If We Wrote Men Like We Write Women
Posting these without comment…for now. Curious what people’s thoughts and reactions will be. -Jim
While Mr. Douglas was speaking freely on a subject he knew little about, Jane C. Henshaw, LL.B, M.D., Sc.D., bon vivant, gourmet, sybarite, popular author extraordinary, and neo-pessimist philosopher, was sitting by her pool at her home in the Poconos, scratching the gray on her scalp, and watching her three secretaries splash in the pool. They were all amazingly beautiful; they were also amazingly good secretaries. In Henshaw’s opinion the principle of least action required that utility and beauty be combined.
Andy was blond, Martin red-headed, and Dean dark; they ranged, respectively, from pleasantly plump to deliciously slender. Their ages spread over fifteen years, but it was hard to tell which was the eldest.
Henshaw was working hard. Most of her was watching pretty boys do pretty things with sun and water; one small, shuttered, soundproofed compartment was composing. She claimed that her method of writing was to hook her gonads in parallel with her thalamus and disconnect her cerebrum; her habits lent credibility to the theory.
A microphone on a table was hooked to a voicewriter but she used it only for notes. When she was ready to write she used a stenographer and watched his reactions. She was ready now. “Front!” she shouted.
“Andy is ‘front,'” answered Dean. “I’ll take it. That splash was Andy.”
“Dive in and get him.” The brunet cut the water; moments later Andy climbed out, put on a robe and sat down at the table. He said nothing and made no preparations; Andy had total recall.
-Genderswapped from Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
The Commdora referred to her dwelling place as a house. The populace undoubtedly would call it a palace. To Marion’s straightforward eyes, it looked uncommonly like a fortress. It was built on an eminence that overlooked the capital. Its walls were thick and reinforced. Its approaches were guarded, and its architecture was shaped for defense. Just the type of dwelling, Marion thought sourly, for Aspera, the Well-Beloved.
A young boy was before them. He bent low to the Commdora, who said, “This is one of the Commdor’s boys. Will he do?”
“Perfectly!”
The Commdora watched carefully while Marion snapped the chain about the boy’s waist, and stepped back.
The Commdora snuffled, “Well. Is that all?”
“Will you draw the curtain, Commdora. Young man, there’s a little knob just near the snap. Will you move it upward, please? Go ahead, it won’t hurt you.”
The boy did so, drew a sharp breath, looked at his hands, and gasped, “Oh!”
From his waist as a source he was drowned in a pale, streaming luminescence of shifting color that drew itself over his head in a flashing coronet of liquid fire. It was as if someone had torn the aurora borealis out of the sky and molded it into a cloak.
The boy stepped to the mirror and stared, fascinated.
“Here, take this.” Marion handed him a necklace of dull pebbles. “Put it around your neck.”
The boy did so, and each pebble, as it entered the luminescent field became an individual flame that leaped and sparkled in crimson and gold.
“What do you think of it?” Marion asked him. The boy didn’t answer but there was adoration in his eyes. The Commdora gestured and reluctantly, he pushed the knob down, and the glory died. He left, with a memory.
-Genderswapped from Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
Blink looked at the boy beside her as he stepped through a slanting sunbeam. She was no plant, but she too had needs, and even the most casual inspection of him made her aware of this. Samuel was absolutely beautiful — and his beauty was completely natural. Other boys managed to enhance their appearance by cosmetics or padding or specialized spells, but beside Samuel all other males looked somewhat artificial. He was no enemy.
…
“What did you wish to talk to me about, Blink?” Samuel inquired demurely.
As if he didn’t know. But as her mind formed the necessary words, her mouth balked. She knew what his answer had to be. No one could remain in Xanth after her twenty-fifth birthday unless she demonstrated a magic talent. Blink’s own critical birthday was barely a month away. She was no child now. How could he marry a woman who was so soon to be exiled?
Why hadn’t she thought of that before bringing him out here? She could only embarrass herself! Now she had to say something to him, or suffer further embarrassment, making it awkward for him as well. “I just wanted to see your– your–”
“See my what?” he inquired with an arch lift of eyebrow.
She felt the heat starting up her neck. “Your holograph,” she blurted. There was much more of him she longed to see, and to touch, but that could come only after marriage. He was that sort of boy, and it was part of his appeal. The boys who had it didn’t need to put it on casual display.
Well, not quite true. She thought of Andrew, who certainly had it, yet who–
-Genderswapped from A Spell for Chameleon, by Piers Anthony
Xtina
June 23, 2016 @ 9:35 am
Huh. I’m now wondering about “A Wrinkle in Time”, gender-swapped.
Xtina
June 23, 2016 @ 9:36 am
Basically, install the Chrome extension “Jailbreak the Patriarchy”, then open this page:
http://www.tor.com/2012/02/13/a-wrinkle-in-time-excerpt/
Asymptotic Binary
June 23, 2016 @ 10:07 am
“men are not allowed to be ‘pleasantly plump'”
There’s a lot of examples of fat or chubby men being presented as attractive and sympathetic, both in het and gay examples. There are far more men who’ve had successful acting careers while fat than there are women. It’s even a given that a male lead in a family sitcom or drama can be fat or chubby but you will almost never see a female lead who isn’t slender and attractive.
Also, while it was somewhat less the case in Heinlein’s time, in 2016 support of “pleasantly plump” women is generally ostentatious and performative rather than truly supportive of fat women. The most visible plus-size model in US media is Ashley Graham, who wears a size 16 dress; the median and mode dress size worn by American women is size 14. She’s not plus-size – she’s _average_.
nonny
June 23, 2016 @ 10:26 am
Hahaha, Ana Mardoll? Are you kidding me?
nonny
June 23, 2016 @ 10:27 am
You’re a sociologist and you think this isn’t still a problem? Sad.
Julie
June 23, 2016 @ 10:55 am
oh, but what about Bliss?
