This is a really excellent article; I kept copying bits to quote here as bits I particularly liked but eventually there were too many. It's a really exceptional critique of the way we've been...
This is a really excellent article; I kept copying bits to quote here as bits I particularly liked but eventually there were too many. It's a really exceptional critique of the way we've been trained to perceive those we view as women -- as well as the works they create. I resonated a lot with it.
There is a reason why there is a long tradition of women writers going by just initials or taking a male nom de plume. Orchestra auditions are now performed behind a curtain because when the...
There is a reason why there is a long tradition of women writers going by just initials or taking a male nom de plume. Orchestra auditions are now performed behind a curtain because when the judges see the musicians, women get judged more harshly then men.
I recently read an essay be Ursula le Guin where she discusses an epiphany she had. Her models for fantasy and science fiction were male authors. She came late to the realisation that she could focus on a woman main character and Tehanu was the result. It changed the arc and tone of the Earth Sea series.
You might know this, but for others not only are orchestra auditions performed behind a curtain, but they are also performed on carpet because just hearing the clicking of high heels can lead to...
You might know this, but for others not only are orchestra auditions performed behind a curtain, but they are also performed on carpet because just hearing the clicking of high heels can lead to discrimination!! So crazy. What is the Ursula le Guin essay?! would love to read it :D
You recommended that I skip to Tehanu in a book thread a while back, and I'm very glad of that recommendation - I ignored it at the time, but looking forward to the final book helped me get...
You recommended that I skip to Tehanu in a book thread a while back, and I'm very glad of that recommendation - I ignored it at the time, but looking forward to the final book helped me get through the others in the Earthsea series! Not that they're bad necessarily, but I think this comment touches on a lot of the issues they had - they feel almost like books that any fantasy youth author might have written. They're very well written, but there's something so completely different and unique about the voice that Le Guin uses in Tehanu that makes it feel so much more interesting.
I think Tehanu might be my favourite fantasy book of all time, and I've devoured quite a bunch of them. It's just so incredibly different from most fantasy, and not in the way other 'subversive'...
I think Tehanu might be my favourite fantasy book of all time, and I've devoured quite a bunch of them. It's just so incredibly different from most fantasy, and not in the way other 'subversive' novels have. It is not merely a subversion, it's not in conversation with mainstream fantasy and it does not reject the tropes of the genre. It rather feels like it's written in an alternate universe where all of that baggage simply didn't exist. (And yet it hits all the harder because of it, of course)
I truly believe you can see evidence of how incisive this essay is by how aggressively some of the comments disparage the work due to a single comparison, as if by disproving it the rest of the...
I truly believe you can see evidence of how incisive this essay is by how aggressively some of the comments disparage the work due to a single comparison, as if by disproving it the rest of the essay comes apart (it doesn't), and by how many negative votes each comment has (at least -500). It truly ruffled some delicate and fragile plumage.
Like many women, I imagine we didn't start out as young girls instantly rolling our eyes at female media. I certainly didn't. My favourite media as a child were written by (and mostly for) women:...
The danger of the male glance is that it is reasonable. It’s not always or necessarily incorrect. But it is dangerous because it looks and thinks it reads. The glance sees little in women-centric stories besides cheap sentiment or its opposite, the terrifically uninteresting compensatory propaganda of “female strength.” It concludes, quite rightly, that Strong Female Lead is not a story but a billboard
Like many women, I imagine we didn't start out as young girls instantly rolling our eyes at female media. I certainly didn't. My favourite media as a child were written by (and mostly for) women: Sailormoon, the works of CLAMP, Inuyasha, Fruits Basket, Kareshi Kanojo No Jijy, kodomo no omocha, Ramma 1/2, Chobits, Twelve Kingdoms....too many stories by women to list.
I grew up reading novels by Margaret Atwood and Margaret Lawrence and 深雪 and 張小嫻. When I was young, worthwhile stories were those told by women or gender neutral unknown entities. Male oriented stories were about only about fighting and were boilerplate and boring (I thought).
It wasn't until much later that I look back and think, hmm, there really isn't a lot of women created content from Hollywood/TV or from America. (And it's entirely my fault I didn't read a lot of American women writers)
And this is how Doll and Em—as brilliant a commentary on how women have been narrated in Hollywood for generations as there’s yet been, taking on The Godfather, All About Eve, and Sunset Boulevard—got dismissed, nonsensically, as yet another satire.
