A problem example, female written males...(long)
Brian D. Fernald
Rather then dumping a whole slew of examples all at one time, I thought
that it might be useful to example some individually. So, here's one,
which I think partially illustrates some of the problems of found in
writing a male character. I tacked on at the end some lit.crit style
comments, for those who find such things useful, which can be safely
ignored.
The rough summary is that a main male protagonist has just fallen off a
horse, in the presence of one of his trusted servants.
The excerpt is taken from _Sunrunner's Fire_, Melanie Rawn, DAW PB
(US), pg. 127
-
"I don't see what's so dammed funny," Pol complained as he regained his
feet.
"Don't you? From where I'm standing, it was hilarous."
"You have no respect for you prince's dignity, Rialt - let alone his
sore backside."
"If you dignity depended on your backside, you'd have a problem," Rialt
replied...
"I just hope the mount you bring to your marriage bed is easier to ride
than this lady here," he teased.
"And no respect for your prince's privacy, either," Pol snapped.
"Temper, my lord," Rialt grinned. Marriage was an increasingly
irritating subject for Pol...
"Come, a nice hot bath will-"
"Don't try to manage me the way you manage my palace, Chamberlain,"
came the sharp reply, and Rialt shut up.
(A quick lessening of the irritation factor follows on the part of
Pol.)
- (Some general crity things.)
What gets me about this passage is not that it misses the point, but
that it lacks a certain number of primary and secondary qualities of
male relationships and personality that would only help the
characterization.
1.) What feelings (as opposed to emotions) pass through Pol's mind
during the span between his fall and the comments from Rialt?
2.) What external evidences of feelings are externally expressed by
Pol?
3.) When Rialt makes his inital comment, what is the physical, facial,
and mental process that goes into his response?
4.) Does Pol feel shame, resentment, embarrassment, anger, or does he
by nature always respond with a slight bit of surly humor?
5.) Why is it that the 'kidding' about the fall not produce a truly
sharp response from Pol, but the comment about marriage does?
6.) Why is it that the anger, lasts but a moment, after the sharp
reply?
7.) How does this all fit together with the psychological knowledge
that we have about how men react in such situations?
Now, these questions may never have occurred to the author, nor might
they occur to every male or female reader, but they did occur to me.
The passage bugs me, because it reads like a stereotype, and as we
discussed elsewhere it's marked by being from a female author.
- (Lity.crity things)
One thing that struck me in some readings on Feminist literary
criticism that I've done is the notion of 'symbolic annihilation'
presented by Tuchman. Symbolic annihilation as applied to the
depiction of woman is taken to be the ignoring, excluding,
marginalizing, or trivalization of women and their interests.
I wonder if my problem with the passage quoted above is an example of
this idea. The psychological progression of feelings and emotions,
elements of personality, and aspect of relationships are symbolically
annihilated, to produce a stereotypical male interaction between master
and servant. When pushed too far, Pol asserts the power relationship,
in a primitive, overt statement. Yet, power relationships often work
covertly, within the context of normal conversational flow, and do not
always require such an overt context break.
Taking the concept out of just the gender description/charactization
field, and applying to the overall narrative, may also provide a useful
concept: narrative annihilation. The idea is that by stripping certain
from the narrative flow, they are destroyed, or removed completely from
consideration. In a way this seems both obvious, and problematic,
which makes it very interesting to me.
--
BDF.
FSOBN.
"Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus"
Mary Gentle
bfer...@mindspring.com (Brian D. Fernald) wrote:
[...]
> feelings (as opposed to emotions)
??
Need a gloss here...
Mary
Brian D. Fernald
mary_...@cix.co.uk said...
It's a concept taken from neuropsychiatry, some experiments have shown
that there is a difference between the ability to feel a specific
'feeling' and the experiencing of an emotion. An accident victim who
has suffered brain trauma, may lose the ability to feel shame, but
might not lose the ability to feel embarrassment. In a nutshell, you
could say that feelings are the primitives by which an emotion is
built.
There are some conceptual problems with making such a distinction, and
the evidence can be argued, but it does have a utility.
Suzanne A Blom
Brian D. Fernald <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.19a6efbcb...@news.mindspring.com...
Since the passage bugs me too, I don't think it's a female-male thing, but
poor characterization.
