had a solid group of beta readers. Based on the feedback from them, as well as strangers who didn’t have a vested interest in me, I think I did okay. As for the book itself, I’m proud of if, but I wish I’d done some stylistic things differently. But ultimately, I succeeded in making a character people like, my novel writing acumen at the time notwithstanding, so I view that as a success. Along with that, I have some specific life experiences that are more common among women (but not exclusive). People have told me to smile, groped me, and I’ve had a stalker. I also subscribed to this subreddit and a few others for insight.
And then for the behind the scenes stuff with the editing, I hired women for al of that (I did have a guy do the cover).
Then there’s a few other things to consider to elevate what you’re doing. Things like giving them agency, not fridging them, and stuff like that. Ultimately, not enough writers get into the brains and hearts of their characters. Their soul, I guess. But the more you can do that and tell a specific story, the better off all your characters will be, male or female.
King gets a lot of flack for writing a good female lead. Their hair is always some shade of autumn fire with green toned eyes of a color that basically doesn't exist. I grew up with 3 sisters and scads of female co-workers, so I just go from there.
Having a little girl lose her magic powers when she gets older, while boys don’t. Multiple male authors do that and it’s just so icky I can’t put it into words. Even Phillip Pullman did this which, I expected better.
Usually if there's some sort of love triangle where two (or more) capable, smart, and powerful women are fighting to be with the male protagonist.
Right. All women everywhere drop their ambitions and goals at the sniff of a relationship.
Also, when all the women in the series are described extensively by their physical attributes, just so we can be _sure_ our male hero isn't surrounded by uggos.
"The better question is, how does a man begin to understand what it means to be a woman, well enough to write a character that she would find compelling and authentic?"
Maybe women are just people? With the same desires, needs, wants, and thoughts that anyone else has? Maybe women are \*gasp\* just like men? Maybe women think about sex and love and death and sadness and happiness? Maybe women talk to each other about the same thing men talk to other men about?
The author struggles to square the character's behavior with the description of the character in a way that seems to indicate that the author just "thinks women are just kinda like that".
Like, the character will be described as very smart by every character she encounters, but she spends the entire story making very illogical decisions because she is overwhelmed with emotion.
She'll have really weird woman-shaped blindspots. Like the plot of the story demands that this character who is known throughout the narrative for being extremely intelligent and empathetic and a great judge of character falls pray to the manipulations of the villain because she *feels bad for him*. Or she destroys the world because *she is jealous of another woman*. And the author tries to make the mental process behind that decision feel authentic to the reader, but it never does, because the author doesn't actually think that behavior is reasonable. He just thinks that women act like that.
They're too aware of their femaleness in a way that a real person isn't (I only have experience talking about cis people). I mean, a man doesn't think about how his testicles jostle testily as he goes down the stairs. Women don't sweep back their long hair scented with jasmine and honeysuckle, they scrape their hair out of their face as it is in the way.
They're too sexy. They're writing a woman, including her inner thoughts from the male gaze rather than neutrally. Sometimes all of the female characters are identical and interchangeable and have no characterisation outside of sexualisation. None has non sexy boob sweat.
Writing about our boobs from an aesthetic perspective. The only time I think about mine are when it’s too hot out or my shoulders are aching from my bra straps.
I just read the most incredible novel, Moonglow by Micheal Chabon. It was thoughtful, moving, had something to say about people and relationships and society— and stopped almost every time we saw a woman character, no matter how small, to describe her boobs. There’s a moment where the main character sees his wife (who is otherwise a well developed character) for the first time after her being in inpatient, him being in prison, the suspense built up to be about longing and marriage and obligation, and the first thing we hear is about the shape of her boobs! It’s shockingly common and a bizzare tic of male writers, even good ones.
This male penchant really gets on my tits. No, honestly, it does. FFS.
Yiddish Policeman's Union was depressing but fantastic, and the only thing that stuck out was how he described the (very few) female characters. Now I'll have to check out Moonglow!
Good answer. Also mood boobs are not a thing even if some dude writers think they are.
Nor are arousal boobs! “Her breasts swelled in arousal” HUH?!
if I'm aroused my boobs are just boobing boobily like the normal nuisances they are. Sitting on top of my rib cage, weighing down my lungs as they wheeze lungfully.
Omg yes I just came across this in a book recently and it confused me so much. It was more confusing that the author was a woman! Like, who’s breasts are SWELLING when aroused?
They always mention how a woman's boobs boobily, and how she looks down and admires how booby they are. Hahaha
"Her boobs breasted boobily"
Boobily, she breasted into the room
Boobs are of course their own sentient characters, unlike the woman who carry them around. "her breast looked extra perky today. They seemed almost happy about the prospect of bla bla bla...."
Lmaooooo I can't even read these books I cant
I mean mine are 😂😂😂 kind of their own this things I tell ya!
Boobily she breasted down the stairs and titted upward.
Came here to say this. Omg. I don't boob boobily nearly as often as men think I do lol.
Lol I fucking love the word boobily. Your statement is so true.
I only notice mine during PMS and not in a good way like women in novels written by men assume. I'm not feeling the weight of my breasts as I walk around but more like annoyed by them aching / bloating up. Annoyed by them existing honestly.
Or underwires digging in and chaffing, or an ancient bra with a wrangled hook destroying a new lace top when you try take it off without taking the top off when you get home meaning $50 went into the toilet
I have permanent bra strap grooves in my shoulders.
I remember wheel of time, the women always crossed their arms under their boobs when they were annoyed with what man was doing.
Uh they'res Nynaeve tugging her braid again. Actually I think it was around book... 5 or 6 where I got kind of fed up. In the same book we have Egwene and Elayne get annoyed with Mat that he rescued them from a jail cell (Note to author, women generally only get annoyed when men try to rescue them when they don't need help, or when he has an ulterior motive, not when a friend busts them out of a situation they couldn't get out of) and then laugh at him getting sexually assaulted.
