Strong Female Characters

kaitie said:

but rather than being fleshed out and given depth, they are women who are basically men under a new name. That doesn't do much to help create a well-rounded female, and doesn't it say more that to be "strong" she has to act like a man? That's part of what I'm pushing back on from the beginning.

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Okay. I will ask again:
a) exactly which traits mean a female character is "acting like a man"?
b) conversely, exactly which traits would she have to display in order to qualify as actually being a female character? Apart from, of course, being a female character.

In other words, by which criteria do you decide whether a particular female character is "a well rounded woman" or "a man under a new name"?

kaitie said:

A kid book with constant threat of rape? That seems...unnecessary.

Though it makes me think of the original Wonder Woman comic. She was supposed to be a feminist icon, but if you saw the imagery associated with her, she was constantly being bound. Kind of crazy, actually.

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Unnecessary and totally unexpected. It's not just implied, either - the threat is spelled out explicitly, including using the actual word rape. I suppose it was the easiest way to show that the bad guys really are bad.

On Wonder Woman... yes. Yes indeed.

kaitie said:

But she has a point, too, wording aside. A couple of us even mentioned it back a few pages. There are characters who are designed to be strong women, but rather than being fleshed out and given depth, they are women who are basically men under a new name. That doesn't do much to help create a well-rounded female, and doesn't it say more that to be "strong" she has to act like a man? That's part of what I'm pushing back on from the beginning.

It's fine to be a woman who doesn't fit into traditional gender roles, but my point from the start of this was that being a strong woman goes deeper than behaving like a man or a woman. There is no doubt in my mind that certain characters are considered strong because of how they fit themselves into the boy's club. Isn't that, in a way, a negative?

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You said this better than I did. The 'man with boobs' wording was intended to convey that I've seen characters who were stereotypical men, just given female names. They weren't even what I would call good characterizations of men. They were simply packages of 'macho guy' traits plastered on a female character with no hint of depth or inner life. They didn't represent well rounded women *or* men.

It's ironic, because your reaction is the complete opposite of mine. You see it as trying to force women into typical roles by saying that they can't be masculine. I see it characters like this as implying that masculine traits are more valued over feminine.

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This is what I meant, that too many writers translated 'strong' to mean 'masculine'. So they take female characters and turn them into hyper-masculine caricatures instead of real people.

If it will help clarify, my own personal ideal of a strong female character is Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan.

kaitie said:

But she has a point, too, wording aside. A couple of us even mentioned it back a few pages. There are characters who are designed to be strong women, but rather than being fleshed out and given depth, they are women who are basically men under a new name.

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This doesn't make sense. You're mixing two ideas that have nothing to do with each other. A character can be well-developed and still have no traditional traits of their gender.

kaitie said:

That doesn't do much to help create a well-rounded female, and doesn't it say more that to be "strong" she has to act like a man? That's part of what I'm pushing back on from the beginning.

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"Act like a man", what does that mean? All men act differently, as do all women. A strong female character will generally have at least a few traits our society associates more with males because mainstream society associates strength more with the masculine than the feminine. That's sort of unavoidable.

kaitie said:

It's fine to be a woman who doesn't fit into traditional gender roles, but my point from the start of this was that being a strong woman goes deeper than behaving like a man or a woman.

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Well, sure. I believe strength is strength, and the definition for me doesn't change depending on the shape of my character's genitals. Things like adaptability, open-mindedness, and the willingness to sacrifice and suffer for what they believe in (whether that's a relationship, a political cause, or simple survival) make a *person* strong. But the list doesn't change for female and male characters as far as I'm concerned.

kaitie said:

There is no doubt in my mind that certain characters are considered strong because of how they fit themselves into the boy's club. Isn't that, in a way, a negative?

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Kind of hard to answer. Depends on the way it's handled, the society in which the story takes place, etc.

kaitie said:

It's ironic, because your reaction is the complete opposite of mine. You see it as trying to force women into typical roles by saying that they can't be masculine. I see it characters like this as implying that masculine traits are more valued over feminine.

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Actually, I believe our society has assigned some of the most valuable traits the definition of "masculine" as a part of its pervasive misogyny, as well as devaluing traits perceived as "feminine".

kaitie said:

I think my point is being missed here. I'm basically saying that a character who is well-rounded and developed won't be these things. And that the flaw comes mostly in not developing the characters in a realistic way, but imposing criteria on them.

It goes back to the strong woman as cold and selfish and uncaring that I've seen quite a lot lately. You can clearly see that the goal here is to shun the traditional gender expectations, as if shunning them alone makes a character strong. I disagree with this. I think that a strong character might be someone who shuns gender roles (for good, developed reasons), or might be someone who fits gender roles, because to me what makes a character strong is about strength of character (personality) and creating a person with depth.