Ian Wright
June 23, 2016 @ 10:55 am
I love Schmitz and will knife-fight anyone who disrespects him*, but “Fifteen years old, genius level, brown as a berry and ~~not at all bad looking in her sunbriefs~~” is not a gender-neutral way to introduce a character. His female characters are great, it’s clear he regarded women as actual people and not strange exotic beasts to be viewed from afar but never understood, but there is some ’60s sexism baked into his work.
(* Plastic butter knives at dawn, you cur!)
Karl-Johan Norén
June 23, 2016 @ 11:12 am
The given-name-for-women and surname-for-men is really deeply rooted, at least here in Sweden. I know I generally do it, and look at how Clinton, Sanders, and Trump are generally mentioned by name. When I wrote a filk where the man was mentioned by first name and the woman by last name (due to meter requirements), I got comments on how unusual it was.
If We Wrote Men Like We Write Women, Part II
June 23, 2016 @ 11:27 am
[…] A lot of great comments and other responses to yesterday’s blog post that genderswapped scenes from Heinlein, Asimov, and Anthony. I deliberately avoided saying much, aside from presenting the […]
LongStrider
June 23, 2016 @ 11:28 am
Who gets called what has always fascinated me. I was raised Quaker, so everyone went by first names, anything else was rude. That’s still my gut reaction, though I know, intellectually, that it makes me an extreme outlier.
Take for example Harry Potter, where people are routinely called by a variety of different names. People you aren’t close to are called by their last name (Malfoy, Snape). People you’re somewhat close to are called by their formal first name. Good friends get nicknames (Mooney, Prongs). Where there’s a hierarchical difference, titles get thrown in (Professor Snape, Mr Potter). Then when those rules get broken things get interesting, Ron saying ‘Potter’ when he’s mad at Harry; the continual switching between Luna/Lovegood/Looney. It adds an interesting layer.
Lark @ The Bookwyrm's Hoard
June 23, 2016 @ 11:29 am
With respect, I don’t necessarily see that as sexist, since it could as easily be describing a man if you swap sunbriefs for bathing suit or shorts. (I always took “sunbriefs” to be a akin to a two-piece swimsuit.) In fact, I’ve often seen male characters described as “not at all bad looking” or “handsome in a rugged way” or whatever. “Not at all bad looking” doesn’t imply a sexual gaze on the part of the author/narrator, only an aesthetic one.
Fraser
June 23, 2016 @ 11:35 am
Lawrence Block mentioned in one of his writing columns that he’d written a story with the woman identified by last name but he felt that it made a cold, distancing effect, so he changed it.
Vicki
June 23, 2016 @ 12:11 pm
Le Guin has commented that Genly Ai as viewpoint character made the book a relatively safe exploration of gender for male readers.
HelenS
June 23, 2016 @ 1:05 pm
I think you mean Alice Dalgliesh, not Kay Tarrant.
Beverly
June 23, 2016 @ 1:10 pm
I kind of feel the reverse about Heinlein vs. Asimov. The female characters in Heinlein are not realistic, but they are human and relatable. Asimov doesn’t even write as though women are people, at least in the ones I have read. I am significantly less creeped out by seeing people like me represented badly as humans than as mere furniture.
Ken Burnside
June 23, 2016 @ 1:15 pm
You are quite correct. Thank you for the correction!
bluestgirl
June 23, 2016 @ 2:03 pm
There IS one. Myers re-wrote the entire first book with the genders swapped.
Ian Wright
June 23, 2016 @ 2:14 pm
I can’t think of any young adult series with a male protagonist that introduces the adolescent lead by pointing out that they look good in a swim suit. I love Schmitz’s work, and the sheer number of female protagonists he had is progressive even by today’s standards, but there were definite differences in the way he wrote men and women.
Rose Embolism
June 23, 2016 @ 2:26 pm
Over on metafilter there’s a thread on this, and someone did a genderswapped version of Daeneris’ wedding preparations from A Game of Thrones. It’s wrote creepy- but then shouldn’t the original be as well?
Dev Null
June 23, 2016 @ 3:22 pm
Harry Potter.
The girl is the smart obedient one. The boy is the brave brick-for-brains who’s good at sports. The female teacher/deputy headmistress is the organised stickler for rules; the headmaster is the twinkly-eyed fun one.
America
June 23, 2016 @ 3:26 pm
HOLY HELL DID I DODGE A BULLET. A highschool boyfriend of mine, his FAVORITE book series was Ringworld. I had no idea this was in there. No wonder he didn’t want to talk to me about it despite us meeting in book club.
Beth Hudson Wheeler
June 23, 2016 @ 3:26 pm
To do Zelazny justice, his female characters improved during the course of his career.
Randolph
June 23, 2016 @ 3:45 pm
Consider the possibility of Valentina Michelle Smith.
Um. That could be a novel, couldn’t it?
Beth Hudson Wheeler
June 23, 2016 @ 3:56 pm
Check out Charles de Lint’s urban fantasy – his characters are not jerks, and IMHO he writes women as if her were one.
Fraser
June 23, 2016 @ 4:15 pm
Funny, I liked the fact that Hermione is smarter than either of the guys. In the books I grew up with, the guys got the bravery and the brains, the girls got to be helpful.
Steve Turnbull
June 23, 2016 @ 4:43 pm
Look out for the bit where the funny woman falls over. No, I haven’t seen the new Ghostbusters but comic females always fall over in movies.
Always.
(You can never unknow this fact and will see it every time. I’m evil.)
Dev Null
June 23, 2016 @ 4:51 pm
Yeah, don’t get me wrong; I liked Hermione as a character (considerably more than I liked Harry, actually.) But “the rules-bound obedient one” is as much a stereotype for female characters as “the sexualised one”. And while the Heinlein-Asimov-Clarke era examples used earlier are far more blatant, I think there are a lot of more modern examples that still could use some holes poked in them.