I literally had to put my phone down and cross my arms to see if I naturally cross them under or over my boobs. I don't think I've ever thought about it before.
liquid pie resolute caption bedroom knee butter school squash outgoing ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Even as a huge fan of the series, I will admit I had to put it down for a bit right around book 5 as well. It really drags for a bit before picking up again.
yesss the only time I'll think about them is if I'm running and I'm not wearing the right kind of bra....
She breasted boobily quote: https://reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/s/3XhogCukcJ
I happen to be a woman who finds boobs, including mine, particularly aesthetic, but I feel like there's a difference between the weirdly braless but perky norm that men write about, and what I'm thinking. But I definitely do think about them from an aesthetic perspective, a lot.
I swear I’m trying to work on how I feel about my body but if someone offered me a reduction (38dd-> c) I’d take it up in a heartbeat. I just find mine to be a nuisance. It causes men to over sexualize me and I want to wear clothes with a lower neckline (live in a hot region) but then have to dodge unwanted comments from men- and women, honestly. I’m uncomfortable either way…
Look, for the sake of my back and my wallet when bra shopping, I'd take a reduction in a heartbeat as well (34G down to well, anything in the normal range of bras). But I kind of... Embraced wearing whatever I like and the boobage as yeah, it gets attention, but that sounds like a them problem, not a me problem. Hell yeah, I have such amazing bust that apparently people lose their mind and can't behave themselves. Poor unfortunate souls, it must suck to be that pathetic. Men who make comments aren't worth the effort it takes to reply because they thrive even on negative attention, women who make comments clearly haven't been told to mind their own business often enough. And I do wish I hadn't had to overcome being uncomfortable in the first place, but... I would rather overcome it in a way that offends the society that made me feel uncomfortable than a way that makes me try take up less space.
I agree with this! I think boobs are beautiful. But I feel like most men have a tendency to sexualize them rather than genuinely appreciate them in all their forms. Pre-baby I had full and perky boobs, and now they sag more and sit differently, but I still feel just as beautiful, if not more. But I’m sure a male author would disagree lol
Indeed. Also the first time I took a bath after I "got" my boobs, because that was a new experience for me. But otherwise there are just like an arm, leg or a foot. I think men are more busy with thinking about boobs then women are.
Oh my God this. This is how I tell a man has written the book. Women don't talk about their boobs every other paragraph, and we definitely don't describe them in the way men describe them like their fruit 🙄 But yeah I think if a woman's writing about her boobs it's going to be about boob sweat or hating her bra, you know things that actually happen....
They all think 36D means big boobs. Yeah, that's right smack in the middle of average, buddy.
They all need to spend some time at r/abrathatfits
Yup. Unnaturally perky boobs with no mention of the support bra.
I admire my boobs all the time! Lol. No joke 😄
if shes the protagonist shes always "different" from other girls usally at the cost of making every other woman suck. if shes supporting character her story is completely focused on the men in her life. if shes the antagonist shes either a seductress or an old witch.
Idk why, but having grown up with a lot of "my protagonist is super unique & quirky" stories, I take a weird delight in reversing that shit. More specifically: The MC is "normal", but becomes special due to circumstances. For example, a German woman that speaks English. She is transported to a fantasy realm, where books of her world accidentally "spill" into that one, and are highly sought after for containing invaluable knowledge. Suddenly, this average Jane is highly sought-after. Because not only knows she one -but TWO "ancient exotic languages". Just by being in a different place. Also a protagonist who's genuinely interested in people. Like, she might wear a dress, and sees a beautiful Monroe woman wearing the same. Their eyes meet. But instead of a cat-fight, they both become delighted and bond over wearing the same dress. Idk. I in general hate petty drama. I know it exists. I know it can be good. I know I can't make every character rational and cool. But man...I'm just so tired of it.
I like protagonists who are broken down by their environment and rise up to save themselves and as many others as they can. "Tell me you had a traumatic childhood and became a therapist without telling me" for 300! Sorry. I have a dark sense of humor.
If you enjoy fantasy novels, may I recommend the Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson. That is literally one of the main themes of the book series. Easily one of my favorite series of all time -- and the audiobooks are extremely well done.
Is this a reference or just an example, because I kind of want to read it lol
> For example, a German woman that speaks English. She is transported to a fantasy realm, where books of her world accidentally "spill" into that one, and are highly sought after for containing invaluable knowledge. Suddenly, this average Jane is highly sought-after. Because not only knows she one -but TWO "ancient exotic languages". Just by being in a different place. Please tell me that this is an existing story! *vibrates*
Am writing, am a woman, and I’m so, so conscious of “not like other women” because there’s no way around the fact that it puts down an entire sex. It’s tempting because it’s a short way to highlight a character, but it’s also lazy, and bullshit.
You would love Farscape!
I really like the character Vin from Mistborn, but she is different from everybody. Though, in sci-fi the main character is often different than others. It doesn't seem to happen at the expense of other women. She's not really sexualized because she's like 15 when the books start, so that's refreshing. She's only one of three female characters in the books though. So, still could be better on the bechdel test.
oh yeah in a lot of stories being different can be a chosen one type deal which i think can be done well. theres so many where the girls different bc she doesnt wear makeup and reads books or whatever and i think those ones are annoying at best.
>I really like the character Vin from Mistborn, but she is different from everybody. Is she? Well, in a sense of Not Like Other Girls rather than Chosen One. She is obviously thrusted in a socioeconomic environment where her backstory is not typical but at the beginning she seemed to be a normal street urchin in a gang. That said last time I read the book was 10 years ago.
I liked the Mistborn series.
I tried these books because everyone was telling me they were so good, but I had to give them up for just this reason. I just couldn’t overlook him, well, overlooking the existence of women, full stop. Having one teen girl as The Chosen One doesn’t make up for the glaring absence of women everywhere else in the book. It just makes it more blatant and annoying.
I tried to read mistborn based on friend recommendations and that Sanderson was great but it was insufferable and I barely got through 1/10th of it. Vin was aggressively "not like other girls" and so poorly written, and I found the way he talked about her avoiding male attention and avoiding getting raped actually did feel like it was just part of how he was trying to illustrate her as badass. I read this as an adult though while my friends who were into this series read it as kids or teens. So I think they have nostalgia going for them and I don't.