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Sorry, I missed this before I responded to your other post. I mostly understand what you're saying here, and I think we're pretty much in agreement.

Listed as YA; main characters are, I think, 12 or 13, so the lower range of the category. No, I won't be passing it on to any kids, either.

At no point have I argued or implied that female characters must shun traditional gender expectations in order to be strong. I write both traditionally "feminine" female characters and female characters who present with more "masculine" traits, but just as stereotypically feminine traits don't imply weakness, nor does not conforming to them imply a character is less female or less of a real woman. In fiction or in life.

What I take exception to is the idea that female characters must either display or eschew certain traits - which are still yet to be defined, so I can't help suspecting they are based on gender stereotyping - or they are somehow less female and are "really" men. In order to have a concept of "men with boobs" in the first place, there must logically be a definition of what makes a character a man or a woman, apart from biological and/or identifying gender, and on top of that, it's stated that a female character who doesn't fit the "proper" definition of a female character is uninteresting. That's what I take exception to.

Being cold and selfish and uncaring is hardly a set of traits exclusive to men. There are a lot of traditionally feminine women who tick all three boxes, as well as men who are warm, selfless and caring. That doesn't make the women men in disguise or the men women in disguise, as far as I can see. I really don't see why there should be more onus on female characters to display touchy-feely characteristics than on male.

Isobel Lindley said:

I really don't see why there should be more onus on female characters to display touchy-feely characteristics than on male.

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There definitely shouldn't be. As a woman who's cold and detached in real life, I've always been greatly annoyed by the social expectations for women to be in touch with their feelings more so than men. Very irritating and not feminist in the least.

I've almost made a game out of undermining that particular stereotype in my books because it just annoys me that much.

The courage to deviate from your gender role!

The courage to conform to your gender role!

kaitie said:

Isobel, I never said that you were the one who said characters should shun gender roles. In the early part of this thread, one of the points brought up by a couple of us is that it sometimes happens that way. I never meant to imply that you're the one who said it. I'm saying that it's something I see often in books, TV, movies, etc., and that it's a negative.

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I apologise for that misunderstanding. But I really, really wish we could discuss what makes a female character well-rounded without assigning traits as meaning a character is "really" male or "really" female, because that comes with a whole huge baggage of gender expectations attached.

Polenth said:

You certainly don't have to write about non-feminine women if you don't want to, but the whole "men with boobs" thing is stomping on your fellow forum members who fit that gender/sex presentation mix. It's saying they don't exist, outside of social commentary or stereotypes. There's no need for that.

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I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean transgendered persons, it never occurred to me it could be taken to represent them, and I certainly apologize for any confusion. Nor was I referring to actual real women or men of any kind. The sort of character I was talking about is an exaggeration of stereotypical male traits applied to a female character, under the strange idea that this makes them a strong person.

I admit I should have chosen my words more carefully. Without thinking I used a term that my writer friends and I use as a shorthand for this type of unrealistic character, forgetting that others would not know the context. I am sorry for any offense I caused.

So I'm...just going to toe about six pages worth of discussion under the carpet and answer the original question, which I think it was really cool.

To me, a strong character is one who acts to achieve her goals. She doesn't wait for someone to give her what she wants, she doesn't passive-aggressively whine in hopes of getting what she wants, and she doesn't glumly accept not having what she wants (unless that's a tactical decision.)

She acts. Her action might be a kickass ninja attack, or silent strength and sustained action, or disgusting villany, or persuasive statements phrased carefully so as to not offend the patriarchy she comfortably operates within.

Being weak is to leave the power to order your life in another person's hands. Being strong is take or retain that power for yourself. There are all different ways to be strong, including quiet or sneaky ones.

To me, a strong character is self-directed.

LeslieB said:

I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean transgendered persons, it never occurred to me it could be taken to represent them, and I certainly apologize for any confusion. Nor was I referring to actual real women or men of any kind. The sort of character I was talking about is an exaggeration of stereotypical male traits applied to a female character, under the strange idea that this makes them a strong person.

I admit I should have chosen my words more carefully. Without thinking I used a term that my writer friends and I use as a shorthand for this type of unrealistic character, forgetting that others would not know the context. I am sorry for any offense I caused.

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It's an insult used in the real world against women who come across in masculine ways. But the insult is only part of the issue. The underlying social attitude is the problem, as it's the one that leads to seeing all non-feminine women characters as exaggerated, stereotypical and shallow. Because people always say it's about depth, yet the "man with boobs" character is held to standards of depth no other character has to reach. She's considered a far worse problem than any other character lacking depth, so she gets her own names, and gets singled out specifically. She's deemed to be an unnecessary political statement, who should be removed from the story, unless the author can provide justification for why the role couldn't have been filled by a man. When one passes the test and is considered to officially have depth, she is an exception who had to jump over very high bars.