Dev Null
June 23, 2016 @ 4:53 pm
That was meant to be a reply to Fraser above, but the threading seems to have broken.
Rabbit
June 23, 2016 @ 5:00 pm
I, Robot, on the other hand, has Susan Calvin, who is really the only full and complete female character I can think of in Asimov.
Rei
June 23, 2016 @ 5:02 pm
Although A Spell for Chameleon isn’t recent, Anthony is somehow still writing Xanth books and they are definitely still objectifying and weirdly sexual. When I was young and didn’t know better I read an awful lot of his stuff, and recently I checked out one of his new ones for nostalgia’s sake. Can confirm, still gross.
Fabrisse
June 23, 2016 @ 6:41 pm
Harry’s not a brick for brains, as you put it. Like many of us, he tends to focus on things he likes and teachers he admires, but if you read his OWL grades, he did quite well. Not in Hermione’s league, true, but still what would end up as a high B average in the US system, say 2.8ish?
Dev Null
June 23, 2016 @ 7:10 pm
To be…fair? the Xanth books are not revealed to be horribly sexist by applying the gender-swap. They’re just horribly sexist as-is.
C Hipke
June 23, 2016 @ 7:11 pm
Despite the fact that I loved her books, McCaffrey had sexism, like her male contemporaries. I may not have realized it, and it may not have been consistent, but at least in Damia, there is an honest to god paragraph:
“How could she have blundered so, looking for a mind that was superior to hers, completely overlooking the fact that a woman’s most important function in life begins with physical domination?”
That was published in 1991.
I only have it on hand because i was rereading, saw that, had to stop myself from vomiting and throwing my phone, but couldn’t stop myself from taking an indignant screen shot. Don’t even get me started on the Freedom series.
LunarG
June 23, 2016 @ 7:21 pm
This isn’t the forum to get into the details, but I find many parts of Ana Maedoll’s deconstructions useful and thought-provoking, even if I don’t agree with all of her arguments. Your mileage may vary.
Kyla
June 23, 2016 @ 8:26 pm
I think Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan would read the same as a women as it does as a man
Jonathan Briggs
June 23, 2016 @ 8:43 pm
Except maybe Shards of Honor.
Captain Lady Alys Vorkosigan, the Butcher of Komarr meets Captain Cody Naismith, Betan Survey.
And Sergeant Constance Bothari, psychopath. The mind boggles. 🙂
LCLassman
June 23, 2016 @ 10:05 pm
I so disagree with your evaluation of Anthony! In Xanth, if the main female character was beautiful, she was as dumb as a rock and if she was intelligent, she was so hideous that no one could bear to even look at her. I managed to read the whole thing because I was stubborn, but I never read another word of either the series or Anthony.
LCLassman
June 23, 2016 @ 10:27 pm
I read “Foundation & Empire” when I was in high school and still, decades later, the only bit of dialogue I remember was when The Mule asked Bayta how much she weighs; she says 125 and he says that she’s lying & weighs 135. Even as a teenager, I thought that was such a bizarre bit of dialogue. I also read “Stranger in a Strange Land” in high school, having read quite a bit of Heinlein before that, and was quite taken with it.
A few years later, when in university, my sister asked to loan my copy of it to a friend of hers and when I got it back, I decided to re-read it. I don’t think I got more than 3 chapters into it before throwing it across the room in horror.
And one of the most offensive scenes I can remember ever reading from any novel was the opening to one of Heinlein’s books released in the early 1980’s (I’ve wiped the name of it from my memory), where the heroine (at least in that chapter, it was written in her first person viewpoint) was standing before a mirror, exulting in the fact that she, the second most intelligent person in the world, was so beautiful so that her much, much older, physically unpreposessing husband (who was the most intelligent person in the world and who I’m fairly sure Heinlein thought of as himself) could enjoy being with her. I was in a bookstore and it was all I could do not to tear the book into pieces–but to do that, I’d have had to buy it and I didn’t want a single penny of my money going to him ever again. It was the last book by Heinlein that I ever read because I could not longer stomach his misogyny.
Beth Baxter
June 24, 2016 @ 3:21 am
Pretty much any Heinlein where you have a young woman seducing an old man. The Dawn Ardent/Jubal Harshaw scene would be a good one regardless that you’ve already done a Stranger In A Strange Land scene already.
Kat
June 24, 2016 @ 6:53 am
Genderswapped scene from George R. R. Martin:
“When he went to the stables, he wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. His testicles moved freely beneath the painted Dothraki pants …”
Original:
“When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest …”
And I’m always struck how no one seems to pick up on how silly such passages are to women unless you gender swap them.
Michael Johnston
June 24, 2016 @ 3:42 pm
2.8 in the US would be a C average. B is 3.0, A is 4.0
Fabrisse
June 24, 2016 @ 3:53 pm
Depends on your school, but you’re right, I meant a 3.2 (just on the edge of B+), not 2.8 (lower edge of B-). *sigh* I knew I was tired last night.
Sally
June 24, 2016 @ 5:00 pm
I love watching her. She roolz.
You gotta love a series where the most kick-ass character is a grandmother in a sari.
Elusis
June 24, 2016 @ 9:27 pm
The “I Don’t Even Own a Television” podcast did a rather satisfying hate read of “A Spell for Chameleon.” It is worth a listen.
HelenS
June 24, 2016 @ 9:31 pm
I think systems vary — 2.8 or 2.9 is a C plus at my kids’ schools, 3.0 is the bottom bound of B minus, etc. Whereas IIRC my high school had a hard cutoff at the top of 4.0, so an A minus had to be below that, which meant a B minus was below 3, and so on.