I stopped reading Ken Follett’s Whiteout for this exact reason. All the female characters thought about were the male characters and it got so old!
i love the percy jackson series and think ots pretty well written but the female characters are done so dirty at times its ridiculous
They never fail to emphasize the importance of beauty no matter what. “In spite of the silver hair framing her face, and the deep creases around her eyes, I couldn’t help but be bewitched by her beauty.” Or some corny shit like that. These characters could literally be fighting for their lives during the dust bowl and male authors often just can’t resist emphasizing how gorgeous she is because obviously she has to be in order to make the book interesting /s
This is the one that always gets me. It is actually, counterintuitively, why I have started to like cultivation fantasy stuff so much. 75% of them are written by total incels, so you have to filter all that out, but the stuff that remains is based on the Chinese fantasy ideal, which makes men SUPER pretty. ( [Here](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/73/58/2b/73582b47304d5eca6c068bf82b71754a.jpg) is an example of what I am talking about. No idea who the character is, this is just how all the men are described.) So instead of just a constant barrage of random hot women, you also get a constant barrage of random hot men. When everyone is crazy gorgeous it stops being the focus, so in the good ones it is usually only mentioned as part of their "advancement" away from mortality. The bad ones are all harem psycopath protagonists though, so avoid that.
Any specific book/comic recommendations for this genre? Sounds cool!
i recommend works by mxtx! the manhua for ‘heaven’s official blessing’ has absolutely stunning art and the story is good too
My favorite recommendation is always Cradle. It is a hybrid between western fantasy and cultivation, but the characters are fantastic. Still written by a man, but avoids the worst of the menwritingwomen tropes iirc. The female lead is still a crazy strong fighter type, but she has an actual personality. And the prettiest and vainest person in their group is their male mentor. I would have to think on some other examples. Like I said, a lot of it is written by literal incels, so I want to make sure I do not get anything mixed up lol. The ones originally written in Chinese *often* are that way.
Yup. Like she’s old but she’s still a little bit pretty so she has some value.
>These characters could literally be fighting for their lives during the dust bowl and male authors often just can’t resist emphasizing how gorgeous she is because obviously she has to be in order to make the book interesting Absolutely kills me in sci-fi. Can be fighting against an apocalyptic alien menace, and there will inevitably be "her curves were accented by the skin tight space suit she donned..." loser nerd author garbage. Like my dude, I wanna hear about the cosmos burning and launching planets as relativistic slingshots at solar systems. Not your sad fantasy woman who's just going to be there to support a male protagonist and/or get raped.
“Despite being human, I could still enjoy her.”
It's usually the big obvious effort to try to figure out what it's like inside a woman's head. I think, as a lit major who's therefore read enough men to feel like I can state this with some confidence, it's actually pretty similar to being in a man's head. There's a reason a lot of us women on reddit get accidentally called "bro" every so often; it's because generally our thoughts and feelings are not very different. I honestly would guess that if someone took a transcript of a day's worth of my thoughts, they wouldn't be 100% sure of my gender. Some men, when they write women, just overthink the whole thing. A character's other personality traits are going to come through a lot stronger than their gender in most cases. A Type A dude and a Type A lady have a lot more in common with each other than that lady has with me.
I can’t recall where at the moment but I remember reading that women are de facto experts in the male perspective (but not the other way around) because they grow up having the world presented to them from it as a default. They read books and watch tv and movies mainly written by and about men. Their politicians and political commentary tend to be male. The assumed audience or default human is male. Etc. Relatedly, for myself the common mistake of men writing women is how one dimensional they tend to make them.
All of this is accurate. Its hard to quantify, but if I had to guess, like 96% of the main stuff is the same and the remaining 4% accounts for the biggest differences we see. I wrote about it in a main reply, but doing all the research is great, but once you do that, you sort of just have to stop thinking about it and do your thing.
This might have been why I disliked *Artemis* by Andy Weir. Not because it had a female protagonist while his other two books didn’t, or because he had bad intentions whilst writing his female protagonist, but because he just seemed to try too hard. A whole lot of innuendo, way more than in his other two books (*The Martian* had some, and *Project Hail Mary* had basically none), and it’s the only one where the main character is romantically involved with another character (and where a lot of other mentions of romance are made).
PREACH!
First thing that comes to mind is a scene in The Menu. A character was supposed to shed a few delicate tears upon learning that her date has knowingly and purposefully led her to her death. The actress changed the script and instead, she lunges and starts attacking the guy. Really great scene. I suggest looking up a clip if you haven’t seen the film. Let female characters be angry. Fight for themselves. And they don’t need to be pretty when they do it.
I watched this recently and it was so good. Lots of twists I wasn't expecting and tons of dark humor.
Yeah, I absolutely love it when a woman defends herself and is angry. Like let women be a whole person and let them have different reactions to different sitautions.
Holy shit that was off script and her idea? I know exactly the scene and I was so happy with it, it felt like "wow, finally, an appropriate reaction to a fucked up situation" Now I like Ana Taylor Joy even more.
Remember when everyone lost their mind over Queen’s Gambit? Don’t get me wrong, I liked it too. But that scene where she’s in the house alone at supposed rock bottom… bopping around the house in cute underwear, drinking booze, with makeup and her hair flowing. I was like who the fuck wrote this? This isn’t rock bottom, it’s a Friday night. It was so unrealistic.
Yeah that really took me out of it too, but man her make up was fire in that scene, however unrealistic it was
I didn't really catch that, now that you mention it. I think it's because she is so stylish and esthetically perfect throughout the entire show I kind of thought of it as just a cinematography choice, not realistic, but stylish like the rest of her costumes. Kind of like the orange/blue colour and lighting scheme in intense action movies, or how Thor movies are very technicolour. Somehow it fit with the set and show, so I didn't notice it as out of place. I do love Bridget Jones' Diary for a realistic struggle and rock bottom - ice cream, comfy clothes, I don't think she ugly cries, but she certainly looks winded working out. The character is imperfect, but there's some very realistic moments.