So it's a loaded statement to say non-feminine women characters are shallow based on aspects of their non-femininity, because the judgement of whether the character is shallow is not one being made impartially. It's being made in the context of that social criticism of women who aren't feminine.

Polenth said:

It's an insult used in the real world against women who come across in masculine ways. But the insult is only part of the issue. The underlying social attitude is the problem, as it's the one that leads to seeing all non-feminine women characters as exaggerated, stereotypical and shallow. Because people always say it's about depth, yet the "man with boobs" character is held to standards of depth no other character has to reach. She's considered a far worse problem than any other character lacking depth, so she gets her own names, and gets singled out specifically. She's deemed to be an unnecessary political statement, who should be removed from the story, unless the author can provide justification for why the role couldn't have been filled by a man. When one passes the test and is considered to officially have depth, she is an exception who had to jump over very high bars.

So it's a loaded statement to say non-feminine women characters are shallow based on aspects of their non-femininity, because the judgement of whether the character is shallow is not one being made impartially. It's being made in the context of that social criticism of women who aren't feminine.

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I don't think asking that a female character resemble an actual human being (assuming, of course, that she is a human, science fiction and all that) to be a high bar. I've seen characters that read as if the author went through a list of stereotypical feminine traits and went as far to the opposite extreme as they possibly could. I have apologized for my phrasing, but I have a perfect right to find that sort of character to be totally uninteresting. I dislike unrealistic characters, period, of any gender or type.

And I don't put all 'non-feminine' characters into that category. I write plenty of female characters who are nowhere near traditional, stereotypical femininity. I've read plenty of books with female characters that could be called non-feminine, and enjoyed them immensely. They are a mix of attitudes and traits, just like real people. Because that is my point. It isn't that the characters don't act like women, it is that they don't act like people.

LeslieB said:

I don't think asking that a female character resemble an actual human being (assuming, of course, that she is a human, science fiction and all that) to be a high bar. I've seen characters that read as if the author went through a list of stereotypical feminine traits and went as far to the opposite extreme as they possibly could. I have apologized for my phrasing, but I have a perfect right to find that sort of character to be totally uninteresting. I dislike unrealistic characters, period, of any gender or type.

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I think you're just using the term differently than how some of us do. You're not criticizing female characters exhibiting stereotypically masculine traits in general, if I'm understanding correctly. You're just criticizing female characters who lack development and adequate characterization, and also happen to exhibit stereotypically masculine traits. That's fine, but it's not the use of "man with boobs" that some of us are used to, which is typically used to decry any female character who happens to take on stereotypically masculine traits.

kuwisdelu said:

I think you're just using the term differently than how some of us do. You're not criticizing female characters exhibiting stereotypically masculine traits in general, if I'm understanding correctly. You're just criticizing female characters who lack development and adequate characterization, and also happen to exhibit stereotypically masculine traits. That's fine, but it's not the use of "man with boobs" that some of us are used to, which is typically used to decry any female character who happens to take on stereotypically masculine traits.

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My friends and I have never used that phrase, and never would use that phrase, to refer to real people. But other people have, so I'll apologize again. We only use it to refer to exaggerated and unrealistic fictional characters, and I shouldn't have used it here.

My thing is that every person is a mixture of traditional/stereotypical masculine and feminine traits. Nobody is 100% feminine or 100% masculine. But the kind of characters I am talking about, the ones who are supposedly strong female characters, are presented not just as 100% masculine, but 200%. When I have read them, I swear I can hear the author's thought process in my head. "Let's see, women are supposed to be empathic, so I'll have her not be able to see past her nose. Women are stereotypically pacifistic, so she'll be ultra-violent and pick fights at the slightest provocation." And so on and so forth.

I find that sort of character just as misogynistic as "I'm helpless, I might break a nail." It is portraying stereotypically male traits as strong, which implies that traditionally female traits are weak. And purely from a reader's point of view, I just can't find a character that would be trite and dull even by old-style adventure pulp standards to be fresh and exciting just because the writer changes the gender.

Oh wow, I checked this thread last night, when it was a single page, planning to come back to it today.

And it has exploded.

I'm guessing someone must have already mentioned Kate Beaton's SFCs? Heh. And her straw feminists, while we're at it. I think, personally, I don't want to see "strong female characters". I want to see strong characters from everywhere on the gender spectrum. I want to see characters that are people first.