> - (Some general crity things.)
>
> What gets me about this passage is not that it misses the point, but
> that it lacks a certain number of primary and secondary qualities of
> male relationships and personality that would only help the
> characterization.
>
> Now, these questions may never have occurred to the author, nor might
> they occur to every male or female reader, but they did occur to me.
> The passage bugs me, because it reads like a stereotype, and as we
> discussed elsewhere it's marked by being from a female author.
I took the stereotyping as creeping EFP syndrome, not a statement of
anything.
Brian M. Scott
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <memo.2003081...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>,
>mary_...@cix.co.uk said...
>> In article <MPG.19a6efbcb...@news.mindspring.com>,
>> bfer...@mindspring.com (Brian D. Fernald) wrote:
>> [...]
>> > feelings (as opposed to emotions)
>> ??
>> Need a gloss here...
>It's a concept taken from neuropsychiatry, some experiments have shown
>that there is a difference between the ability to feel a specific
>'feeling' and the experiencing of an emotion. An accident victim who
>has suffered brain trauma, may lose the ability to feel shame, but
>might not lose the ability to feel embarrassment.
I'm afraid that this isn't helping much. How would you
distinguish this particular pair, for instance?
[...]
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
[...]
>The rough summary is that a main male protagonist has just fallen off a
>horse, in the presence of one of his trusted servants.
>The excerpt is taken from _Sunrunner's Fire_, Melanie Rawn, DAW PB
>(US), pg. 127
>-
>"I don't see what's so dammed funny," Pol complained as he regained his
>feet.
>"Don't you? From where I'm standing, it was hilarous."
>"You have no respect for you prince's dignity, Rialt - let alone his
>sore backside."
>"If you dignity depended on your backside, you'd have a problem," Rialt
>replied...
>"I just hope the mount you bring to your marriage bed is easier to ride
>than this lady here," he teased.
>"And no respect for your prince's privacy, either," Pol snapped.
>"Temper, my lord," Rialt grinned. Marriage was an increasingly
>irritating subject for Pol...
>"Come, a nice hot bath will-"
>"Don't try to manage me the way you manage my palace, Chamberlain,"
>came the sharp reply, and Rialt shut up.
>(A quick lessening of the irritation factor follows on the part of
>Pol.)
[...]
>1.) What feelings (as opposed to emotions) pass through Pol's mind
>during the span between his fall and the comments from Rialt?
>2.) What external evidences of feelings are externally expressed by
>Pol?
>3.) When Rialt makes his inital comment, what is the physical, facial,
>and mental process that goes into his response?
Unless you're suggesting that plausible answers to these
questions are incompatible with the dialogue, or that straight
dialogue wasn't a good way to handle this episode, I don't see
the point.
>4.) Does Pol feel shame, resentment, embarrassment, anger, or does he
>by nature always respond with a slight bit of surly humor?
It seems obvious from the dialogue that he's mildly embarrassed
by the fall and eventually a bit annoyed by Rialt's teasing.
>5.) Why is it that the 'kidding' about the fall not produce a truly
>sharp response from Pol, but the comment about marriage does?
The book isn't accessible at the moment, and it's been years
since I read it, but I have a faint memory that marriage *was* a
touchy subject at that point. If so, what's surprising?
>6.) Why is it that the anger, lasts but a moment, after the sharp
>reply?
Because that's the way Pol is? Because he feels that
embarrassment over the fall made him snap more sharply than he
should have done?
>7.) How does this all fit together with the psychological knowledge
>that we have about how men react in such situations?
I can easily put myself into Pol's shoes, and almost as easily
into Rialt's, so from my point of view the reactions are quite
natural.
[...]
Brian
sharkey
>
> "I don't see what's so dammed funny," Pol complained as he regained his
> What gets me about this passage is not that it misses the point, but
> that it lacks a certain number of primary and secondary qualities of
> male relationships and personality that would only help the
> characterization.
Too many words. And they don't interact, instead delivering
little speechlets at each other. I guess it's a Ye Olde Situation,
but I'm pretty sure Ye Olde Folke could be terse at times.
And they kow each other, and they can see what's happening, so
they don't need to keep reminding each other of who they are
and what they just landed on.
P: "What's so damned funny?"
R: "From here, it was hilarious ..."
