Help! Amazon Warriors Are Invading My Novel!

Because of years of gender inequality, every fiction writer in existence feels the calling… The calling to write “strong” female characters. (Feel free to squirm under the weight of my sweeping generalization.)

“Well, first of all, WELCOME TO ONE OF MY PET PEEVES,” says Lori in her post on Tumblr.

Preach it, sister.

Excuse me while I get up on my soap box…

Alright. Here’s what inspired the post that inspired this post. Lori was asked this question:

Part of Lori’s response is frequently quoted. Some have made it into a meme. Here’s the Disney Princess edition:

Lori talks about female characters with weak characteristics being written off as “damsels in distress.” As feminists (you are one, surely), we have to promote “strong” females in literature, because women need to be empowered, dang it!

First of all, no. That’s a terrible way to go. Think of all the women left out, who would think themselves not good enough because they can’t match the Xena strong-woman ideal.

Second of all, the flaw I find in extreme feminist thinking is easily found in Lori’s answer. At one point, she says: if a female character is only ever weak, if she’s flat, if she “has no agency of her own, [and] only exists to define other characters (usually men),” then she isn’t a person. The goal in writing female characters is to create people.

When we limit women saying they can only be Distressed Damsels or Amazon Warriors, we’re creating a type, a stereotype. George R. R. Martin, when asked about his interesting female characters responds this way:

I read another author’s take on women (both the quote and the author’s name has vanished from my memory). He said we don’t need more “strong” women, but more women. More women in stories to be all the qualities Lori talks about in her internet famous quote.

But, I think we have to take this a step further and think, if we stop at developing female characters as real people, we could ignore how the gender coin has two sides. We need both genders to make equality. We need dynamic male characters alongside dynamic female characters and vice versa. We need men not boxed in by cultural expectations and men who conform to them. We need male characters to be as interesting as the female.

Because stories are about people. And people are diverse. And that’s kind of awesome.