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Writing Across Gender

by Jennifer duBois, March 30, 2012 11:16 AM
In promoting A Partial History of Lost Causes, I've fielded some questions about what it was like to write across gender ? to enter the point of view of a man, Aleksandr, and stay there for 30 years of his life. Those questions have made me think in a broader sense about what writing across gender means: what it implies, who is expected to do it, how it relates to some of the most vexing ontological questions about women that have preoccupied the country of late, and how, perhaps, it can help to address them.

I don't think it's terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender's consciousness in a way that men aren't. This isn't to say that women don't often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has. Every element of her life — from reading books about boys and men to writing papers about the motivations of male characters to being attentive to her own safety to navigating most any institutional or professional or economic sphere — demands an ironclad familiarity with, and belief in, the idea that men really are fully human entities. And no matter how many men come to the same conclusions about women, the structure of society simply does not demand so strenuously that they do so. If you didn't really deep down believe that women were, in general, exactly as conscious as you, you could probably still get by in life. You could probably still get a book deal. You could probably still get elected to office.

This discrepancy plays out in fiction, where it fuels a literary cycle which is both a cause and a consequence of the broader issue. Girls, alongside the variety of other ways in which they're confronting the reality of male consciousness, read and write papers about Huck and then Holden and then Jake Barnes. In doing so, they learn that male minds, like female minds, are complicated and weird and worthy of attention. Adult female readers then will often voluntarily read books by and about both men and women, whereas male readers will overwhelmingly, though of course not exclusively, read books by and about men. And female writers will often also voluntarily write books populated by both men and women. (If they don't, they will have to be ever-mindful of the possibility of being understood as writers of "women's fiction" — meaning fiction for women only.) Male writers will have the latitude to do whatever they want: many will write books about both men and women, but they can excise women entirely from their fictional universes, if they want to, without ever marginalizing their books. And all of this results, of course, in a re-enforcement of the initial problem: the production of another realm where taking women seriously — as consciousnesses, narrators, characters — is optional.

Male writers' hesitation to use women as point of view characters seems to stem in part from a prevailing sense — perhaps not entirely unfounded — that one simply can't win, and that the tiniest gesture or cadence amiss could spark a frenzy. But a larger fraction of the hesitation seems to me to arise from two premises: first, the notion that women are essentially strangers, their consciousnesses wholly foreign; and second, that this foreignness, in addition to being unassailable, is also pretty limited and boring. A male writer who careens around in time, deviates from autobiography, or takes liberties with realism believes in the potential dramatic and aesthetic payoffs for doing so. Writing from a female point of view seems to be generally regarded as something more like writing from the perspective of a deer: you might get points for novelty, but it'd be impossible to get right, and who really wants to hear a deer narrate a story, anyway?

That is, of course, something of an overstatement. But I suspect that the notion that women's consciousnesses are so alien and reduced as to be generally unknowable is actually fairly widespread, I suspect it pervades our literary culture, and I suspect it explains a lot of recent political theatrics. But I also suspect that reading books with complicated female consciousnesses (any kind, as long as someone's actually driving!) can chip away at it, to some extent. If there's one thing that's unambiguously morally elevating about fiction, it's the way it forces us to confront the complexities of the brains of strangers, since all characters are strangers to us when we start a book. By engaging our attention and our curiosity, fictional people can make real people seem more real. And that means that writing female narrators is something of an ethical issue, as well as a literary one, for writers of both genders.