P: "You've no respect for my dignity, Rialt -"
R: "Or your arse. I hope you got an easier ride from -"
P: "... Or for my privacy!"
R: "Temper, temper! How about a nice hot bath ..."
P: "Don't try and manage _me_, Chamberlain!"
On the other hand, I have no idea what the story is about, who
the characters are, or what you meant by:
> Symbolic annihilation as applied to the depiction of woman [...]
... so I'll get back on my horse and sod off ...
-----sharks
Mary K. Kuhner
Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>>It's a concept taken from neuropsychiatry, some experiments have shown
>>that there is a difference between the ability to feel a specific
>>'feeling' and the experiencing of an emotion. An accident victim who
>>has suffered brain trauma, may lose the ability to feel shame, but
>>might not lose the ability to feel embarrassment.
>I'm afraid that this isn't helping much. How would you
>distinguish this particular pair, for instance?
I think embarrassment would be the face blushing, ears reddening,
and the internal sensations which go with that, whereas shame would
be the thought processes "I hope no one saw that" and "Gods, what
are they going to think of me?" and "Boy, that was a stupid thing
I just did" and the emotional context that goes with those.
When I started taking antidepressants, I thought for a while that
I wasn't feeling anger any longer. Then, after a bad experience,
I was analyzing my reactions and realized that I *was* angry, but
the usual physical (and some of the mental) correlates were gone,
so I literally hadn't recognized it. I didn't feel the adrenaline
pumping, or have my thoughts go round in tight obsessive circles
around the object of my anger (Zoloft is also an anti-obsessive).
I was just, in an unfocused and not very physical way, still angry.
(It was a relief to stop taking them and have my mind and body
speaking in the same idiom again. It may be a less than optimal
idiom, but I'm used to it.)
Very tiny babies have to make a link between the physical feelings
in their body and the meaning of those feelings. I just got to
watch my two-month-old niece apparently struggling with "am I
miserable because I'm hungry, or because I'm tired?" She would try
suckling, find out it didn't work, and throw a fit. My sister
in law would swaddle her so that she could no longer throw a fit,
and the baby would grin in apparent delight and go to sleep.
We call what she feels and what she thinks about it both "tired"
but at that age, or in brain damage or other extreme states, they
come uncoupled. I think this is close to Brian's "feelings"
and "emotions."
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Brian D. Fernald
mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu said...
> In article <3f3d74fe...@enews.newsguy.com>,
> Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
> >>It's a concept taken from neuropsychiatry, some experiments have shown
> >>that there is a difference between the ability to feel a specific
> >>'feeling' and the experiencing of an emotion. An accident victim who
> >>has suffered brain trauma, may lose the ability to feel shame, but
> >>might not lose the ability to feel embarrassment.
>
> >I'm afraid that this isn't helping much. How would you
> >distinguish this particular pair, for instance?
>
> I think embarrassment would be the face blushing, ears reddening,
> and the internal sensations which go with that, whereas shame would
> be the thought processes "I hope no one saw that" and "Gods, what
> are they going to think of me?" and "Boy, that was a stupid thing
> I just did" and the emotional context that goes with those.
> When I started taking antidepressants, I thought for a while that
> I wasn't feeling anger any longer. Then, after a bad experience,
> I was analyzing my reactions and realized that I *was* angry, but
> the usual physical (and some of the mental) correlates were gone,
> so I literally hadn't recognized it. I didn't feel the adrenaline
> pumping, or have my thoughts go round in tight obsessive circles
> around the object of my anger (Zoloft is also an anti-obsessive).
> I was just, in an unfocused and not very physical way, still angry.
This is similar to my experiences with Paxil. I was still hyper-aware
of myself in certain situations, but the physical sensations were
stripped from the awareness. The biological feedback loop portion of
the problem was removed, and I could focus on letting the self-
awareness go.
> (It was a relief to stop taking them and have my mind and body
> speaking in the same idiom again. It may be a less than optimal
> idiom, but I'm used to it.)
>
> Very tiny babies have to make a link between the physical feelings
> in their body and the meaning of those feelings. I just got to
> watch my two-month-old niece apparently struggling with "am I
> miserable because I'm hungry, or because I'm tired?" She would try
> suckling, find out it didn't work, and throw a fit. My sister
> in law would swaddle her so that she could no longer throw a fit,
> and the baby would grin in apparent delight and go to sleep.