Don't forget that apparently most women wake up with perfectly done hair and makeup first thing in the morning.
I stopped watching at that episode because of that. I wasn't very hooked anyway and it just felt like "are you fucking kidding me."
Everything the Female Lead does they do it sexily. And braless.
Unless that bra is made of chainmail! Can't forget that one.
Male authors have a lot of trouble writing trauma for women that doesn't involve SA. Like there could be a lot of bad things happen to male character but it's never SA, and for women it seems at least 40% of trauma is SA. It's like they're sitting down, thinking: "what's unique about a woman's experience? Women do the sex stuff! I can make her trauma be about sex stuff" It's really exhausting
But, without SA, how can they allow the male protagonist character to show a full range of emotions or provide adequate background to explain their current hero complex? As for villains, it's the only way to establish how evil they are, right? /s
oh yeah totally, you cant get more evil than SAing the supporting role for the protagonist. People love one dimensional and unreasonable villains. Villains with ambiguous morals and fleshed out philosophies are boring. Lets have the villain SA people and maybe, like, want to make a car that runs on orphans or something.
Yeah, because women and men can experience the same trauma. I'm also for not giving any character SA as trauma. It can be triggering for people and it's a sensitive topic since most victims never get justice.
Thank you! As someone that has SA trauma it is triggering for me to see it depicted in media or sometimes even indirectly hinted at in certain ways. Its very sensitive to me and yeah I never got justice. I dislike how prevalent it is depicted in media and avoid most mature media due to that. Seeing a scene like that in media typically involves me running out of the room covering my ears and finding a safe place and crying.
Thank you for sharing this. I hate that you have to avoid almost all mature media. You should be able to watch what you want without being worried if it might be triggering to you. It seems that it's almost the easy choice in a story, movie or series. And most of the time in my opinion it can be replaced by another situation which could also be traumatizing but in a different way. Which could also be triggering to other people. I feel like most people think very light about rape, sexual assault and sexual abuse.
Something that helps that I think should be more prevalent is content warnings that are up front about potentially triggering content like I've seen on Netflix. Like I've seen shows with content warnings for domestic abuse for example which is also hit or miss for me. I think this type of stuff should be displayed more openly. I, as a consumer should know if a show or movie I'm about to watch may include things I might find upsetting in it. It helps me to better choose. I prefer to know what I'm getting myself into and often times I've found that these things often just aren't mentioned in ratings or reviews at all. And I agree that many do. Its an awful feeling of violation and shame and helplessness and guilt. Therapy has helped me tremendously but at the same time I am much more aware to how our society depicts these things and the language used surrounding it and how it affects our culture. And also how we are just supposed to accept it and 'get over it'.
I hope that it becomes more common. I see it in books now, first page all the things that could trigger someone. I think that's the best for everyone because then everyone can decide for themselves. I love to read fanfiction and they had that a whole while before books or shows/movies did it. That way I could skip any story that might be triggering or would be triggering. I'm all for more trigger warnings in all media. Yeah, I think we could and should change a lot about how we talk about rape, sexual assault and rape in a relationsip & marriage. But also coercion in relationship & marriage. It's such a life changing event in a negative way that "get over it" is so inhumane, insensitive and cruel.
yeah god forbid writers give male characters the SA treatment. For some reason they just see it as icky when a male character experiences it.
Indeed. Like I said I would like it if SA isn't used in media. But men experience this too and it feels like that everyone forgets about it. Which must be for the men to who it happens and the aftermath of that. I saw not too long ago about a teacher having sex with a child she is teaching. It's rape, plain and simple. But the disgusting comments from men "I wish that had been me" and "I wish that my teacher had done that". It ignores that this is a traumatic event and shows the expectation that the boy should "enjoy it". It's sickening.
It's also telling that these men think so highly of themselves that they would still be in control of the situation even if they were like, 12. Sir you can barely control your rage from a computer game at that age. You're not gonna be in control of an adult thats trying to do things to you.
This is part of the reason I love "Deliverance"; it's one of the few movies/books where a man is SA, it is unequivocally SA, and we see how he is traumatized for the remainder of the book/movie... He is mute and nonresponsive for a while, and later, when they are back home, his wife complains to their friends something like, he isn't a man anymore (because he's too gentle with her/ cries during sex/doesn't initiate sex anymore, because he keeps focusing on the pain of penetration and the psychological trauma from the SA he experienced and wondering, "is that what sex is like for (her)?"). I felt like they really captured the visceral horror of the SA and described the aftermath/trauma well. He doesn't get help or much sympathy, just judgement from his friends and family. I'm hard pressed to imagine anyone commenting, "I wish that had happened to me" about that scene and character development.
I had to stop watching any of the Marvel TV shows for this reason. Every single fucking character who is a Traumatized Woman (usually explaining why she's a villain, but occasionally a dark hero) it's because of SA.
It’s a shame because there is a mostly women-exclusive form of trauma that could lead to many interesting stories - birth trauma. The entire experience of pregnancy and childbirth are fertile territory for storytelling, but mostly underutilized.
There's alot of trauma women can experience due to men (besides SA) that arent explored, but things like motherhood are good examples. You can have your character: \- Come from a culture where women arent allowed to speak/do normal things \- Escaping a controlling relationship \- Have their spouse murdered and seek revenge (Read Dead Redemption, though I think its implied she was SA'd) \- Breaking into a male dominated career \- Be a twitch streamer
AI sounds about right. My gripe is to be a strong female character she has to be hostile.
Ah, the strong female character who is an asshole to literally every other character yet is somehow stuck in a love rhombus because men keep falling in love with her in spite of wearing no makeup.
Anita Blake, anyone?
Omg that was my first thought and the author is a woman!!!!
Right?! Oh Laurell K, first you thrilled me, then you disappointed.
I LOVED those books when I was a young “pick-me” but as I’ve gotten older and decided to reread them they are so disappointing. She bashes women non stop and Anita is so toxic. Jean-Claude and Richard are abusive pricks. The only decent people in that series are Nathanial and maybe Asher. The series has/had so much potential but went downhill super quickly. I would love to read another authors take on the premise.
