As long as I'm pissed...
27 Jul 2005 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouLet's get this clear. If I hear one more time that a woman cannot write a man, a gay man, a straight man, a gun-toting man, a young man, or a cane-using gray-haired doddering old man -- and all criticisms often said by a MAN -- I'm going to go fucking ballistic. I'm warning you, people, I'm a donkey on the edge. I have a temper and I'm past the point of being afraid to use it!
Look, it's bullshit, plain and simple. That's my opinion, and nothing anyone says is gonna change it. You can agree with me, you can point out disagreements, but if you flame me, take it elsewhere or get deleted. Argue about it on your own damn journal. Not interested, because this post is me stating that I think it's bullshit. Here, let's try on a few examples for size. All examples edited to remove names, but not genders.
Now. You tell me which excerpts were written by men, and which were written by women.
Because the claim that started this post really pisses me off. I've read Ian Fleming's novels, and all of them have that feeling like someone who really damn well knows the spy business wrote those stories -- but Tom Clancy, who only used research available publically, came up with a book that had the Navy and the Pentagon scrambling to investigate him to make sure he hadn't revealed national secrets. When was the last time you read a book that had a murder in it? Did you think, "hunh, that would've been FAR more realistic if the author had first-hand experience as a murderer and could prove s/he is sitting on death row at this very instance." Have you ever read a book that had you thinking, this person so gets what it's like to be a woman, that you're shocked to realize the author was a man? Or vice versa?
It is true that there are women who cannot write realistic gay male characters. It is also true that there are gay men who cannot write realistic heterosexual women. And there are writers everywhere who cannot write realistic characters of one niche or another. But these statements would have to come with the clarification to some degree that these writers therefore SUCK. Maybe not at everything but at that detail? Yes. Does that make them representative of all writers trying to write that type of character? NO. So shut the fuck up and stop whining about how someone not of the character's background, gender, orientation, culture, or whatever-the-fuck cannot therefore write a character of that type. It's bullshit.
A good writer will suck you in and convince you, even despite yourself, that what you are reading is The Way It Is. I have favorite novels on my shelf that cover everything from sharecroppers to sailors. Hell, until I'd read Kim, I thought Rudyard Kipling had to be a Gloucestor man, born and bred on the big blue water. Is he somehow less of a writer because he only listened in the pubs and never went out for a season of fishing? I don't see anyone claiming that no man can write a woman as well as a woman. The body of literature denies that claim, as much as it does that a woman can't write a man. And I just don't fall for the crap that sexual orientation is any different, really; it's SEX. Maybe the mechanics are a bit different, but if you're not writing porn, it doesn't fucking matter. It's still two characters interacting, and if you can write two men, two women, two goddamn dogs made of concrete, you can keep going from there.
Bloody fucking hell! What a blasted useless day. One fucking thing after another, and then the classic whine of "women can't write this" -- where the hell are the complaints from the women about "men can't write this"? Oh, right, MEN have been writing women since WAY before women have been writing MEN. And while there are plenty of romanticized versions -- from Jane Eyre up to the modern fen slash writer -- there are just as many where in reading you get lost and think, OMG, this person MUST be a ____, to totally grok how I feel, as a fellow ____. And then SURPRISE. The author is a white, middle class, somewhat well educated person writing from a small study in fucking SUBURBIA, and yet s/he has totally, somehow, grokked what it's like to be a minority of a disparate sexual orientation living in the ghetto. This is not a remarkable thing, for a writer. This is simply a sign of a damn good writer.
Besides, if I had to be personally experienced with everything I write -- in the strictly literal reading of "write what you know" -- it'd be a damn poorer story set for me, and every other frickin' writer out there. Forget your damn fantasy! If you've never seen a dragon, met a fairy, killed someone, shot a gun, popped a wheelie on a motorcycle, robbed a bank, fallen in love, had children, then don't fuckin' write it. Losing a lot of options there, eh. Yeah. So if you're tempted to whine that someone not of your gender, your orientation, your background, your education, your culture, your country, your religion can write someone like you... just shut up. Whine somewhere else.
This reminds me of the time Alexie Sherman threw a fit on public radio about the middle-class journalist who wrote On the Rez, a semi-anthropological work about the author's friendship with a full-blooded Pine Ridge resident. Sherman just went OFF about how the author was stealing Sherman's culture, and taking advantage of it, and twisting it to his own ends, and how the author could NEVER grok the depth and richness of Sherman's culture. Blah, blah, blah.