Books mentioned in this post

Partial History of Lost Causes

Jennifer Dubois
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14 Responses to "Writing Across Gender"

Vivian June 28, 2012 at 04:43 AM
"The anxiety about getting a female voice "right" indicates belief in a monolithic female voice, which doesn't actually exist." ...And this is what always drives me crazy about this sort of discussion. There is no Female Point Of View. Or if there is one, I've never met her. There are approximately 3.5 billion female points of view. Me, I'm a chick. But I am not the same chick as Mother Teresa or Sarah Palin or Paris Hilton or even, despite agreeing wholeheartedly with her post, Amy up there. My point of view is not the same as theirs due entirely to the fact that we all (presumably) have uteruses. And the assumption that it must be bothers me. I had a conversation with my husband once about the imagery in Cronenberg movies. He asserted very confidently that the body-horror stuff was generally made to resemble female genitalia, and therefore be frightening by symbolizing the alien, the Other. He didn't seem to get it when I told him that, for someone who possesses female genitalia, it is neither alien nor Other. He did eventually, but it took a lot of explaining. That's not to say that that wasn't exactly what Cronenberg had in mind when he made the movies. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was. This underscores the point made in the article, though. A thoughtful, intelligent person like my husband simply did not consider that "female" doesn't always mean "other", even when talking to someone who has been quite thoroughly demonstrated to him to be female. It really isn't something you have to think about (if you're not female). This is not ideal. Of course, I don't know the answer. But you put it very, very well. Thank you.

Joseph Robert Lewis June 25, 2012 at 02:05 PM
This is a wonderful articulation of the problem. I certainly hope that as more books/reading becomes electronic and is no longer funneled by New York editors, we'll start to escape from "genre" limitations and labels. I think that the industry is partly to blame for calling a man's book about being a middle-aged man with man problems a "literary book" while a woman's book about women is "women's fiction." Mass media culture is also to blame for pandering to the lowest common denominator, for oversimplifying the roles of both women and men, for reinforcing negative stereotypes on all sides. But again, as media becomes more democratized online, perhaps we can escape those tropes as well.

Jerome Francis Lusa June 20, 2012 at 07:45 AM
Jennifer, I keep seeing your quote about a deer narrating a story and wonder if you are aiming this at my short story (which a few dozen people have in fact read)... http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14742910-the-deer-story I do, however, appreciate the intent of your quote... "something more like writing from the perspective of a deer: you might get points for novelty, but it'd be impossible to get right, and who really wants to hear a deer narrate a story, anyway?"

Raoul May 24, 2012 at 04:09 AM
I am sad to observe that, while there is some underlying truth to this, taken as a whole it is twaddle. Listening to many women over they years talking about men, puzzling out their motivation and declaring frequently to "understand" them and "you know what men are like", the lack of understanding may be unbalanced but it is closer to equal than the author would like to admit or seems to believe. We can and possibly do understand each other as individuals, but I have never noted more than a very few traits that can be ascribed to gender and even these are bucked by individual traits. The "underclass" always believes it understands the overlord and they are wrong. The overlord likewise believes it understands "only too well" the mind of the underclass, and they are wrong. Sorry.

Angelica May 22, 2012 at 06:39 AM
I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that no character can be completely "gotten wrong," like Jen said... the only way to get it wrong is to fail to develop them. A voice also doesn't always have to be completely "feminine" to be female. I think as long as you have a believable character, you can get away with a couple of mistakes.

ERose May 21, 2012 at 12:27 PM
Another thought - I've read a lot of books written by men with female characters and even protagonists, but I can't think of one off the top of my head that fully escapes using a male lens in writing her. Reverting subtly to the male gaze in character development is a common crutch men use when writing women. I'd say a good way to avoid that is to write several scenes that develop her without picturing her appearance and avoiding any discussion or description involving a male character. Obviously, men can appear in the scene, but don't spend any time developing them - in this exercise they are placeholders. Or even write out imagined conversations between you and her. You might not use them in the final book, but it will be a huge help in getting to know her and a great way to train yourself to think of her as herself, apart from her function in the story. I use these exercises whenever I have a character that isn't coming naturally to me. When I'm writing a character that is marginalized by society in a way I am not, I also often show some of these conversations, or early drafts of key scenes for them, with someone who is of the same marginalized population. I don't take their word as Gospel, but it does give me a good sense of whether I'm writing a character that rings true regardless of the level of privilege the reader brings to the table.

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