{"id":1210,"date":"2011-06-04T03:15:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-04T03:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:34:08","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:34:08","slug":"well-allrighty-then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=1210","title":{"rendered":"Well, Allrighty, Then"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writers always worry about things.<\/p>\n

Straight writers worry about how to portray gay characters.
Caucasian writers wonder if they should attempt to portray characters of other ethnicities, while those outside of the dominant culture wonder if they’re not representing if they don’t write solely about their own culture.
Female writers worry about writing males — and often are told they’re stripping them of testosterone, while male writers tiptoe when writing female characters, and wait for the firestorm of female protest.<\/p>\n

Writers always worry about things.<\/p>\n

Some do, anyway. Others make bold sweeping statements like,I’m a good boy writer, and no girl writer is as good as me, nyah, nyah.<\/i> Or, if they’re the Indian author V.S. Naipaul, they say that there is no woman writer whom he considers his equal<\/a> \u2013 and then single out Jane Austen as someone with whom he could never share such sentimentalism. Naipaul also said that women are never fully masters of their house, and that comes out in all of women’s literature, AND that if you give him a paragraph or two, he can pick out anything that a woman has written.<\/p>\n

\"St.<\/a>Um. Yeah. First of all? Our Jane wrote in the 19th century. That time is past, and none of us is ever going to be quite as innocent and sentimental as the people of that time. It has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with the fact that there were no iPhones. Secondly, I had to read Naipaul for grad school. He is not sentiment free. I’m just sayin’. Thirdly, Naipaul wrote about colonialism. The South Asian characters whom he depicted were usually under the thumb of the British (or their wives, parents, mother-in-laws, or all of the above) and not in charge of their lives nor their households at times — and yet: he is not a girl.<\/p>\n

But what made me happy just now was seeing how the Guardian cheerfully challenged his statement about being able to tell gender in writing. They put together a little test<\/a>. Try your hand at it. Can YOU always tell?<\/p>\n

(I can’t. I am, apparently, guilty of sloppy thinking, and should read more books by men…)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, writers are still worrying about everything. If you want to “man up” (oh, I hate that phrase, what the heck does it mean?)(No, don’t try to explain, it’s self-evident. It’s still stupid, however) or “girly down” your characters, you can use the Gender Genie<\/a>, but really – the trick is to have others read for you, read your work aloud, and understand that there isn’t always an identifiable “thing” that males or females do. Just… write your characters as best you can, and carry on.<\/p>\n

Stop worrying, k?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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