I've never heard of this tv show (not a tv watcher) and I dismissed it instantly because the name has "doll" in it. I assumed, like the author says, that the story is either going to be tailored for the male gaze (boring), or worse tailored for the supposed female audience: something "small and careful, or petty and domestic, or vain, or sassy, or confessional", or worse, "provocative, unflattering, and exhibitionist".
So much female media recieve titles that immediately signal (at least to me) "This is Women Stuff: feel free to ignore it or else pull out your red markers". What I mean is titles like the above "doll" and "queen" and "housewives" and "soap" and "-girl/-woman" and "sex". But maybe the writer is right: the words are neutral, the automatic scorn is all mine.
Some of our biggest movie franchises have been from women: Harry Potter, Mockingjay, Twilight. I'm looking forward to more.
That was a fantastic read. Without spoiling the end:
outline it, so that others will see it too.
By submitting this piece, you've done just that. Wonderful. We gotta keep doing that.
I resonate with much of your comment, so I feel compelled to respond to this aside. Apologies if I'm reading too much into it, but I believe it's important to give ourselves some grace along our...
(And it's entirely my fault I didn't read a lot of American women writers)
I resonate with much of your comment, so I feel compelled to respond to this aside. Apologies if I'm reading too much into it, but I believe it's important to give ourselves some grace along our learning journey.
To use myself as an example, I recall growing up a lot of 'best of', 'must read', or 'classics' lists were dominated by male writers, so I find it difficult to blame younger me for reading fewer female authors. If book publications were once - but no longer! - dominated by men, then even now the majority of long-established classics would be written by men.
It took me a lot of growth to see that this gap existed and to become more unabashedly comfortable in my own skin as a women to understand the need for (let alone importance of) purposefully seeking women's perspectives across all types of media. I'd say my reading (and watching and listening) these days is more balanced between men and women as a result, and exposure to these perspectives have further helped me grow into myself and the world around me.
That's an interesting article in it's own right. Yeah I agree with you I think. It used to be that I would read things "if they were good", as if my going to look on a shelf I'm presented with an...
That's an interesting article in it's own right.
Once upon a time, women authored less than 10 percent of the new books published in the US each year. They now publish more than 50 percent of them. Not only that, the average female author sells more books than the average male author.
Yeah I agree with you I think. It used to be that I would read things "if they were good", as if my going to look on a shelf I'm presented with an even offering of writings from men and women, and each book is being judged "fairly" based on title and cover art alone. I didn't realise that I was actually picking from 90% male writings + 10% women's writings that passed the judgement of (likely) male publishers and librarian selection.
I'm going to use this space to both pitch for one of my favorite overlooked, under-promoted shows of the past year, Somebody, Somewhere, and point to The Male Glance author, Lili Loofbourow's own...
I'm going to use this space to both pitch for one of my favorite overlooked, under-promoted shows of the past year, Somebody, Somewhere, and point to The Male Glance author, Lili Loofbourow's own review of it, here. Loofbourow's review is the best of a very mixed bag. It's difficult to describe how deftly Everett's writing and the stellar cast navigate a minefield of potential stereotypes with care for the individual characters' lives. The dialogue is by turns pants-wettingly funny and tear-inducing. This is quietly powerful storytelling which ensures that every complicated character is neither wholly loveable nor hate-worthy, just perfectly human and relatable. I dare anyone to view it without finding a person or situation that resonates with their own lives.
This is a really excellent article; I kept copying bits to quote here as bits I particularly liked but eventually there were too many. It's a really exceptional critique of the way we've been trained to perceive those we view as women -- as well as the works they create. I resonated a lot with it.
There is a reason why there is a long tradition of women writers going by just initials or taking a male nom de plume. Orchestra auditions are now performed behind a curtain because when the judges see the musicians, women get judged more harshly then men.
I recently read an essay be Ursula le Guin where she discusses an epiphany she had. Her models for fantasy and science fiction were male authors. She came late to the realisation that she could focus on a woman main character and Tehanu was the result. It changed the arc and tone of the Earth Sea series.
You might know this, but for others not only are orchestra auditions performed behind a curtain, but they are also performed on carpet because just hearing the clicking of high heels can lead to discrimination!! So crazy. What is the Ursula le Guin essay?! would love to read it :D
You recommended that I skip to Tehanu in a book thread a while back, and I'm very glad of that recommendation - I ignored it at the time, but looking forward to the final book helped me get through the others in the Earthsea series! Not that they're bad necessarily, but I think this comment touches on a lot of the issues they had - they feel almost like books that any fantasy youth author might have written. They're very well written, but there's something so completely different and unique about the voice that Le Guin uses in Tehanu that makes it feel so much more interesting.