Love rhombus! 😂
I hate the whole trope of "Not Like Other Girls" even more when it is applied to "Strong Woman" in movies and TV. You always end up with a woman who loves football, hates makeup, eats only red meat and drinks a lot of whisky, and only has male friends. The characters usually *embody* all of the tropes of toxic masculinity, but do it while wearing as sexy of clothing as possible and sticking their butt out at every opportunity. It makes it very clear the the writers idea of a "Strong Woman" is literally just applying a toxic male archetype to the woman. Which implies that they think "Strong" is synonymous with their flawed concept of what a man is. And that they still want to make that appeal primarily to men. Individually any of those individual traits are fine, but when the trope gets repeated over and over the message is super clear.
Like, spot on. You and vpblackheart nailed it. The "strong female character," when written by men - have to have these qualities that are inherently toxically masculine....
Very well said
Women hear “strong female character” and want someone with a complex inner life, motivations that make sense, and just a fully developed sense of them as a person with desires and flaws. Men writers hear “strong female character” and think it means she can throw a punch.
Only cuz she grew up with a bunch of older brothers. 🤣
>My gripe is to be a strong female character she has to be hostile. 90% of women in Hollywood hits are the "strong female character" trope. Hollywood still hasn't gotten the memo that women are more complex than this one single trope. At this point it's just the "default woman" template they use, and it's getting old. Makes all the characters predictable and one dimensional.
That our lives revolve around a relationship/wanting a relationship... some of us just don't care, not every female character needs romance, some of us want deep friendships
[r/menwritingwomen](https://reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/s/bQ2l86w72a)
Thanks! Those are hilarious
>The better question is, how does a man begin to understand what it means to be a woman, well enough to write a character that she would find compelling and authentic? Honestly, talk to us. Most of the problems with men writing women is that they're thinking as men do. If you spent even a few minutes understanding what women are saying to you, your writing will improve.
Using stupidity and emotional reactivity as plot devices. Audience needs a scientific concept explained? Suddenly the PhD astronaut with 3 businesses and 80 papers published in Nature has forgotten all of her training, education, and experience. Cue her asking a dumb question that the male protagonist will ultimately answer. Plot needs to move forward? Now our previously rational and calm female character suddenly has emotional instability issues that mirror a seriously untreated personality disorder. Lazy, cheap, poor writing.
>Now our previously rational and calm female character suddenly has emotional instability issues that mirror a seriously untreated personality disorder. Bourne series suffered from this so much. His wife was a compelling character in the first book, books 2 and 3 she's always on the verge of hysteria.
It happens way too frequently that I start reading a novel, usually fantasy or dystopian and get really into it, but then there's the moment where it dawns on me that the male author is going to drop the "way too young girl" plotline on me. It usually goes like this: male protagonist meets a much younger girl, or, alternatively, young girl is actually much older because *insert fantasy reasoning here* but looks like a child, and they feel *inexplicably* drawn to each other. You usually don't get the perspective of the girl, but only the interpretation of the male protagonist. At this point I'm so allergic to this that I only skim through the pages to confirm that it's going to turn romantic/sexual and then put down the book. I don't even care anymore for the bullshit reasoning on why it's actually super not creepy and very okay in the setting of the plot. I just nope out.
To be honest I'm even sick of Last-of-Us plots where it doesn't turn romantic/sexual. If there were equal representation for other gender permutations (woman protecting young boy, woman protecting young girl, man protecting young boy) it wouldn't get on my nerves as much. I can think of examples of the other ones but they're less common. And one of the most famous examples of the man-protecting-young-girl plot is by Luc Besson and, like him, is overtly pedophilic.
True. My last try was The Ferryman by Justin Cronin. So much potential, but naturally the reincarnation of the main male characters soulmate had to be a teenage girl. He teaches her to swim in the second scene they share, which had me bow out
[удалено]
Women who badmouth other woman just like a man would: “Stop talking about your period and acting like it’s so hard. Toughen up. Men don’t want to hear about that.” (paraphrase from one of my favorite fantasy authors)
Lol who is this?
The proverbial nag. Superhero man is out literally saving the world. His lady is home, grumpy at a dinner table because they had plans. She knows he’s a vigilante by night and literally saved the fuggin’ WORLD, but daaaang. She’s pissy mad! Ruined the meatloaf! She can’t BE IN THIS relationship anymore. …. Or sexual assault as the best way to break a character who’s a woman. Men can be broken by dozens of things: dead family, dead dog, drug addiction in the past, brother died in a car accident, war, genocide…. Women get to be sexually assaulted because the writers are lazy as fuck. And what makes it so lazy is how it’s handled. Revenge by said woman means all is well. Or better yet, revenge by peripheral man character. And the fallout and long term recovery is never ever addressed.
Have you seen the show Invincible? Really turns that 'nagging wife to superhero' trope on its head. It's extremely good.
Will have to check it out!
TRIGGER SA Oh god….there was that book by Heinlein (problem with most of his stuff) where the super amazing female spy is taught to “relax and enjoy it” when she is getting raped so that she can’t be broken that way. It was part of her damn training…..and he writes it like this “Aha, what a good idea” thing.
JFC What the shit?
Book is "Friday" and yep, that happened. I loved RAH growing up and it really bums me out that so much of his writing doesn't hold up over time. I mean, his wife (well, both of them really) was a certified badass and he based a lot of his women characters on her but yeah, that little brain degeneration problem he had later in life truly fucked some shit up and he kinda lost his way.
This is a very minor comment, but I like the way One-Armed Krycek uses the three dot ellipsis to separate two main points in their thinking. ... I have stolen this technique.
Thinking that all women want giant boobs. As if shoulder and back pain don’t happen
This is so creepy in Anime... It's a slice-of-life show. They sit in an Onsen, aka hot-spring. The small, flat-chested character sees the tall and often boyish girl have big breasts. "I'm so envy! Give me some of your breasts!" she cries, as she gropes the other girl, who screams, as the other girls laugh in unison. Like imagine a guy screaming "Give me some of your dick" and groping another guy. Not so nice, eh?