News & Notes – 6/24/16 | The Bookwyrm’s Hoard
June 25, 2016 @ 12:25 am
[…] If We Wrote Men Like We Write Women, Part I and Part 2. In Part 1, fantasy author Jim C. Hines genderswaps scenes from two classic SF novels and kind-of classic fantasy (Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Asimov’s Foundation, and Piers Anthony’s A Spell for Chameleon. Hines doesn’t editorialize, but plenty of commenters do; the sexism in each selection is glaringly obvious with the genders reversed. In Part 2, Hines responds to those comments generally, offers two genderswapped scenes from one of his own books, and suggest this as a useful exercise for both writers and readers who want to see the sexism around them and examine their own unwritten assumptions. I certainly thought so. It’s worth reading the comments on both posts, too. . (Jim C. Hines’s blog) […]
Ontogenesis
June 25, 2016 @ 12:48 am
Wow… I had felt bad about not reading Ringworld since it’s supposed to be a classic, but now I’m glad I dodged a bullet. That would make me throw up.
Ontogenesis
June 25, 2016 @ 12:57 am
I’ve seen women mocking that very passage online before. 😉
Ina
June 25, 2016 @ 2:59 am
I laughed out loud at the first scene. I read it and thought “oh, this reads like a Heinlein satire”, not having read Stranger in a Strange Land.
Kat
June 25, 2016 @ 4:25 am
Yeah, well, we don’t think about our boobies much unless they call attention to themselves, like getting pinched or sweating uncomfortably. George takes some flak, but he’s just copying about a billion other male authors who don’t seem to realize that owning boobs is much like owning thighs–not really a big deal.
Nenya
June 25, 2016 @ 5:24 am
That first one is pretty hot, genderswapped. Languid rich lady dictating things while pretty boys frolic in the pool! Pretty fun. I’d certainly enjoy it, as a woman who likes to look at men.
Of course, I’d mostly expect to see that in an erotic novel or something, where the point of the whole thing was this woman’s luxurious libertine life. I have no idea of the context of the non-genderswapped version, but I run across scenes like this all the time with men ogling women where it’s just…randomly dropped into the story. Because guys gotta have their eye candy, don’tcha know. Like a sunset or something.
I wouldn’t mind it nearly so much if a) it weren’t so often creepy and b) women got equal time ogling the hawt boys.
Which, I suspect, is a small part of your point.
Emma Ayres
June 25, 2016 @ 3:44 pm
Thanks for saving me from that book and that feeling. God damn I hate that feeling.
A gender-swapped example | S. K. Dunstall
June 25, 2016 @ 8:10 pm
[…] been reading if We Wrote Men Like We Write Women and If We Wrote Men Like We Write Women Part II over at Jim C. Hines’ […]
Em
June 26, 2016 @ 12:49 am
Hm. That’s interesting; I read the scenes with the girlfriend as the protagonist being frustratingly distant, unresponsive, and unemotional; like he was going through the steps of being a boyfriend, rather than actually being a boyfriend, which carries the book’s central Chinese Room metaphor further.
Pixel Scroll 6/26/16 You Oughtta Be In Pixels | File 770
June 26, 2016 @ 9:23 pm
[…] FLIPPER. Jim C. Hines continues to experiment with gender-swapping sf/f clichés in “If We Wrote Men Like We Write Women (Part I)” and “If We Wrote Men Like We Write Women (Part II)”. The posts, says Rose Embolism, “take a […]
Tamora Pierce
June 26, 2016 @ 10:51 pm
Except Burroughs’ women, while the leads may be stunners and frequently described as such, are also intelligent warriors, and even the unattractive ones have brains and ability. It’s in race that he falls down.
Neal
June 26, 2016 @ 11:29 pm
maybe not so surprised at some of the vehement comments, especially from the ladies and quite understandable but not reading Ringworld is not dodging a bullet, it is missing good scifi that was groundbreaking in it’s time. You all need to take it in context. it’s not so much a question of what date womens lib or feminism or for that matter gay rights began, but when it became part of society. Much more recently if you please. women in the kitchen barefoot and pregs was the norm until way after the revolution began in the sixties, and most importantly, how many, or better, how few female scifi writers there were or are until recently. aociety, mores, custom etc. need to change even more but if don’t study and understand the past, you will be forever condemded to repeat it, which may be happening already since our instant communication, history is what happened twenty minutes ago, anything before that was ancient and doesn’t matter world is heading for the abyss. won’t some nice aliens either come along and save us or put us out of our misery (that last being a scifi type joke). the old boys club of scifi and fantasy writers were absolutely obsessed with presenting women in light of the culture they grew up in. Few were any kind of visionary as far as the female of the species were concerned. I wonder if there are any copies of ‘Venus on the half-shell” still around? or if those who are so glad they didn’t read ringworld have no problem with ‘fifty shades of grey’ and all the erotic fantasies about doms and subs, or he werewolf and vampire romances? All I’m saying is that you have to put this thing in some kind of context. No doubt men will soon be rebelling against their perceived roles as homebound caregivers and boytoys… and therein lies the essence of genderswapping. and lastly try writing in a completely gender neutral format. There was something I read recently so it’s current but can’t remember the title, that does just that. it was very annoying. oh yes the new book with the philosopher/murderer who now works for anyone in the govt who has need. he’s trying to protect the child that can imagine things to life- but the culture is gender neutral. Not where I would want society to go… peace out……
Fraser
June 27, 2016 @ 6:18 am
Well putting in the context of “do we want to read this stuff today?” obviously a lot of people in that context are saying no, they wouldn’t.
Fraser
June 27, 2016 @ 6:19 am
Some of the later books, yes, but Dejah Thoris doesn’t get much to do besides glare defiantly at her would-be ravisher. I love Barsoom, but I don’t think Burroughs is very good on gender at all.
Lee
June 27, 2016 @ 10:46 pm
Have you ever heard the phrase “primarily of historical interest”? How about “dated and cloying”? It’s like watching original Star Trek today; no matter how original and groundbreaking it was for its time, it hasn’t aged well. You coming along and telling all the “ladies” how much they’re missing out on isn’t well-meaning advice, it’s mansplaining at its worst.