>
> We call what she feels and what she thinks about it both "tired"
> but at that age, or in brain damage or other extreme states, they
> come uncoupled. I think this is close to Brian's "feelings"
> and "emotions."
A perfect explanation.
Brian D. Fernald
said...
straight dialogue isn't necessarily the best way to handle this
episode, and it is a set of cliches and stereotypes.
> >4.) Does Pol feel shame, resentment, embarrassment, anger, or does he
> >by nature always respond with a slight bit of surly humor?
>
> It seems obvious from the dialogue that he's mildly embarrassed
> by the fall and eventually a bit annoyed by Rialt's teasing.
Indeed, but there is no life to either the teasing or the
embarrassment. It's cardboard and missing much of the little clues
that signal feelings and emotions external to the spoken words.
> >5.) Why is it that the 'kidding' about the fall not produce a truly
> >sharp response from Pol, but the comment about marriage does?
>
> The book isn't accessible at the moment, and it's been years
> since I read it, but I have a faint memory that marriage *was* a
> touchy subject at that point. If so, what's surprising?
Marriage is a touchy subject, but it is also a big Las Vega neon sign
cliche.
Why would a chamberlain, seeing his lord fall off his horse, decide to
bring in that touchy subject, at that point?
> >6.) Why is it that the anger, lasts but a moment, after the sharp
> >reply?
>
> Because that's the way Pol is? Because he feels that
> embarrassment over the fall made him snap more sharply than he
> should have done?
If the marriage is such a touchy subject, then how realistic is a
single, hastily recanted outburst?
If the chamberlain, is such a friend that it is not wise to let ill
feelings linger, why would he have made the mistake of bringing up a
touchy subject?
> >7.) How does this all fit together with the psychological knowledge
> >that we have about how men react in such situations?
>
> I can easily put myself into Pol's shoes, and almost as easily
> into Rialt's, so from my point of view the reactions are quite
> natural.
I can only see it as a very superficial touching on 'natural'.
R. L.
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <memo.2003081...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>,
>mary_...@cix.co.uk said...
>> In article <MPG.19a6efbcb...@news.mindspring.com>,
>> bfer...@mindspring.com (Brian D. Fernald) wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > feelings (as opposed to emotions)
>>
>> ??
>>
>> Need a gloss here...
>
>It's a concept taken from neuropsychiatry, some experiments have shown
>that there is a difference between the ability to feel a specific
>'feeling' and the experiencing of an emotion. An accident victim who
>has suffered brain trauma, may lose the ability to feel shame, but
>might not lose the ability to feel embarrassment. In a nutshell, you
>could say that feelings are the primitives by which an emotion is
>built.
There's a good angle on this sort of thing in William James's PRINCIPLES
OF PSYCHOLOGY.
R.L.
Justin Bacon
>1.) What feelings (as opposed to emotions) pass through Pol's mind
>during the span between his fall and the comments from Rialt?
>
>2.) What external evidences of feelings are externally expressed by
>Pol?
>
>3.) When Rialt makes his inital comment, what is the physical, facial,
>and mental process that goes into his response?
>
>4.) Does Pol feel shame, resentment, embarrassment, anger, or does he
>by nature always respond with a slight bit of surly humor?
>
>5.) Why is it that the 'kidding' about the fall not produce a truly
>sharp response from Pol, but the comment about marriage does?
>
>6.) Why is it that the anger, lasts but a moment, after the sharp
>reply?
What does any of that have to do with a male character, in particular?
Short of this tie-together question:
>7.) How does this all fit together with the psychological knowledge
>that we have about how men react in such situations?
Which is largely irrelevant and ill-defined in its scope.
The passage does not reader as gender-specific at all. Nor, given its context,
should it (short of whatever societal norms are in place for the various
genders in the story in question). There is nothing about the scene which
doesn't work equally well between two lesbians. (And lesbians only because of
the explicit sexual reference requiring a female marriage partner.)
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Brian D. Fernald
@aol.com said...
> Brian D. Fernald wrote:
> >1.) What feelings (as opposed to emotions) pass through Pol's mind
> >during the span between his fall and the comments from Rialt?
