On women in fiction

[jaebility]

tithenai wrote an interesting entry about silencing female characters: The Graveyard Women: Lest We Forget.

"I hate that in everything I read lately, it’s women who lose their memories – women who have had great adventures, who have been great, who have done great things. In the things that I read and watch on television, these women give up their memories, or have them taken from them, or allow them to be taken from them, in order to keep themselves from harm. They give up their longings, their desire for adventure, the adventures they have had, in order to stay sane, or keep their heads from exploding, or, sometimes, to save the world."

I completely agree with tithenai here; it's depressing that women are left behind - if they get included at all - that they're the ones who make sacrifices, or that they're the ones who need to be killed off, raped, kidnapped in order to move the plot. Women are devices in these stories; they aren't characters and they certainly aren't the heroes.

Here's hoping that 2010 will produce new fiction unhampered by this misogyny.