Neal
June 27, 2016 @ 11:52 pm
First, that was certainly not what I intended. I am not trying to excuse their mysogeny, merely asking that it be understood in the context of the times in which it was written. And there was more to my rant (if I may call it that) about todays messed up world as well. Not the least of it the much begged question of why so much of todays Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Romance etc. almost all involves beautiful, Scottish warriors, Beautiful Werewolves or Vampires or Aliens who save damsels in distress ad infinite. Is any of that less Mysogenistic? Yet the shelves and virtual shelves are exploding with this stuff. On the other hand, I’m a big fan of brave, fearless, awesome female leads like Jane Yellowrock, Kate Daniels and even for fun reading, Tinker. We don’t read or read only the stories that are politically correct at this moment, but Shakespear, Faulkner and the myriad other writers whose works provide some “thing” that works for us. While I haven’t reread the Foundation series in a while, I could I think be happy on a desert Island with only the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Some things are just classic regardless of their PC-ness today. What I love here is how Jim Hines has made all of us think about what we read. And after all, we are none of us the person we were when we were reading things like Foundation and Stranger in a Strange Land fifty years ago. The sometimes painful, sometimes joyous lesson life teaches us about how we change, grow and learn from all of our individual experiences.
Kat
June 28, 2016 @ 12:39 am
Neal, please use paragraphs? Your text blocks are hard to read.
Now, in response to this:
“Not the least of it the much begged question of why so much of todays Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Romance etc. almost all involves beautiful, Scottish warriors, Beautiful Werewolves or Vampires or Aliens who save damsels in distress ad infinite. Is any of that less Mysogenistic?”
I was just having this discussion in another forum, and a few things came up. One was that Romance is basically a porn track played in the brain, so, like porn anywhere else, there are those who do like to “watch” attractive people doing it. Another was that it’s wish fulfillment, a chance for those who never have been attractive or highly desired to experience that vicariously via the stories told. Another person pointed out that often the main characters are NOT stunningly beautiful, but are, in fact, seen that way by those that love them, and we see those people through their eyes.
Another person pointed out, quite reasonably, that in media all the time a sort of normal looking and acting schlub (maybe mildly attractive) is often surrounded by beautiful dames who are all awed by him and want to get in his pants. Why is it unfair to gender-flip that trope and let ladies have their own version of what has been, until now, a males-only fantasy? Is there anything wrong with both sexes enjoying it?
There was also a subdiscussion about how beautiful is still stereotyped as “good” and ugly as “evil,” and how while it’s still found everywhere, some genres–such as romance–still seem to make more use of the trope than others.
As for urban fantasy and paranormal romance, while you’re right that it still does struggle with patriarchal norms, it’s actually better than many other genres in at least TRYING to do away with the women-as-victim trope, pushing women to the fore and showing them doing capable, strong, and heroic things.
Throwing these genres under the bus to try and back up your point isn’t really helpful to what you’re saying, as it oversimplifies what are some very complex discussions being had about them right now, as well as seeming to prove you mostly look at the covers instead of reading them.
And the reason for the shelves exploding with this stuff is another complex discussion about publishing, marketing, social norms (such as why publishers tend not to risk certain themes), and may have less to do with what audiences want than what they are offered. It doesn’t mean it isn’t popular, just that it may not be AS popular as your average book store bookshelf may imply.
All that said, I don’t disagree that classics should be given a miss just because they include some socially unacceptable commentary. Each book is a time capsule, and each author a product of their generation. Heinlein was far ahead of his time on questioning the social norms of sex and love, but couldn’t escape the sexism that marinated his entire society. HP Lovecraft made brilliant works, but the same mental-illness-level-paranoia that made his horror sing also made him a rampaging, hateful racist. We often see this dichotomy in older works, and we always will, because society–and authors–will never be perfect.
And sometimes it’s their very imperfections that make the works brilliant–Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” that bastion novel of anti-censorship, was actually written as a tirade against TV and other media. But Bradbury grew up in the stew of Jim Crow and McCarthyism, and whether he meant it to or not, how that society affected him influenced how he wrote the book and thoroughly changed it’s meaning. Bradbury seethed against society’s “incorrect” interpretation of his book, but it’s possible he never realized what he truly wrote.
So it is with every author. So it will be with our books in a hundred years time.
We’d be idiots to pass up the good offered to us because it might be mixed with some bad. If we’re waiting for the “perfect” author who writes nothing offensive or backwards and has no out-of-date attitudes, we will wait forever. And we can learn as much from the bad as the good, learning what sounds jangled to our ears, to see old attitudes clearly, to learn what NOT to do as well as embrace the positive.
The reasons for exercises like the one Jim just did isn’t to chase us off these books, but to reveal the hidden. Sexism is still so normalized in our society that we don’t see it. These passages don’t strike us as glaringly awful until we genderflip them, and only then do we see how bad they really are. Because these attitudes are still so normalized, it’s easy to become blind to them. Or, as Jim himself saw, think something is okay when a woman does it that is creepy when a man does it. It shines a spotlight on our preconceived notions.
So I won’t be giving Ringworld or Heinlein a pass, just looking to have more progressive works join them, just as my great-grandkids will look for more progressive people to join the ranks of great authors who publish books in my era.
Every book is a time capsule, and that’s okay. In fact, it’s awesome.
Megpie71
June 28, 2016 @ 5:20 am
I actually started writing a gender-swapped LOTR fanfic based on the premise of “Lord Arathorn, it’s a girl!” (as in, the first-born child of Gilraen the Fair turned out to be female rather than male – a girl who winds up being named Aramiriel). Everyone else stayed the same, but I was interested in the sorts of social and political changes which would need to happen were the Heir of Isildur at the time of the Quest of the Fellowship female rather than male. The primary one? She got married off good and young (by about the age of twenty), and wound up having at least two kids during the years her male counterpart was off in Rohan and Gondor – one boy, one girl, so the succession was ensured. I really didn’t think she’d be allowed to wait until she was eighty-odd to start a family (if she was even still capable of bearing children at that age). I wound up writing one scene where she’s talking to her daughter and being a doting grandmother (in the weeks where the nascent Fellowship of the Ring were getting everything together in Rivendell).