A reviewer down in Louisiana had a come back to that. He pointed out that Sherman used Robert Johnson in Reservation Blues, where Johnson's magical guitar ends up owned by Thomas Builds-the-Fire. On behalf of black Southern men everywhere, the reviewer wrote, he'd like to complain that Sherman needs to stop commandeering the reviewer's culture, and rewrite his book to remove all references to Robert Johnson -- who, as we all know, was NOT a full-blooded Native American but an itinerate if gifted musician, and a black Southern man, as well. If Sherman's going to complain about someone else lifting his culture's stories wholecloth, he needs to stop doing it himself.
So, yeah, if you wanna argue only gay men can write gay men, go ahead. But what are you gonna do? Leave out all heterosexual men in your story? Have absolutely no women in your story, lesbian, straight, or otherwise? Oh, please.
So...shut up already. And get back to writing, and stop giving a flying fuck about whether or not your credentials -- or anyone else's, for that matter -- fit in with the subject matter. If you write a good book, I really won't frickin' care. If it's a good book, I should never see you but for a few moments at the end, when I say: this author really grokked How It Is. If you can't do that, you suck, and no amount of personal experience is gonna save your ass, and no amount is gonna make me read past the first paragraph.
And in case you're wondering, this goes just as much for me, too. If we can't write, we might as well go back to washing dishes and refilling coffee cups.
Look, it's bullshit, plain and simple. That's my opinion, and nothing anyone says is gonna change it. You can agree with me, you can point out disagreements, but if you flame me, take it elsewhere or get deleted. Argue about it on your own damn journal. Not interested, because this post is me stating that I think it's bullshit. Here, let's try on a few examples for size. All examples edited to remove names, but not genders.
- But we should go slow." D looked away, then looked back. "Can I ask if - if you've -"
"No, I haven't. I never thought I would. But I'm as certain of this as anything in my life. I trust you. I love you! And I want to give myself to you."
D sat humbled by his new love's words. He brought one hand up to trace M's jaw line. "I didn't dare to hope for this, to believe that you would return my feelings."
"I do. So let me -"
D put two fingers to M's lips. "We will, we will. I promise. But not tonight." - ...T walked towards his partner with slow, deliberate - almost predatory - steps, eyes fixed on his face. A hand reached for the duffle bag's strap and slipped it off C's shoulder in one spare movement. C didn't twitch; he was a coil of dangerous stillness. His hand twisted ever so slightly, catching the strap of the bag as it fell by his wrist, to let it slip more slowly to the ground without ever breaking eye contact, in a move that was so minimalist it was almost a threat, like two great cats watching each other, waiting to see what move the other would pull.
- He longs for this moment more than any other. It is what he lives for, and when she returns his embrace, he gives himself over to this moment, at peace once again.
He raises his head and gently touches her cheek and she tilts her head and closes her eyes. His hands are hard and her skin is soft, and he wonders for a moment if she'll pull back, but of course she doesn't. She never has, and it is at times like this that he knows what his purpose is in life.
His is here to love her, to hold her in his arms, to protect her. He is here to learn from her and to receive her love in return. His is here because there is no other place to be. - He hesitantly put his hands on her knees, a supplicating gesture as he knelt, looking up. "In college, I read fairy tales for a class, and it was like the war. Happily ever after, right?" He ducked his head. "I'm scared. I don't know what to do, after that. I don't know how it works. I'm not an easy person to be with. I'm only a decent cook, I don't know anything about movies, I'm not very sociable, I don't always know what to say... "
Now. You tell me which excerpts were written by men, and which were written by women.
Because the claim that started this post really pisses me off. I've read Ian Fleming's novels, and all of them have that feeling like someone who really damn well knows the spy business wrote those stories -- but Tom Clancy, who only used research available publically, came up with a book that had the Navy and the Pentagon scrambling to investigate him to make sure he hadn't revealed national secrets. When was the last time you read a book that had a murder in it? Did you think, "hunh, that would've been FAR more realistic if the author had first-hand experience as a murderer and could prove s/he is sitting on death row at this very instance." Have you ever read a book that had you thinking, this person so gets what it's like to be a woman, that you're shocked to realize the author was a man? Or vice versa?