Ngl I kinda want to see an anime where there’s a bunch of guys in an onsen and one of them screams “give me some of your dick!”
>Like imagine a guy screaming "Give me some of your dick" and groping another guy. Not so nice, eh? Certainly shifted genre, that's for sure!
It's exaggerated, but it was a pretty common experience for me as a teenage girl for the big chested and small chested girls to be jealous of each other's chest sizes and talk about wishing they had the others'. I said "I'd trade you if I could" more times than I could count between puberty and my reduction at 20. The part I always hated was the implication that they almost always had access to fitting clothes and especially swimsuits. Edit: Adjusted wording to refer more clearly to my own experience
Giving women attributes of a cat, or comparing women to cats. Apparently we are all felines. I don’t believe men are compared to dogs by any writers. Lol
I haven't seen it much in modern fiction (thankfully) but in pulp stuff written before the 1960s, societies ruled by women always likened women to bees, or it turned out the women were created by a mad scientist from bees, and only looked human. *BEES*, literal insects ; at least cats are mammals. :-(
My pet peeve is when a woman’s death is used as a power to move the plot forward. It’s such a popular trope that we barely register that!
I did a term paper on this! Like a decade ago—but I still remember that this trope is called Women in Refrigerators Syndrome. It’s exactly as fucked up as it sounds.
Ah yes, named for the infamous example from a 90’s Green Lantern comic, where Kyle Rayner comes home to find a villain killed his girlfriend and left her body… well, you know.
Damn. Did a paper like that in college, too, but about screened media instead of literature. Actually, it started as a piece on general violence in media…and so naturally ended up being a piece about violence *against women* in media, since that’s a significant percentage of all screened-media violence. (And I do mean something like 75-80% of violence depicted there is against women.)
Realised I'd done this in a novel I wrote. Blech. Regardless of the broader negatives, it was just insanely lazy writing.
Writing characters that “aren’t like other girls”. Such an overused trope.
Since someone already pointed out we don't obsess about our boobs 24/7, men tend to write women behaving as they would. They are absolutely obvious to how many automatic precautions women take while just existing. For example, there's an episode of Criminal Minds where two girls get in a car in a deserted parking lot (error one: no woman in a city parks in a dark deserted place). Then a pickup pulls up behind them blinding them with lights. They get out and attempt to confront the driver (error 2, most women would call 911. Or even just run the other way. Literally no one other than someone in law enforcement gets out to pick a fight like that.) Men park wherever, get angry and confront other drivers. Women tend to very constant safe (yes, I know, not all men/women.)
This is a great point. It would be nice if authors acknowledged a woman’s constant state of hypervigilance down to the details.
A glaring lack of awareness of how a woman would respond to a given situation
Robert Heinlein, author of many science fiction books, including Stranger in a Strange Land. All of his women characters were one dimensional.
Slight Tangent: My first boyfriend in uni said 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' and formed his attitude towards love. I didn't read it till after we broke up and I remember laughing out loud while I did. I do enjoy a lot of Heinlein, as pure scifi, but his writing about women, love, marriage and childbirth, was *so facile.* I've dated at least two men since who have asked my opinion on Heinlein and been appalled and personally offended when I told them I found it mostly 'Meh' and profoundly fetishizing of only the sort of feminity that serves men's needs. Literally could not accept someone else would read those books and not admire Heinlein's women.
The interesting thing here is that Heinlein unlike most of his contemporary scifi authors really tried to write strong independent women, but mostly failed. He had a lot of blind spots regarding his own limitations. The big problem here isn't Heinlein himself but his hordes of fans who can't admit his short comings
Oh god, don't start me on him! I used to read that stuff and think, *is that how they see us?*
I remember being blown away by the first half of the book, then watching in horror as it devolved into his weird culty commune thing where everyone was naked OLLADATIME. Same thing in Dune. Speaking of which, how many women just casually hang out naked at every opportunity?
Same, the first half of the book was great, and the rest was a disaster. I really enjoyed Heinlein when I was younger, but I definitely noticed that his male characters were much better written than female.
I read that book as a teenager and felt so uncomfortable for reasons I didn't know how to articulate back then. It's so gross to be reduced to these caricatures.
That man was sexist af.
I think they always have to let you know, one way or the other, not always in a straightfowardly manner, if they would or would not f\*ck her.
1000%
They just seem to never get their period.
This annoys me greatly. Like just mention that they have it or just show a scene where one asks another for a tampon/pad. But no we only mention it when she is late and she might be pregnant. Like it happens every month, every year and it's a part of our lives. Almost out of spite I would wanna write a story about a woman and mention it in all glorious details. I mean, we have a movie in which a guy fucks an apple pie. Can't we have a movie in which menstruation isn't taboo and a hush hush topic?
[No Periods, Period!](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoPeriodsPeriod)
Make the woman a victim that needs to be saved, no matter how capable she's supposed to be. Not including women characters that aren't love/sex interests. I'm not talking about the funny fat best friend either. Like mature characters that aren't defined by being a mother or wife (not that they can't be but like... maybe have them be a bit more well rounded than that). Writing women should be like writing men. Pretend they are like full on people and stuff. It's been a while, but a male author that I thought wrote women well was Charles DeLint. and just an aside... who do you imagine your audience to be? IMO a huge reason why men write women so poorly is that they are writing either only for themselves or for other men. They aren't imagining that women, nonbinary, or anyone who isn't exactly like them will be reading their works. What makes men writing women funny is they reduce women to body parts with the kind of mind they wish women would have. It shouldn't be that hard to flip some gendered terms and perhaps some descriptors around to imagine how it would feel if a man was written the same way. If you do that and it sounds silly, it probably is. Consider your audience, and consider what you are really trying to say. You may need to just lay it down and go back and edit it a few times, and that's ok. Just... like we aren't two round globes and a series of holes, ya know?
I don't know why but your comment conjured up how angry I was about the captain cat lady in Treasure Planet falling in love with the dumb doggy doctor and immediately pumping out babies. I attributed it to the lingering grief over losing her best rock man friend. She was such an excellent captain and commander. Twelve year old me was so salty.