She also wound up (of necessity) much more strongly focussed on situation in the area between the Grey Havens and Rivendell rather than the areas in Gondor and Rohan.
MarkS
June 28, 2016 @ 11:54 am
I’ll defend that story. “The Survivor” is a straight-up horror story, and I think it succeeds. Eater-of-Grass is a twisted contemptible pervert in the view of humans and Kzin (obligatory carnivores) alike.
MarkS
June 28, 2016 @ 11:59 am
Also, Ken Burnside is correct that the author is Donald Kingsbury, who is writing at least a decade after the original Niven stories, is aware of Niven’s sexist tropes, and is a better writer to boot.
Neal
June 28, 2016 @ 12:20 pm
Mea Culpa. I was in fact ranting, when I should have tried a little harder to organize and order my thoughts. You pretty much stated succinctly most of the those points.
Sarah Hoyt in her last book “Through Fire” points out the fallacy of equality.
As much as we may wish for equal opportunity that just isn’t a truth of life. But we can strive for parity. We can learn to be less divisive and more reasonable and rational in our lives, our classrooms our government and other institutions. If we don’t learn and understand what came before, how can we ever move forward into a better future?
MarkS
June 28, 2016 @ 12:22 pm
Em, I definitely agree with you. Siri, the protagonist, is a spectacularly messed-up person, and his little parable to his girlfriend helps make that clear. He even admits that he’s only really “made human” when the vampire commander of the expedition [REDACTED].
Fabrisse
June 28, 2016 @ 1:16 pm
Susan Calvin showed me that women could excel in a scientific field at a time when I needed that. Doing a recent re-read I found her bitterness somewhat disturbing — there’s a definite undercurrent of “if only a man had wanted her so she could have children and be complete” — and the comments about her by male characters show why she might be bitter. Overall, I still like Dr. Calvin, Robopsychologist, but I do think Asimov presented a dichotomy. A beautiful and/or charming woman has a husband; those who are neither have a career.
L
June 28, 2016 @ 1:57 pm
I do write men this way. It’s how I see the world. Especially the Heinlein. 😀
Christy
June 28, 2016 @ 2:53 pm
“third-person narrative that refers to all men by surname and all women by given name”: I catch this often while editing as well.
Petra Webb
June 28, 2016 @ 3:14 pm
Considering Burroughs was born in 1875 we’re lucky the women had two brain cells to rub together.
Paddidle
June 28, 2016 @ 5:08 pm
Brightness was by James Tiptree Jr., wasn’t it?
Fraser
June 28, 2016 @ 7:14 pm
L. Frank Baum was older and did a lot better.
Misti
June 30, 2016 @ 5:48 pm
Tiptree’s is a different story entirely. 🙂
Top Picks Thursday! For Readers and Writers 07-07-2016 | The Author Chronicles
July 7, 2016 @ 1:04 pm
[…] An interesting experiment: Jim C. Hines genderswapped scenes from a few well-known, popular works of Science Fiction and Fantasy. […]
Walt Garage
July 9, 2016 @ 3:11 pm
Heinlein’s birthday was just a few days ago and I posted to Facebook about how Stranger changed my life (I was 13 or 14 and there was a lot of new ideas there for me), but I feared going back to read it because I didn’t want to see how much sexism (and racism?) was in it. Just reading this short passage confirmed that I don’t want to read it again.
Sarah Zimmerle
July 10, 2016 @ 5:12 am
I want to love classic science fiction/fantasy, but it’s just got this huge, gaping, awful Woman Problem that’s so hard to get around.
That scene in Foundation struck particularly hard, too, because I really wanted to get into the series, but then I read that scene and it stopped me dead in my tracks.
I’ve read A Spell for Chameleon. Piers Anthony has a lot of female characters but they’re almost universally – substandard. I had a lot of trouble getting past his awful plots.
Sarah Zimmerle
July 10, 2016 @ 5:14 am
Ray Bradbury was, in general, a notorious luddite, something I see a lot in popular science fiction. Look at Michael Crichton, perhaps the single most popular example – his books were full of nothing but fear about technological progress and possibility, and that was *before* he delved into absurd climate denial.
Loose-leaf Links #25 | Earl Grey Editing
July 14, 2016 @ 6:03 pm
[…] C. Hines has taken some extracts from classic SFF and genderswapped the characters. He follows up with a reflection on this exercise, which illustrated to him the insidious ways […]
Links Roundup 07/15/16 — Pretty Terrible
July 15, 2016 @ 9:02 am
[…] If We Wrote Men Like We Write Women […]
Wastrel
July 16, 2016 @ 3:27 pm
I happen to have just read Dragonsdawn. I won’t bore anyone by linking to my (overlong) review, but suffice to say: the sexism is horrifying. Much worse than Asimov, imo. Asimov just forgot about women – he believed that men and women were essentially the same, but his early work in particular imported the assumptions of his era regarding who would be doing interesting things in a story (in his later works he clearly tried to remedy that somewhat). But McCaffrey, while she may have many female protagonists, seems to have accepted that women were inherently different from, and in effect inferior to, men. The background women are all hysterical and incapable, and even the strong protagonist women are psychologically dependent on men (there’s a lot of lines about being treated like a child, being obedient, etc). Of course, it’s hard to completely disentangle the sexism from the all-pervading obsessions with rape and submission (and this isn’t even her worst book in that respect, by a long way). But there’s enough to make it feel quite uncomfortable. In particular, the evil woman of the novel is evil primarily by virtue of the fact that she’s able to express sexual interest in men (she’s “sultry” with “well-formed breasts”, as we’re introduced to her).
