I have to wonder why the proportion of women and men in a story must always be 50/50 for the story to pass the test.
To be fair, I didn't say that it *has* to be 50/50, I just said that 50/50 was a good start. I'm not going to get any hackles raised just over number if, for instance, in a cast of five characters, two are women and three are men, provided the women are well written and well portrayed in their roles.
Yes, women are always there, in reality, but there are any number of stories wherein there are good, character-driven reasons for a gender imbalance.
Oddly enough, I'm having trouble thinking of one. I'm sure you can, so I'll ask you for an example.
To my mind, even in historical situations where women were excluded from certain areas of society or certain places, I mean even on a *battlefield*, women can be found. Either as camp followers, or sometimes disguised as men, fighting. The question is, does the story (and thus its creator) value women enough to look at what they were doing at the time, if they were physically excluded from a certain place?
Why should the scenes/lines be split 50/50?
Because the amount of scenes/lines given is almost always (notice the almost, I'm sure we can find exceptions) an indicator of how valued the character is within the story. And again, it's not a hard, fast rule. But giving the women a few scattered lines here and there and leaving the vast heaping rest of the work to the menfolk clearly isn't getting it done.
Then, you say women "who have not only substantive, important, relevant conversations with each other..." and I have to wonder by whose definitions? Because now you're coming dangerously close to defining substantive and important by the historical male rules,
The definition is relative, and it depends on the situation and the story line. Yes, talking about children, sewing, etc can be relevant and substantive and important in some contexts, but at the same time? If you have a heroine who supposedly has the power to kill creatures of the night and use a semi-auto, but yet the only discussions she seems to have with other females are about shoes and purses, then you have a problem.
But it's like I said - even my own rules have holes and exceptions and other flaws, because it's all about quality in context.
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Date: 2009-01-09 01:04 pm (UTC)To be fair, I didn't say that it *has* to be 50/50, I just said that 50/50 was a good start. I'm not going to get any hackles raised just over number if, for instance, in a cast of five characters, two are women and three are men, provided the women are well written and well portrayed in their roles.
Yes, women are always there, in reality, but there are any number of stories wherein there are good, character-driven reasons for a gender imbalance.
Oddly enough, I'm having trouble thinking of one. I'm sure you can, so I'll ask you for an example.
To my mind, even in historical situations where women were excluded from certain areas of society or certain places, I mean even on a *battlefield*, women can be found. Either as camp followers, or sometimes disguised as men, fighting. The question is, does the story (and thus its creator) value women enough to look at what they were doing at the time, if they were physically excluded from a certain place?
Why should the scenes/lines be split 50/50?
Because the amount of scenes/lines given is almost always (notice the almost, I'm sure we can find exceptions) an indicator of how valued the character is within the story. And again, it's not a hard, fast rule. But giving the women a few scattered lines here and there and leaving the vast heaping rest of the work to the menfolk clearly isn't getting it done.
Then, you say women "who have not only substantive, important, relevant conversations with each other..." and I have to wonder by whose definitions? Because now you're coming dangerously close to defining substantive and important by the historical male rules,
The definition is relative, and it depends on the situation and the story line. Yes, talking about children, sewing, etc can be relevant and substantive and important in some contexts, but at the same time? If you have a heroine who supposedly has the power to kill creatures of the night and use a semi-auto, but yet the only discussions she seems to have with other females are about shoes and purses, then you have a problem.
But it's like I said - even my own rules have holes and exceptions and other flaws, because it's all about quality in context.