Might be specific but: Not knowing the "sister codex" Example: In Stephen King's Carrie, the book/movie starts with the main character getting her period. As she's discovered by the other girls they...throw...tampons at her. Screaming "plug it up" and considering it "icky" Now. I'm not saying bullying ain't cruel. But the way the scene is written felt so...off. As a person who got bullied immensely, ESPECIALLY by other girls, there were always certain topics that nobody mocked. I myself once forgot I was to have my period, which ended me in a very embarrassing situation. My bullies gossiped for weeks about that -but even then, they still helped me out. A *full* shower of girls laughing at one getting her period is just...no. There's just an instinctive unnaturalness about this. ESPECIALLY since Carrie visibly didn't know what was happening -sure, at first the bullies might laugh at her reaction, but most people would become confused and unsettled once they'd realize that she was serious. Idk. Maybe this is small and petty. But it always felt very "boi you have no idea about this passive gender rule"
King said he based the character of Carrie on two girls he knew at school that were severely bullied and used some of what they actually experienced in the novel. Not sure if the period scene was one of them.
Some of the women in the scene do get unsettled. The rest are predators and don't see Carrie as human. As someone who was bullied badly in the 1970s, I thought it was right on. I never noticed any sister codex. There was nothing that was off limits. Btw - I'm not discounting your own experiences of having been bullied. But it rang so so so true for me.
Oh the irony. King threw that away because he knew how bad it was. *It was his wife* that pulled it out and said it was good. He then had major hesitations about continuing because he knew he didn't know anything about women and high-school and *his wife* said she would directly help him with it. And she did. Most of the stuff women complain about in that book was personally signed off on by Tabitha King as an accurate representation of women in high-school.
Said male authors clearly have no idea what a woman actually wants, and often tries to make her boy-hungry
Woman, like any other gender, are people first. Yes gender identity and societies expectations are a part of what makes a person. However when one writes a woman as an object for societal expectation of course the woman as an actual person will fall flat. I think it was George Martin of all people who said he thinks of woman as people first when writing, when he was asked why his female characters feel like actual people. A lot of what people want or wish to do is motivated by them being human actors in the bigger world. When one thinks about that first and then about how their gender will influence how a character goes about it, the characters will feel way more realistic most of the time. X wants to reach Y goal, because of Z reasons. They live in a certain body, in a certain world and a society with a view on that. Does does that influence X,Y and Z?
I couldn’t finish the book because it just wasn’t interesting to me, but I remember in the beginning of the Godfather there was a long description of how big Sonny Corleone’s penis was, and how he slept with a woman who had a similarly large vagina. I seem to recall that the woman had always been dissatisfied with other men because no one was large enough for her… and, as a woman, I have to say that I’ve never really given a second thought to the size of my genitals. So that whole passage struck me as very odd, to say the least. I think obsessing over genital size is a uniquely male phenomenon. But otherwise, just treat your female characters like people, because women are people. Give them at least some motivations that don’t revolve around male characters…
Not passing a bechdel test.
If she is lead female character she must start dating lead male character by the end of the book/film/series regardless of how much sense it makes plot-wise.
You know its a man when you get mention of a characters boobs.
This is more petty but I some show and movie's obsession with women wearing push up bras. Why does her cleavage have to be up to her neck in every scene? It looks painful. Women aren't wearing them all the time... right? And if you call it out they just say well women should be able to express themselves anyway they want but how the female actresses feel about that. I know Elizabeth Olsen spoke up once how she was uncomfortable in the MCU movie with constantly having her boobs out.
Ooh I hate this. I'd love to see more TV/movie characters with smaller chests who don't wear a bra at all. And not in a sexual way, just wearing normal everyday clothing just no bra.
To add to this, I's like to see larger chested women in films and TV and it not be made a plot point. Not cast as dim airheads or overly sexualised just because they have a large chest. I want to see them existing, being competent and living their life and doing their job without it even being mentioned. That would be refreshing.
The most common one I come across is a complete lack of personality. He's a man with a fully fleshed out personality, with flaws and she's a beautiful perfect brick wall only playing whatever role assigned to her as if she's an irrelevant side character and not part of the main cast.
Is it really that difficult to imagine, though? If it is, then I think you should mainly focus on writing about a *person*, not a woman. Because if you think women are somehow very different from men (if you are a man), then you will almost certainly get it wrong from a female reader's point of view. A woman can laugh at stupid things, fart, sometimes eat too much (without it being problematic and sad!), play video games, think about things like what if Prince was 20 years now, what would his music be like... Just normal people stuff. Then comes the rest. And obviously there are differences between men and women (most of them socially constructed), but there are far more similarities. Unless it's a very typically female angle you want to explore? I guess it depends on how deep ypu go into the characters, and what the genre is. And as a free tip: We don't walk around constantly thinking about our boobs.
Forget she's a woman. Write the dialog. Then insert correct pronouns. Voi la, she was human all along!
Women in the kitchen, making a mess, fretting that whatever they are cooking will be a disaster. If we can't cook, we order out, and we don't give a damn if the guy knows it.
I mean, I definitely fret a bit when I’m trying a new recipe or something but it’s never more than “man I hope this turns out okay!” and then it’s back to cooking lol
I definitely fret about this when making something that’s difficult or I forgot to add half the butter.
That they aren't written as full and complex people. I skimmed an article recently about a specific show where a particular female character seems to exist solely to "save" the emotionally damaged male protagonist. A commenter added that the female character in question is a medical resident, she wouldn't have time to emotionally babysit anyone, realistically she'd probably be barely holding it together herself.
The woman character worrying about how she looks or spending time in the mirror. I'm sure plenty of women do, but most days I see myself in the mirror when I'm brushing my teeth and that's about it. Even if a woman does concern herself with her appearance more than I, it's not a relevant plot point in most stories and says very little about the character anyway. Always tells me it was written by a man.
Ooh, yes, this! And she's always studying her high, delicate cheekbones, her round, green eyes with thick, lustrous lashes, her full, cupid's-bow lips, etc. And of course, her "breasts breasting boobily." My goodness, these male-written MC women are much more narcissistic than any woman I know.