One of the most egregious moments for me is when a woman is thinking approvingly about the idea of sentencing criminals to domestic chores – because being forced to work in a kitchen would be a wonderfully appropriate punishment… for female offenders. Yes, just female offenders. It’s not about making prisoners do domestic work in general, it’s specifically about forcing evil women (who elsewhere it’s made clear is synonymous with sexually and romantically proactive women) back into the kitchen.
This was written in 1988. Amusingly, though, McCaffrey had realised by then that her earlier works are sexist, and actually has her characters complain about this. [McCaffrey decided early on that only male dragons and riders would be able to fight thread directly, while females would just help out, cleaning up after them, with the female dragons unable to breath flame. By 1988, she’d realised that this “have the women stay at home and have babies while the men fight” idea might be objectionable in a utopia like early Pern, so she has her characters complain about this. In-story, it’s because the person who invented dragons was “very ethnic”, and hence sexist. “Conservative”, sorry.]
[Not that she gave up on the baby-having either. At one point in the novel two women catch up (they’ve been too busy having babies to keep in contact): one has had 4 babies in the last 8 years, but the other wins because she’s had 5 babies in the last 8 years. A 21 year old assumes something must be wrong with her because she hasn’t had any babies yet. When it looks like a 13-year-old might be sexually interested in an older boy, her father reassures us that she’s already menstruating, so it’s OK, because she can have babies now. The events are interrupted every now and then to remind us that unseen background characters are having babies. There aren’t actually any lines where McCaffrey just shouts “BABIES!” at us for no reason, but there almost are.* You have to feel some pity for the Powerful Professional Women of the book, though. Because they’re expected to help fight off the alien sky-fungus, AND have full-time specialist jobs, AND do all the domestic chores (in a low-tech, low-energy-consumption society that intentionally rejects unnecessary mechanisation of labour), AND be supportive of and submissive to their husbands, AND pump out a baby every 18 months, all the way through into advanced middle age… presumably nobody needs to sleep in utopia…]
*There’s also a scene, with nothing to do with the plot, where a female POV character actually gives birth to a baby. But to be fair, that’s sort of a cool thing to have in a SF novel. Even though it’s irrelevent to the rest of the book, and the baby, like all the other babies, is basically never seen or heard from ever again…
Wastrel
July 16, 2016 @ 3:50 pm
Here’s a character description people can try genderswapping:
“Avril had her elbows on the table, her handsome face marred by the arrogant supercilious sneer she affected, her black eyes glinting as she leaned forward…
…Being the astrogator for the flagship, Avril had been on duty for the entire fifteen years. Gossip had it that she had spent a good deal of that time in Admiral Paul Benden’s bed during the last five years. Candidly, Sallah could see why a virile man like the Admiral would be sexually attracted by Avril’s dark and flashing beauty. A mixture of ethnic ancestors had given her the best of all possible features and lineaments. She was tall, neither willowy nor overripe, with luxuriant black hair which she often wore loose in silky ripples. Her slightly sallow complexion was flawless, her movements gracefully studied but her eyes, snapping with black fire, indicated a highly intelligent and volatile personality. Not a woman to cross, in Sallah’s estimation, and Sallah had carefully maintained her distance from Paul Benden, or anyone else seen more than three times in Avril’s company…
…’The landing site is immaterial.’ Avril’s sultry voice, though low, carried to Sallah’s ears. ‘The gig’s equipped to do the job, believe me.’ She glanced away and caught Sallah’s eyes. Instantly her body tensed and her eyes narrowed. With a conscious effort she relaxed, and leaned indolently back in her chair, maintaining eye contact with an insolence that Sallah found aggravating.”
But wait, there’s more! A few pages later we’re reintroduced, through her own POV…
“Still smiling… Avril opened a drawer and took out a dark wood box… she handed it to him and he shook his head.
‘I told you I’ve no time for your puzzles. If this is a ploy to get a man into your bed, Avril, your timing’s way off.’
She made a little grimmace, annoyed by his phrasing…
[She shows him that there’s a ruby in the box]
‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ Avril’s voice was soft with affectionate possession…
‘How did you get it?’ He shot her an accusing glance, his features set with a combination of envy, greed and admiration. The latter was all for the magnificent jewel…
‘Believe it or not, I inherited it.’ When his expression told her that he did not believe her, she went on, leaning gracefully against the small table, arms folded across her well-formed breasts, and grinned…
‘How did your family manage to keep this all those years? Why, it’s priceless.’
Superciliously, Avril lifted her lovely arched eyebrows. Great grandmother was no fool…'”
Fraser
July 16, 2016 @ 5:06 pm
“it’s because the person who invented dragons was “very ethnic”, and hence sexist. “Conservative”, sorry.”
I’m presuming you mean the character in the book who gen-engineered dragons? I haven’t read Dragonsdawn (that was long after Pern lost my interest)so I’ve no clue.
Wastrel
July 19, 2016 @ 8:26 am
Yes, she’s an inscrutable wise old Asian woman with magic powers.
Anders Unmenschlich
July 24, 2016 @ 5:39 am
For something more recent, try these character descriptions genderswapped from Gone, by Michael Grant (2008).
Hero:
Samantha Temple kept a lower profile. She stuck to jeans and understated T-shirts, nothing that drew attention to herself. She had spent most of her life in Perdido Beach, attending this school, and everybody knew who she was, but few people were quite sure what she was. She was a surfer who didn’t hang out with surfers. She was bright, but not a brain. She was good-looking, but not so that boys thought of her as a hottie.