It is true that there are women who cannot write realistic gay male characters. It is also true that there are gay men who cannot write realistic heterosexual women. And there are writers everywhere who cannot write realistic characters of one niche or another. But these statements would have to come with the clarification to some degree that these writers therefore SUCK. Maybe not at everything but at that detail? Yes. Does that make them representative of all writers trying to write that type of character? NO. So shut the fuck up and stop whining about how someone not of the character's background, gender, orientation, culture, or whatever-the-fuck cannot therefore write a character of that type. It's bullshit.
A good writer will suck you in and convince you, even despite yourself, that what you are reading is The Way It Is. I have favorite novels on my shelf that cover everything from sharecroppers to sailors. Hell, until I'd read Kim, I thought Rudyard Kipling had to be a Gloucestor man, born and bred on the big blue water. Is he somehow less of a writer because he only listened in the pubs and never went out for a season of fishing? I don't see anyone claiming that no man can write a woman as well as a woman. The body of literature denies that claim, as much as it does that a woman can't write a man. And I just don't fall for the crap that sexual orientation is any different, really; it's SEX. Maybe the mechanics are a bit different, but if you're not writing porn, it doesn't fucking matter. It's still two characters interacting, and if you can write two men, two women, two goddamn dogs made of concrete, you can keep going from there.
Bloody fucking hell! What a blasted useless day. One fucking thing after another, and then the classic whine of "women can't write this" -- where the hell are the complaints from the women about "men can't write this"? Oh, right, MEN have been writing women since WAY before women have been writing MEN. And while there are plenty of romanticized versions -- from Jane Eyre up to the modern fen slash writer -- there are just as many where in reading you get lost and think, OMG, this person MUST be a ____, to totally grok how I feel, as a fellow ____. And then SURPRISE. The author is a white, middle class, somewhat well educated person writing from a small study in fucking SUBURBIA, and yet s/he has totally, somehow, grokked what it's like to be a minority of a disparate sexual orientation living in the ghetto. This is not a remarkable thing, for a writer. This is simply a sign of a damn good writer.
Besides, if I had to be personally experienced with everything I write -- in the strictly literal reading of "write what you know" -- it'd be a damn poorer story set for me, and every other frickin' writer out there. Forget your damn fantasy! If you've never seen a dragon, met a fairy, killed someone, shot a gun, popped a wheelie on a motorcycle, robbed a bank, fallen in love, had children, then don't fuckin' write it. Losing a lot of options there, eh. Yeah. So if you're tempted to whine that someone not of your gender, your orientation, your background, your education, your culture, your country, your religion can write someone like you... just shut up. Whine somewhere else.
This reminds me of the time Alexie Sherman threw a fit on public radio about the middle-class journalist who wrote On the Rez, a semi-anthropological work about the author's friendship with a full-blooded Pine Ridge resident. Sherman just went OFF about how the author was stealing Sherman's culture, and taking advantage of it, and twisting it to his own ends, and how the author could NEVER grok the depth and richness of Sherman's culture. Blah, blah, blah.
A reviewer down in Louisiana had a come back to that. He pointed out that Sherman used Robert Johnson in Reservation Blues, where Johnson's magical guitar ends up owned by Thomas Builds-the-Fire. On behalf of black Southern men everywhere, the reviewer wrote, he'd like to complain that Sherman needs to stop commandeering the reviewer's culture, and rewrite his book to remove all references to Robert Johnson -- who, as we all know, was NOT a full-blooded Native American but an itinerate if gifted musician, and a black Southern man, as well. If Sherman's going to complain about someone else lifting his culture's stories wholecloth, he needs to stop doing it himself.
So, yeah, if you wanna argue only gay men can write gay men, go ahead. But what are you gonna do? Leave out all heterosexual men in your story? Have absolutely no women in your story, lesbian, straight, or otherwise? Oh, please.
So...shut up already. And get back to writing, and stop giving a flying fuck about whether or not your credentials -- or anyone else's, for that matter -- fit in with the subject matter. If you write a good book, I really won't frickin' care. If it's a good book, I should never see you but for a few moments at the end, when I say: this author really grokked How It Is. If you can't do that, you suck, and no amount of personal experience is gonna save your ass, and no amount is gonna make me read past the first paragraph.
And in case you're wondering, this goes just as much for me, too. If we can't write, we might as well go back to washing dishes and refilling coffee cups.
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no subject
Date: 28 Jul 2005 02:59 pm (UTC)