> >
> >2.) What external evidences of feelings are externally expressed by
> >Pol?
> >
> >3.) When Rialt makes his inital comment, what is the physical, facial,
> >and mental process that goes into his response?
> >
> >4.) Does Pol feel shame, resentment, embarrassment, anger, or does he
> >by nature always respond with a slight bit of surly humor?
> >
> >5.) Why is it that the 'kidding' about the fall not produce a truly
> >sharp response from Pol, but the comment about marriage does?
> >
> >6.) Why is it that the anger, lasts but a moment, after the sharp
> >reply?
>
> What does any of that have to do with a male character, in particular?
conversation about the presentation of a male character.
> Short of this tie-together question:
>
> >7.) How does this all fit together with the psychological knowledge
> >that we have about how men react in such situations?
>
> Which is largely irrelevant and ill-defined in its scope.
Not at all, the scope is broad, and intentionally so.
> The passage does not reader as gender-specific at all.
Which is entirely subjective, as is my 'rendering'.
> Nor, given its context, should it
> (short of whatever societal norms are in place for the various
> genders in the story in question).
This implies that social norms of the society in question have
established a different pattern then can be seen in every other
existent human culture, that the biological makeup of the characters is
substantially different, and that the author made allowances to provide
evidence to that effect to the reader. None of these things are
evident from either the quoted passage, nor the surrounding context.
> There is nothing about the scene which doesn't work equally well between
> two lesbians.
Except for the fact that there is phenomenological, empirical, and
clinical evidence for distinct differences in the processing of
emotions and feelings tied to gender and that these differences are
tied to gender and not to sexual preferences. Just because a woman is
a lesbian, does not mean that she stops being a woman and becomes a
male - in other words.
If the scene works just as well as if it were between two women, or two
lesbians, provides at least one datum that I am correct, because it
shows that the characters are not 'men' but that they are 'blank-
monotonous entities' defined to be men by authorial fiat. Or, it could
be that they are just poorly written male characters by a female
author, with no recognition of the things that make men men, except for
the most basic and stereotypical markers.
> (And lesbians only because of
> the explicit sexual reference requiring a female marriage partner.)
Which misses the point entirely, biological gender does not equal
sexual preference.
Tim S
What do you think is actually wrong with it, in detail? How should it be
different, specifically?
Tim
Mary K. Kuhner
Brian D. Fernald <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Indeed, but there is no life to either the teasing or the
>embarrassment. It's cardboard and missing much of the little clues
>that signal feelings and emotions external to the spoken words.
I'm inclined to agree, but I don't see it as having anything
much to do with gender. The characters aren't responding to
each other, and their dialog is stilted--that seems to be a big
problem, but it would equally be a problem if they were women.
I agree with the other poster who said that their remind-the-reader
use of each others' names/titles is irritating, for example.
When only two people are present, they normally use each others'
names only to make a point or to get an inattentive person's
attention, not in ordinary conversation.
I think there are a number of different issues confounded
here, and it might be helpful to sort them out into separate
threads. One question is whether this passage of dialog works
or not, and how it could be improved. Another is whether
plausible portrayals of male characters need to conform to some
specific standards of maleness, and if so, what those standards
are. In a sense you're assuming that that second point has
already been made and your audience is in possession of all the
findings. I don't think this is so *at all* and lack of common
ground (for either agreement or disagreement) is stifling the
discussion.
I am, personally, deeply skeptical that there are universal
male behaviors that cross both cultural and biological
differences. Part of my conviction comes from being married to
a heterosexual male who is completely indifferent to visual
turn-ons (from me or anyone else of either gender). "Was that
supposed to be sexy? Huh." But tactile or situational signals
are another matter entirely. This goes against everything I've
read about "how males behave." But I would find it plausible
in a story, especially since I've seen it in real life, but
also because I don't think that all males behave the same.
So I think I reject your premise (to the extent that I understand
it) which makes it hard to go further with your analysis of
the specific example.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Chris Johnson
Tim S <T...@timsilverman.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> on 15/8/03 7:26 pm, Brian D. Fernald at bfer...@mindspring.com wrote:
> > "I don't see what's so dammed funny," Pol complained as he regained his
> > feet.
> > "Don't you? From where I'm standing, it was hilarous."
> > "You have no respect for you prince's dignity, Rialt - let alone his
> > sore backside."