I think Tehanu might be my favourite fantasy book of all time, and I've devoured quite a bunch of them. It's just so incredibly different from most fantasy, and not in the way other 'subversive' novels have. It is not merely a subversion, it's not in conversation with mainstream fantasy and it does not reject the tropes of the genre. It rather feels like it's written in an alternate universe where all of that baggage simply didn't exist. (And yet it hits all the harder because of it, of course)
It might have been more than one, but one source is the essay What Women Know, found in the collection Words are my Matter
I truly believe you can see evidence of how incisive this essay is by how aggressively some of the comments disparage the work due to a single comparison, as if by disproving it the rest of the essay comes apart (it doesn't), and by how many negative votes each comment has (at least -500). It truly ruffled some delicate and fragile plumage.
Like many women, I imagine we didn't start out as young girls instantly rolling our eyes at female media. I certainly didn't. My favourite media as a child were written by (and mostly for) women: Sailormoon, the works of CLAMP, Inuyasha, Fruits Basket, Kareshi Kanojo No Jijy, kodomo no omocha, Ramma 1/2, Chobits, Twelve Kingdoms....too many stories by women to list.
I grew up reading novels by Margaret Atwood and Margaret Lawrence and 深雪 and 張小嫻. When I was young, worthwhile stories were those told by women or gender neutral unknown entities. Male oriented stories were about only about fighting and were boilerplate and boring (I thought).
It wasn't until much later that I look back and think, hmm, there really isn't a lot of women created content from Hollywood/TV or from America. (And it's entirely my fault I didn't read a lot of American women writers)
I've never heard of this tv show (not a tv watcher) and I dismissed it instantly because the name has "doll" in it. I assumed, like the author says, that the story is either going to be tailored for the male gaze (boring), or worse tailored for the supposed female audience: something "small and careful, or petty and domestic, or vain, or sassy, or confessional", or worse, "provocative, unflattering, and exhibitionist".
So much female media recieve titles that immediately signal (at least to me) "This is Women Stuff: feel free to ignore it or else pull out your red markers". What I mean is titles like the above "doll" and "queen" and "housewives" and "soap" and "-girl/-woman" and "sex". But maybe the writer is right: the words are neutral, the automatic scorn is all mine.
Some of our biggest movie franchises have been from women: Harry Potter, Mockingjay, Twilight. I'm looking forward to more.
That was a fantastic read. Without spoiling the end:
By submitting this piece, you've done just that. Wonderful. We gotta keep doing that.
I resonate with much of your comment, so I feel compelled to respond to this aside. Apologies if I'm reading too much into it, but I believe it's important to give ourselves some grace along our learning journey.
To use myself as an example, I recall growing up a lot of 'best of', 'must read', or 'classics' lists were dominated by male writers, so I find it difficult to blame younger me for reading fewer female authors. If book publications were once - but no longer! - dominated by men, then even now the majority of long-established classics would be written by men.
It took me a lot of growth to see that this gap existed and to become more unabashedly comfortable in my own skin as a women to understand the need for (let alone importance of) purposefully seeking women's perspectives across all types of media. I'd say my reading (and watching and listening) these days is more balanced between men and women as a result, and exposure to these perspectives have further helped me grow into myself and the world around me.
That's an interesting article in it's own right.
Yeah I agree with you I think. It used to be that I would read things "if they were good", as if my going to look on a shelf I'm presented with an even offering of writings from men and women, and each book is being judged "fairly" based on title and cover art alone. I didn't realise that I was actually picking from 90% male writings + 10% women's writings that passed the judgement of (likely) male publishers and librarian selection.
I'm going to use this space to both pitch for one of my favorite overlooked, under-promoted shows of the past year, Somebody, Somewhere, and point to The Male Glance author, Lili Loofbourow's own review of it, here. Loofbourow's review is the best of a very mixed bag. It's difficult to describe how deftly Everett's writing and the stellar cast navigate a minefield of potential stereotypes with care for the individual characters' lives. The dialogue is by turns pants-wettingly funny and tear-inducing. This is quietly powerful storytelling which ensures that every complicated character is neither wholly loveable nor hate-worthy, just perfectly human and relatable. I dare anyone to view it without finding a person or situation that resonates with their own lives.
Thank you, I will definitely give it a watch!