Babel Clash

Funny how this conversation moved so quickly onto sex and gender!

I thought I’d drag it a little back toward the initial question of capabilities (if that’s okay with everyone) and keep it fresh by answering a question I get asked a bit at conventions and such — namely given my more subversive attitude toward gender in general, what are my interests that inform my attitudes?   Or in other words, it’s another variation in the old ‘where do you get your ideas?’ question.

Well I follow a bunch of stuff on the internet for one thing.   Women’s sports always interested me, because it combines my sociological interest with my love of sport.   I’m intrigued, for example, at how bad women’s coaching is in most sports.   Take women’s tennis.   For some odd reason, women’s tennis coaches from young ages teach the girls to play completely differently from boys.   Women, they reason, can’t play like men, should produce shots differently, etc.   They should all be tall, powerful, and hit flat with no clearance over the net because women can’t generate power any other way, right?   And the result can be ugly.

I saw this when I was involved with women’s basketball in Australia as a reporter.   Women can’t play offence, just teach them to play defence.   Only then a few players emerged who could play offence, players like Lauren Jackson and Penny Taylor, and they blew all their competition away.   Likewise in tennis, tiny Justine Henin (my favorite) did the impossible and played just like a man, and blows much larger girls off the court.   Turns out that power is a function of technique as much as muscle.

Which is how I know that ‘separate but equal’, when applied to male and female in most arenas and not just sports, is stupid.   There’s what works, and what doesn’t work.   Unfortunately for women, men often get access to what works, and women are told they can’t be like men, so they’re told to do something else — what doesn’t work.   And sports in this way is a pretty good model of what happens in a lot of other areas of society.

And it’s amazing how much in sports has informed my fantasy writing, especially on sword fighting.   Nearly every sport you look at, footwork is the huge, underrated thing.   Same with martial arts — footwork comes first, everything else is second, because if you’re not balanced, you’re useless.   Hard work and self-centered determination are similarly important, and in ‘A Trial of Blood and Steel, Sasha’s personality is influenced to some extent from watching sportspeople, and seeing the huge egos and narrow-focused attitudes.   It’s not always pretty, but it’s necessary, to be that good at something.

To be a good writer, I think you have to be interested in SOMETHING, because that something is what informs your work.   Doesn’t have to be sports, you just need to find stuff interesting.   Any most good writers have their own stuff that intrigues them, however obscure.

Related posts:

• Capabilities
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