[Content Note: Sexism, Rape Culture, Violence]
Here's the thing. You have this character. You want him to be a bad guy. Maybe not the Bad Guy, but a bad guy that most people wouldn't like in real life. Maybe you know someone like this guy in real life and you think, hey! I'll put that guy in my novel. That's fine. It's fair. There are some crappy people out there, after all. It's a decent characterization.
But when your bad guy is going around blatantly doing horrible sexist stuff, and your good guys never actually call him on it or indeed do much of anything besides sort of weakly and ineffectually protest, your good guys do not seem like Good Guys to me.
This does not mean that your good guys should punch the bad guy in the face in a fit of righteous rage over the bad guy's sexism. Feminists are not actually all about beating up men. What it does mean is that your good guys might actually seriously and effectively call your bad guy on his sexist stuff. Or they might stop hanging out with him entirely! And they might, just might, do things to effectually help the victims of his sexism! Because those women he is hurting? Are actually in fact people. So you might want to do something about that.
And if that doesn't seem "realistic" to you because in real life you never call your buddies on their sexist stuff despite there being real live victims in front of you being hurt, you might want to reevaluate how you are living your life.
Feminism Pro-tip: Being friends with sexist guys is not actually good ally behavior.
Writing Pro-tip: Good Guys have to actually be good, not simply better than the bad guys.
13 comments:
I'm serious.
I really like my roleplaying partners. Whenever I write a character who behaves in sexist, racist, or homophobic ways, however mildly, every character he interacts with comes away from the interaction going "Damn, that guy's an asshole."
My guy will be all, "Bitches, huh? Always so manipulative." And the other character will inevitably go, "Actually, not really. She's just mad that I forgot her birthday, which I find totally reasonable. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go schedule a makeup cruise." And he'll be left standing there going "....what just happened? Bros before hos?"
That is awesome. :D
I solve this by simply not having major female characters in most of my stories. My good guys--when I have good guys and not just rotters we can sympathize with and rotters we can't-- are as neutral toward the women they meet as they are the men, because they're too caught up being in love with each other. Women are wallpaper in their world, as is everyone besides the beloved.
OTOH, I don't write heterosexual romance. I don't believe in it. Just finished a straight cyberpunk and realized all the sexual interactions in it are decidedly non-erotic and actually awful. The men are all dreadful. Even the nicest has an unpleasantly misogynistic religion.
My lesbian short story collection has a few non-sexist men in it. They're still awful human beings though, the kind who blow up whole ships and make people take long walks out short airlocks, The only good ones are teenage boys dealing with their moms.
Well, guess what: real world (and thus, realistic fiction) essentially runs on Black and Grey Morality - there are no "flawless good" people, only VERY BAD ones and those "normal", who have their flaws, but are mostly OK. And the latter thus are forgiving of flaws that don't hit them directly. That sexist guy? May be a good, reliable friend... IF you are male. (Holmes, anyone?) Not to mention that calling Your boss/superior is not the best idea at any time and compromises must be made. So it's entirely realistic that typical "good" people WILL hang out with "bad" guis if they themselves are noit targeted. If Janet Reinwatter (a white female psychilogist, and once quite famous) could hang out with racist friends, why cannot other males (including black ones) hang out with mysoginic charachters?
Well, guess what: real world (and thus, realistic fiction) essentially runs on Black and Grey Morality - there are no "flawless good" people, only VERY BAD ones and those "normal", who have their flaws, but are mostly OK. And the latter thus are forgiving of flaws that don't hit them directly.
I am so glad you're here. I'm entirely new to this universe and thus have no actual lived experience with which to draw my own conclusions about how the real world works. In my home dimension, people are not homogenised blocs that all react in exactly the same way to a given stimulus, so it's very useful for me to now be informed that no one in this reality stands up for people other than themselves and it would be unreasonable to expect them to act otherwise. I will make a note of it in my interdimensional travelogue and submit a notice to the bureau back home.
That could have been embarrassing.
LOL! I wasn't sure how to say this, but you did a great job. :D
Welcome, traveler.
Teach us of your strange and non-homogenized ways.
@Will Wildman, there HAD to be another one of us somewhere. *individualist fist bump* Alas, you are a world away. I shall pine and be angsty. What is your plan to deal with this dreadfully dramatic eventuality?
Ana, have I mentioned recently that I love reading your blog? Because I love reading your blog.
"Your good guy does not read as a particularly good guy to me" is a valid observation, and one that I particularly like in this case. That there are reasons for the good guy not to be good to a given group of people is also valid - but that the good guy can't stand to be good to women for REASONS isn't likely to make me think he's any more of a good guy.
Just, you know, he lives in a sucky culture that devalues women, and goes along with it, instead of fighting it where and when he can.
No, that doesn't make them good guys. Unfortunately, it makes them realistic, at least in our reality.
Unless, that is, they're being very silent on really obvious and blatant acts, where even the most thickheaded of other men would not tolerate that kind of thing. Then they're not just bad guys, they're poorly characterized. (Or had better have a really damn good reason for not doing anything.)
Sure, it's not an unrealistic quality, and in itself, it doesn't make a character unrealistic. It is, on the other hand, something that happens even when the author is trying to make the character likeable, and without much awareness that the character's apathy is a flaw. I didn't think the point was that this was an unrealistic thing for something to do, more that it's one of those things that can make a character less likeable, which should be taken into account when writing scenes where the jerky characters are being jerky.
Bingo. Realistic, yes. Likable, no.
I think it falls in remembering that Character A's actions reflect on Character B, if B is in the scene and fails to react to A. Failure of reaction is itself an action, unless B has variable existence.
I think it falls in remembering that Character A's actions reflect on Character B, if B is in the scene and fails to react to A. Failure of reaction is itself an action, unless B has variable existence.
Variable existence? As in:
"Why didn't you do anything?"
"I wasn't real at the time."
?
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