To me, that means that technically nothing is off limits. But at the same time, some tropes are so overplayed that there really needs to be less of them. A female character made into a badass because there's rape in her backstory? Overdone, lazy and rarely done in a way that is the least respectful towards real survivors. A female character, strong and independent, who has to get rescued by the usually-weaker male lead because of some monstrous pregnancy plot device? Same.

Bechdel test passes are the same. It's not that there is no legitimate way to have a story that fails the test. It's that stories fail the test so often that the trend is problematic, and any time a writer finds themselves failing it, they would probably do well to step back and examine why.

I think a lot of the issues here are down to the fact that we have a long history of (mostly misconstrued) gender stereotyping to deal with. This is why we have concepts such as 'masculine traits' and 'feminine traits' instead of just 'traits' as it probably should be. We are also mired in very Victorian (and in a similar way, 1950s) images of what 'women should be like' when both of those images are a) only two very short periods out of several thousand years of human history and b) largely inaccurate for portrayals of women even in those periods anyway.

I tend to have a lot of discussions about this topic with my wife who is a historian with an interest in the role of women in history and I have been surprised by some of the things we discuss. The idea, for example, that it used to be considered essential for a woman to orgasm before she could become pregnant, which was beleived in the Regency period before Victorian physicians discounted it and set things back a step. The stories of the things that women have done throughout history - from the anglo saxon female abbesses who became saints to medieval wives who defended their husband's lands from attack. All of these stories have told me one thing - there is no such thing as 'male or female' in terms of personality or behaviour, there is just people.

And I think that is the main test of any character - are they a well rounded and believable person?

jjdebenedictis said:

So I'm...just going to toe about six pages worth of discussion under the carpet and answer the original question, which I think it was really cool.

To me, a strong character is one who acts to achieve her goals. She doesn't wait for someone to give her what she wants, she doesn't passive-aggressively whine in hopes of getting what she wants, and she doesn't glumly accept not having what she wants (unless that's a tactical decision.)

She acts. Her action might be a kickass ninja attack, or silent strength and sustained action, or disgusting villany, or persuasive statements phrased carefully so as to not offend the patriarchy she comfortably operates within.

Being weak is to leave the power to order your life in another person's hands. Being strong is take or retain that power for yourself. There are all different ways to be strong, including quiet or sneaky ones.

To me, a strong character is self-directed.

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This is an excellent point.

The first thing I thought of when I started reading this thread was Scarlett and Melanie from Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. Both of them are excellent examples of strong female characters in literature, and they are wildly different people.

Melanie is a picture of quiet strength. She's not a complaining type, she faces the same seemingly insurmountable obstacles as Scarlett does, but she works withing the framework of the society that she was reared in. Even at the end, when she knows she's dying, she has the strength of mind to try and protect the people she loves the most. She's gentle and kind- the picture of a subservient southern woman- yet she is painfully strong. There's a lot of argument out there that she is the actual heroine of GWTW.

Scarlett, on the other hand, is a take the bull by the horns, do what you need to do even if it isn't moral kind of woman. And she survives. She makes it through the terrible circumstances she is placed in by bucking the rules and doing what's best for her, even if that hurts other people or her reputation. She gets what she wants. She becomes a successful and secure person. Unlike Melanie, she works outside the framework of society, and it serves her well.

I think there's an interesting argument here, especially with regards to femininity and social expectations of women. You can argue, I think, that in the end, though both women achieve what they want, Melanie is the superior of the two. She is able to maintain her social standing and take care of herself and her family. She is the person at the end of the book who experiences love in its most full aspect. Scarlett, while safe and secure with plenty of money, ends up having a loveless life because of the sacrifices she makes. Of course, even at the end she resolves to be strong in the face of that as well...so I guess the argument can be made either way. However, you get broad spectrum on strong female characters in that book.

I'm starting to ramble and lose the thread of my thought, so I'll hush. Great discussion, though.

Does a strong character have to be a self starter, a positive person, a go getter, a great role model? I really don't think so. A strong character to me is simply a character who seems real and/or is full of personality even if, technically, they are larger than life. By 'strong' are we making a moral judgement on someone's worth rather than simply identifying characters who are well-written?

No offence meant, but I genuinely don't understand why anyone would have to question how to write a strong woman. We're not an exotic alien species. We're just people. Just write human.

I don't know the history of the phrase "strong female character." I'm wondering if the initial intent was "a female character whose replacement with a fern would drastically change the story." That is, it was coined in response to stories about men doing manly things (i.e., things) with other men, and the women, when they were mentioned at all, were "X's wife" and existed primarily because people had wives unless the character not having a wife is what the story was about, and secondarily for the purpose of expository dialogue.

By that measure, then, Lucy Van Pelt is a strong female character. I suppose she is anyway.