On Monday, Sandra Harvey blogged a rather thought-provoking piece on Sexism in Writing. In her post, she wrote:
I read today an article that explained how each gender wrote and how we should be expected to write and sound. It was complete trash. Apparently, if we write in a female perspective, the woman going on a trip to somewhere she’s never been will spend the whole trip thinking about her family and friends and nothing else, while in a man’s perspective, he’ll think about the trip and nothing else.
She went on to say:
Regardless of what some people think, sexism exists on both sides–female and male. And I see it too often in writing to ignore. We’re given the strong male lead with the damsel in distress who can’t think for herself, or the independent female lead who can’t show any sign of weakness and is basically Supergirl (AKA this girl will never get injured, be emotionally distraught, or be helped by–God forbid–a man).
My first reaction? Oh hell yeah.
While I hope one day I’ll be able to work only as a full-time writer, I’m still among the many authors who must keep a day job. In that, I’m extraordinarily lucky. For the past 14 years, I’ve had the privilege of working from a home office as a self-employed computer programmer.
Unfortunately, the tech industry is plagued with sexism. Over my 30-year career, I’ve experienced plenty of it firsthand. Once, early on, I had a male engineer say to my face that I didn’t know anything about a technical topic because I was “only a woman.”
It’s no surprise that women are leaving the tech industry in droves. I might have left long ago were it not for the fact that I’ve been able to escape some of the more blatant prejudice and chauvinistic remarks because I work from home.
Still, I am acutely aware that I have been paid less than my male co-workers, my professional opinions were less respected, and behaviors that marked a male as a “confident go-getter” were more likely to mark me as a “bitch.”
The sad irony in all of this is that the stereotypical and strongly-defined gender roles don’t always occur in real life. While I am certain the extremes Sandra described in her piece exist in the wild, people are much more varied and nuanced.
I never fit the traditional model for women in my generation. As a kid, when the neighborhood girls talked me into playing house, I’d take on the unwanted role of the father. Given a choice, I preferred to play the starring role of Speed Racer or Dracula. While the other girls fought over the female lead, I was happy to be the dude nobody wanted to play.
As an adult, I went into a career field predominately occupied by men, instead of becoming a wife and stay-at-home mother. I have always hated dresses, heels, and makeup and have solidly refused to wear them since 1989. I like tinkering with classic cars, I can handle towing a travel trailer solo, and I’m not impressed by alpha men who think they can dominate me.
As for my sweetheart, he doesn’t fit neatly into expected gender roles either. While he shares my interests in camping and classic cars, he’s not a wealthy alpha male career climber. Instead, he works in a caring profession (education) and is deliciously sensitive. He knows how to cook, clean and do laundry. He’s cuddly, he likes kisses, and he loves homemade cookies.
On one of our earliest dates, he baked me a key lime pie from scratch. It was delicious, and it remains one of my fondest memories from those days.
Society wants to put people in little pre-defined gender boxes, but the reality is that many folks don’t fit perfectly into them. We are far more varied than the stereotypes indicate, and it’s a sad reality that people who don’t fit end up penalized.
When it comes to my writing, most of my lead characters reflect that complexity. Michael isn’t your typical vampire, and he certainly isn’t your stereotypical alpha male. While he started out that way hundreds of years ago, bitter experience and an act of kindness encouraged him to grow into a better person.
Unlike Sandra, I don’t spend a lot of time consciously trying to exclude gender stereotypes. Instead, I focus on trying to get to know a character before I ever write a word. Michael, Kari, Bruce (TWV), Marcus (Shampires) and Christine (Shampires) all had fully-formed personalities before I put pen to paper. When it came time to write about them, I wasn’t writing about stereotypes. I was writing about characters who had become real people in my mind. It was remarkably easy to tell their stories, because I knew each and every one as well or better than friends I’ve known for years.
While there certainly is a market for tales of bodice-rippers, or women who don’t need a man ever, feeding those stereotypes shortchanges us all. Art is a reflection of society and, by reinforcing those roles, they become the gold standard by which real people are judged.
I think it’s much more fun to play with complex characters. When you have a vampire, a leading lady, and an antagonist who don’t fit into neat little boxes, you end up with a story that is richer, more entertaining, and a lot more fun to read.