In Other Words, Writer, You’re Doomed

Ironic I should stumble across this article at aeon.co shortly after I finished reading Frans de Waal’s “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are”.

Harks me back to some of the criticism I’ve received on Doleful Creatures, namely that most of the female characters in the book are dead, and the only major living one is bad.

This prompted two schools of thought:

1. I guess maybe I do need to add more female characters
2. Pound sand, smallheads.

This article prompts a third: Do I know enough of the female mind to even bother trying?

Read the article (warning, breasts are briefly discussed, but not in a dirty way). Then you tell me. I’m sure most people out there would consider me, a white male, infinitely unquali9fied to write a female character. Yet I’m being told to do just that.

What to do?

Concentrate on the story, for one.

Figure out why the obsession over gender, for another.

Maybe it’s my white male privilege showing, but when I read I rarely concentrate on the gender of the characters in the story. I want a fun story to read, that’s about it. If it makes sense that a certain character is a certain gender, that’s fine. But I never get out a blank Gender Scorecard and keep track of who has what parts, and get all snotty when, at the end of the story, there’s a gender disparity.

Easy for me to say since “most stories” out there are chock full of male characters written by men, so I don’t have to worry my pretty little head about it? Okay, I guess. From a certain point of view.

Getting away from description, first of all (as in the breasty example) seems to be the best bet in writing a better opposite-gendered character. Maybe make characters work with the story, no matter their gender, rather than checking off boxes.

Yet part of this article makes me want to give up a little. For sure I’ll fail at writing a decent female character, so why bother?

And here’s the corollary: I’d like example of female writers who produce good male characters that stray from the stereotypical man seen on the cover of most romance novels:

Distant, aloof, fabulously wealthy, muscular, moody, mysterious, oh so mysterious . . .

Instead, I’m reminded of something from “Keeping Up Appearances,” said by Daisy, reading such a book:

“They're always tall and handsome, romantic heroes. Never short and fat. I've never yet come across a heroine who's fallen for anybody short and fat. It's a bit unfair, really. Plus, it makes no account of the weird shapes we females actually fall for!”

Meeting Basic Needs

It bothers me that we remain surprised by things like this:

Is it the nature of animal or the nature of man that we expect the bear to at best ignore the struggling crow, or, at worst, eat or kill it?

“So touching,” writes one commenter on this YouTube video, taken at a zoo in Budapest. “Humans could learn something from this bear. . .”

I suppose it’s human nature to forget that humans do things like this all the time, of course.

I’m weary of a world that focuses on the negative.

It’s not like we don’t see this kind of thing before:

“Basic needs are met – you’re seeing more elaborate behavior. They’re using their brains in different ways,” says the zoo official in Pocatello, explaining why we see such behavior in zoo animals.

This is a world of light. It is a world of justice and a world of peace. If we let it. If we concentrate on the good and do good and see the good in others -- even our animal kin. It is a dark and terrible place if we focus on the terrible things that do happen. I don't want to live in a world like that.