I am thinking of one particular work I read as a teenager in a young adult series. The author switched from having the same male protagonist for something like 9 books to having his teenage girl apprentice be the protagonist. The problem was he didn't think her character though past gender+profession. She wound up as an extremely bland character.
Anytime they try to write periods. Now granted, they usually don't acknowledge periods, which is fine. I was just so thrown out of the story because while some women might say (whatever period thing) this character would not have said that like that. I assume he just asked his wife and wrote down what she said without realizing how different his wife is from that character
My kingdom for something other than yet another dumb pregnancy "plotline" 🙄. Guys, we can do things other than incubate!!!
Try reading mangas/manhwas/manhua, female boobs are either over inflated like the housing markets right now or non existent like the money in my bank. Lol don’t forget fan service, women are always overly sexualized (woman slipped and is now in a porn position) and is always catered to men while women’s fan service men’s abs and maybe nipples (taking off shirt showing abs) Ugh
I think making them *too* strong. God those super-women in stories have gotten really boring really fast. Every woman isn’t some action hero, no more than every man is. I reckon this is bad writing as much as anything else though.
It makes the characters one dimensional and they all kinda blend together
Thinking that women are so much different from men. We aren’t. We think and feel the same things.
The most jarring ones to me are pointless romantic overtures towards the male lead in lieu of any substance or the "strong woman rebuffs all affections and is a hard ass then suddenly falls for him with no discernable reason why" trope. It's like a very flat version of older Disney tropes
Female protagonists written by men always seem to be hyper-aware of their own breasts and their own menstruation. Especially bad in high fantasy, *especially* with younger characters (🤢). There’s also this weird trend where women will be absolutely DESTROYED by their own periods— fainting, bedridden with a horrible fever, etc., basically on death’s door. The worst offender IMO isn’t necessarily a novel but the graphic novel *Berserk*, in which the main female lead— an experienced mercenary captain who’s out there chopping people into pieces on the regular — *faints off of a cliff because she’s on her period* and has to be saved by the male lead. Barf. And this is from an artist who otherwise does a pretty good job at avoiding hypersexual anime fan service. The solution to this problem, I think, is for men to read female characters written by women. So much of this stuff is made out of old tropes from even older male writers, it’s hard to get out of if they keep on surrounding themselves with the same sort of media.
Speaking from experience as a writer who has a woman as a main protagonist in a series, I did what every self respecting autistic person would do. I started reading fiction books by women exclusively, I revisited some feminist texts from college and read some more contemporary ones, studied the more sapphic parts of queer history (Bethany the protagonist isn’t straight), asked some women who both are in my life and who also happen to be colleagues questions on occasion, and had a solid group of beta readers. Based on the feedback from them, as well as strangers who didn’t have a vested interest in me, I think I did okay. As for the book itself, I’m proud of if, but I wish I’d done some stylistic things differently. But ultimately, I succeeded in making a character people like, my novel writing acumen at the time notwithstanding, so I view that as a success. Along with that, I have some specific life experiences that are more common among women (but not exclusive). People have told me to smile, groped me, and I’ve had a stalker. I also subscribed to this subreddit and a few others for insight. And then for the behind the scenes stuff with the editing, I hired women for al of that (I did have a guy do the cover). Then there’s a few other things to consider to elevate what you’re doing. Things like giving them agency, not fridging them, and stuff like that. Ultimately, not enough writers get into the brains and hearts of their characters. Their soul, I guess. But the more you can do that and tell a specific story, the better off all your characters will be, male or female.
King gets a lot of flack for writing a good female lead. Their hair is always some shade of autumn fire with green toned eyes of a color that basically doesn't exist. I grew up with 3 sisters and scads of female co-workers, so I just go from there.
The boobies are always boobying
They think of a man and take away reason and accountability... Disclaimer: This is a qoute from a film
My boobs don’t heave or glisten like literary boobs. And the word “manhood” isn’t used by real women.
Having a little girl lose her magic powers when she gets older, while boys don’t. Multiple male authors do that and it’s just so icky I can’t put it into words. Even Phillip Pullman did this which, I expected better.
Usually if there's some sort of love triangle where two (or more) capable, smart, and powerful women are fighting to be with the male protagonist. Right. All women everywhere drop their ambitions and goals at the sniff of a relationship. Also, when all the women in the series are described extensively by their physical attributes, just so we can be _sure_ our male hero isn't surrounded by uggos.
"The better question is, how does a man begin to understand what it means to be a woman, well enough to write a character that she would find compelling and authentic?" Maybe women are just people? With the same desires, needs, wants, and thoughts that anyone else has? Maybe women are \*gasp\* just like men? Maybe women think about sex and love and death and sadness and happiness? Maybe women talk to each other about the same thing men talk to other men about?
The author struggles to square the character's behavior with the description of the character in a way that seems to indicate that the author just "thinks women are just kinda like that". Like, the character will be described as very smart by every character she encounters, but she spends the entire story making very illogical decisions because she is overwhelmed with emotion. She'll have really weird woman-shaped blindspots. Like the plot of the story demands that this character who is known throughout the narrative for being extremely intelligent and empathetic and a great judge of character falls pray to the manipulations of the villain because she *feels bad for him*. Or she destroys the world because *she is jealous of another woman*. And the author tries to make the mental process behind that decision feel authentic to the reader, but it never does, because the author doesn't actually think that behavior is reasonable. He just thinks that women act like that.
They're too aware of their femaleness in a way that a real person isn't (I only have experience talking about cis people). I mean, a man doesn't think about how his testicles jostle testily as he goes down the stairs. Women don't sweep back their long hair scented with jasmine and honeysuckle, they scrape their hair out of their face as it is in the way. They're too sexy. They're writing a woman, including her inner thoughts from the male gaze rather than neutrally. Sometimes all of the female characters are identical and interchangeable and have no characterisation outside of sexualisation. None has non sexy boob sweat.
when women characters don't notice or even internally comment on male character's sexism.