Babel Clash

I think there’s some sexual politics at work here too.   Ever since hard line feminism made it politically incorrect to portray female characters as too sexual, there’s been a reluctance from a lot of male writers to even go there.   I ran into this a little bit from a small number of responses to my lead character in the ‘Cassandra Kresnov Series’, who is very sexual, and a few female readers supposed this was because I was writing out some kind of male fantasy.   Well no, I did it because it suited the character, and humanised her in a way that relieved doubts about her humanity, and I reckon those complaints say more about the reader’s attitude to sexuality than mine.   I think some male writers know that every well rounded character needs some kind of sexuality, but aren’t game to wade into that sexual politics as a male writer, and steer clear of it.   Maybe this is why the very un-PC 1930s produced more leading women in Hollywood than is often the case even today.

I was thinking about this watching DVDs of Farscape, and reflecting that the character of Chiana (played by Gigi Edgley) was unlike almost anything you’ll see on TV — a ‘loose woman’ prone to seducing anything male just for fun, but who is also tough, smart, likable and is given some of the show’s best one liners.   And the fact that it’s so rare that this type of character should be likable and even heroic is pretty sad, because it shows that popular culture still has a problem with female sexuality, with women who are overtly sexual in any way still insulted and disrespected, or otherwise treated as though they are no more than the sum of their sexual parts, while male characters are held to an entirely different standard.   That’s not to say that good female characters HAVE to be very overtly sexual, Sasha in ‘A Trial of Blood and Steel’ is fairly restrained in that regard thanks to her honour code (which regulates who she sleeps with as well as who she kills).   But I think there’s a lot of confusion on the portrayal of female sexuality in all popular culture, and if characters aren’t allowed full access to all of their human dimensions, they’ll be dull.

Besides which, a lot of fantasy is fundamentally conservative, or has characters that live in worlds that are very conservative by today’s measure, and let’s face it, there aren’t many dramatic uses for old fashioned ‘virtuous women’.   And I gotta say it, if a traditionally minded director like Steven Spielberg can go an entire career without figuring out how to write a single interesting female character, it’s no surprise some fantasy writers are struggling too.

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