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Quiet Man Cometh · 05:21 AM

Personally, I think the "in fiction" part really isn't necessary. Gender roles and stereotype exist in fiction because they exist in society, and the topic doesn't need to be limited to books. I think people will only get around stereotype once we stop complaining about people that match it.

There's a good short online called "Pink is not the problem" by MovieBob (never heard of him before this) that I think covers the crux of the issue with gender roles and how they are currently portrayed (he uses 300 and The Hunger Games as examples). In brief, females and males can supposedly act as they like, but masculine traits still have an elevated status over those traits labelled as feminine. This could be why the portrayal of male characters haven't appeared to change much. It is acceptable for women to act in a masculine fashion, but men acting feminine, or "too feminine" will often be given a hard time.

I think easiest way to get around gender stereotyping is to just ignore it. A character is a character, and how they act should be a product of personality, not biological sex. To talk about male/female aspects at all is to invite expectations of behavior. I've written several short stories where I simply don't bother to list the characters' sex at all. I've had different reactions each time. For one story, people simply assumed the narrator (all stories were in first person) was male or female, and were divided in opinion as to which. In another, people actually asked what sex the narrator was, probably because said character had a noted attraction to a man in the crowd and knowing the sex of the narrator would have altered how the story was read (ie, is the narrator homosexual?); and in the last, nothing related to gender ever came up.

There was an amusing short story I read in Women's Studies class about a hypothetical child that was raised with their sex being kept secret (not to the child, but to everyone else) with the point of the story being that, until relationships are involved, sex (or sexual identity) and accompanying gender stereotypes really don't matter.

While thinking about the topic, I found a good blog post some years ago about an author's encounter with stereotyping. I'll see if I can dig it up.

EDIT: Ha! Found it! That was fast.
Apparently I write like a girl

		#6	Quiet Man Cometh We're all mad here.
Personally, I think the "in fiction" part really isn't necessary. Gender roles and stereotype exist in fiction because they exist in society, and the topic doesn't need to be limited to books. I think people will only get around stereotype once we stop complaining about people that match it. There's a good short online called "Pink is not the problem" by MovieBob (never heard of him before this) that I think covers the crux of the issue with gender roles and how they are currently portrayed (he uses 300 and The Hunger Games as examples). In brief, females and males can supposedly act as they like, but masculine traits still have an elevated status over those traits labelled as feminine. This could be why the portrayal of male characters haven't appeared to change much. It is acceptable for women to act in a masculine fashion, but men acting feminine, or "too feminine" will often be given a hard time. I think easiest way to get around gender stereotyping is to just ignore it. A character is a character, and how they act should be a product of personality, not biological sex. To talk about male/female aspects at all is to invite expectations of behavior. I've written several short stories where I simply don't bother to list the characters' sex at all. I've had different reactions each time. For one story, people simply assumed the narrator (all stories were in first person) was male or female, and were divided in opinion as to which. In another, people actually asked what sex the narrator was, probably because said character had a noted attraction to a man in the crowd and knowing the sex of the narrator would have altered how the story was read (ie, is the narrator homosexual?); and in the last, nothing related to gender ever came up. There was an amusing short story I read in Women's Studies class about a hypothetical child that was raised with their sex being kept secret (not to the child, but to everyone else) with the point of the story being that, until relationships are involved, sex (or sexual identity) and accompanying gender stereotypes really don't matter. While thinking about the topic, I found a good blog post some years ago about an author's encounter with stereotyping. I'll see if I can dig it up. EDIT: Ha! Found it! That was fast. Apparently I write like a girl Tea? Last edited by Quiet Man Cometh; 12-15-2013 at 05:21 AM.
	Posted 12-15-2013, 05:10 AM