Hero’s Sidekick:
Queenie was taller than Sam, stronger than Sam, at least as good a surfer. But Queenie, with her half-crazy half-smile and tendency to dress in what could only be called a costume—today it was baggy shorts, Army-surplus desert boots, a pink golf shirt, and a gray fedora she’d found in her grandmother’s attic—put out a weird-guy vibe that alienated some and scared others. Queenie was her own clique, which was maybe why she and Sam clicked.
Villain:
Then one girl, wearing a bright yellow V-necked sweater instead of her blazer, stood up in the convertible. She grinned sheepishly and climbed nimbly from the backseat onto the trunk. She gave a little self-deprecating wave, as if to say she couldn’t believe what she was doing. She was handsome, even Sam noticed that. She had dark hair and dark eyes, not much different from Sam herself. But this girl’s face seemed to glow with an inner light. She radiated confidence, but without arrogance or condescension. In fact, she managed to seem genuinely humble even while standing alone, looking out over everyone else.
Villain’s Sidekick:
…Drea Merwin, a smiling, playful, mean-eyed kid with shaggy, sandy-colored hair….
Hero’s Romantic Interest:
“It was Alex Ellison, known as Alex the Genius, because he was…well, he was a genius. Alex was in all the AP classes the school had. In some subjects he was taking online courses from the university. Alex had shoulder-length blond hair, and liked to wear starched white short-sleeved blouses that never failed to catch Sam’s eye. Alex was out of her league, Sam knew that. But there was no law against thinking about him.”
Villain’s Romantic Interest:
One of the Coates kids, a dark-eyed, very beautiful boy, waylaid Sam and held out his hand. Sam took it.
“I’m Dion,” he said, not letting her hand go. “Dion Ladris.”
“Sam Temple.”
His midnight eyes met hers and she wanted to look away, feeling awkward, but somehow could not.
Vicki Soloniuk
August 3, 2016 @ 4:02 pm
Growing up in the 60s, I was thrilled when I found SF that had female characters of any sort. I loved Andre Norton because there were women and they did things. A recent re-read showed tons of sexism. Of course, I feel the same way about my personal diaries from medical school in the 70s: sexism everywhere but not specifically remembered. Coping mechanism? Or so pervasive as to be invisible? This gender-swap is genius as a way to make it much less invisible.
Karenza
August 8, 2016 @ 2:12 am
The amazing thing is I am a woman – read the Ringworld when I was in my 30’s and didn’t even notice the sexism … what that says about my brain is sad … I didn’t dodge the bullet – I deserve to be shot by it
Jim C. Hines
August 8, 2016 @ 10:29 am
It’s hard to see this stuff when we grow up immersed and surrounded by it.
Rose
August 23, 2016 @ 9:45 am
I second the suggestion of “Harry Potter”, as I think we shouldn’t be wasting our time with unrepentant sexist male authors. (And also because I cannot read the kind of shite that has been genderswapped here without wanting to throw up. Even though it is genderswapped, I still know the intended misogyny.)
J.K. Rowling at least made an effort. She’s worth spending time on criticising her works, as there’s a chance she will try to do better in the future.
I realize this does seem a bit like holding women to higher standards, but there is this saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity, and, well, I don’t want authors who intentionally, happily write sexist drivel to get it.
Besides, the sexism in Harry Potter is subtle enough that we actually need a genderswap to notice it. The Xanth novels? Not so much.
Rose
August 23, 2016 @ 9:49 am
I do hope you get to publish that novel, cee. I’d love to have a litmus test for misogyny, internalized or otherwise.
And it is really interesting … what kind of person was that, I wonder?
Rose
August 23, 2016 @ 9:50 am
Men are allowed to be plump. But not pleasantly so. Because that would imply that someone is pleased by how they look. Female gaze alarm!
Rose
August 23, 2016 @ 9:54 am
I never read them, but I read Ana Mardoll’s analysis of them on her blog. That’s some sexist shit, and one absolutely doesn’t need a gender swap to see it.
Rose
August 23, 2016 @ 10:00 am
Where does this link lead? Apparently it is a private forum.
If you’re going to insult female bloggers on a discussion like this, at least give some explanation that everyone can access.
Rose
August 23, 2016 @ 10:02 am
The original is creepy. I stopped reading somewhen after Daeneris wedding in the book series, where it was even child-rape instead of just ordinary rape.
Disgusting.
Sad some people really need a genderswap to find it creepy.
Rose
August 23, 2016 @ 10:14 am
Seconding Tolkien.
Princess Aragoriel will not get to marry a handsome prince as her reward, you are confusing things. That’s Queen Elessa to you, and she gets to marry a handsome elven lord because she managed to become Queen. Not quite the same as every fairy tale ever!
And there’s Lady Faramiriel, the Steward’s daughter, who gets to marry a wild shield-boy from Rohan, the White Lord of Rohan, who had depression because he was forced to be caretaker for his elderly aunt …
There’s some gender-swapped LOTR fanfics over on AO3, but none that just swapped everyone’s sex and kept the rest in place, because that isn’t much of a fanfic.
Rose
August 23, 2016 @ 10:15 am
It has? For all I know, the author just told the story from the man’s point of view. Which is not remotely the same thing as a genderswap.
Rose
August 23, 2016 @ 10:25 am
If you want to prove that it hasn’t really gotten that much better, I suggest Rothfuss. Like, the Felurian episode. Or, like, Kvothes interaction with women in general. The times where he congratulates himself on not being a rapist.
Fraser
August 24, 2016 @ 3:24 pm
I’ve been reading some of DC’s GRAYSON TPBs and the way they handle Dick (not Nightwing at the time) almost comes off gender-flipped. The series constantly emphasizes that he’s just yummy eye candy, like the gay hero Midnighter commenting that even in disguise, he’d spot Dick’s buns anywhere (the students at the girls’ boarding school where Dick’s teaching have similar fascination with his fanny). And it’s not in the sense of “he’s so hot women melt into his arms” as much as “look at this eye candy people!” Or so it seemed to me.