> > "If you dignity depended on your backside, you'd have a problem," Rialt
> > replied...
> > "I just hope the mount you bring to your marriage bed is easier to ride
> > than this lady here," he teased.
> > "And no respect for your prince's privacy, either," Pol snapped.
> > "Temper, my lord," Rialt grinned. Marriage was an increasingly
> > irritating subject for Pol...
> > "Come, a nice hot bath will-"
> > "Don't try to manage me the way you manage my palace, Chamberlain,"
> > came the sharp reply, and Rialt shut up.
They're women, or screamingly queer :)
> What do you think is actually wrong with it, in detail? How should it be
> different, specifically?
You mean, to be blatantly guys interacting? Assuming they are
_friends_...
*thump*
"Heh. Heh, heh, h.."
"Oh, SHUT up."
"Sorry."
'Guy' guys aren't sharp, they're blunt. They don't tease and use
satire, they use bombast, parody, and slapstick. They don't ask for
consideration or respect, they arrange to bop each other equally with
disrespect until they're even. They don't formally negotiate any points
of respect, but derive them from how continued interaction goes.
I'm not a 'Guy' guy at all, but I've had plenty of opportunity to
observe them.
Chris Johnson
Brian M. Scott
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <3f3d75dc...@enews.newsguy.com>, b.s...@csuohio.edu
>said...
>> On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:26:39 -0400, Brian D. Fernald
>> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> >The rough summary is that a main male protagonist has just fallen off a
>> >horse, in the presence of one of his trusted servants.
>> >The excerpt is taken from _Sunrunner's Fire_, Melanie Rawn, DAW PB
>> >(US), pg. 127
>> >"I don't see what's so dammed funny," Pol complained as he regained his
>> >feet.
>> >"Don't you? From where I'm standing, it was hilarous."
>> >"You have no respect for you prince's dignity, Rialt - let alone his
>> >sore backside."
>> >"If you dignity depended on your backside, you'd have a problem," Rialt
>> >replied...
>> >"I just hope the mount you bring to your marriage bed is easier to ride
>> >than this lady here," he teased.
>> >"And no respect for your prince's privacy, either," Pol snapped.
>> >"Temper, my lord," Rialt grinned. Marriage was an increasingly
>> >irritating subject for Pol...
>> >"Come, a nice hot bath will-"
>> >"Don't try to manage me the way you manage my palace, Chamberlain,"
>> >came the sharp reply, and Rialt shut up.
>> >(A quick lessening of the irritation factor follows on the part of
>> >Pol.)
[...]
>> >4.) Does Pol feel shame, resentment, embarrassment, anger, or does he
>> >by nature always respond with a slight bit of surly humor?
>> It seems obvious from the dialogue that he's mildly embarrassed
>> by the fall and eventually a bit annoyed by Rialt's teasing.
>Indeed, but there is no life to either the teasing or the
>embarrassment. It's cardboard and missing much of the little clues
>that signal feelings and emotions external to the spoken words.
The dialogue is perhaps a little on the pedestrian side, but
apart from that it's not missing anything important to me. If I
understand Mary K's explanation correctly, emotions are much more
important to me than feelings, and they tend to be expressed in
verbal form. Thus, a passage like this conveys the emotional
information that matters to me. Mind you, I might change my mind
if I read it as reworked by a better writer, but whether I would
or not, I don't see this as having anything to do with maleness.
[...]
>> >6.) Why is it that the anger, lasts but a moment, after the sharp
>> >reply?
>> Because that's the way Pol is? Because he feels that
>> embarrassment over the fall made him snap more sharply than he
>> should have done?
>If the marriage is such a touchy subject, then how realistic is a
>single, hastily recanted outburst?
Depends entirely on his relationship with Rialt.
>If the chamberlain, is such a friend that it is not wise to let ill
>feelings linger, why would he have made the mistake of bringing up a
>touchy subject?
Because people don't always do the 'sensible' thing.
As I said, I have little trouble imagining myself behaving like
either one of them in comparable circumstances, so I'm not
bothered. Perhaps if I remembered more about how they're
presented, I'd recognize that this isn't really compatible -- I
certainly hold no brief for Rawn, whose books I found in general
rather pedestrian -- but in isolation it simply isn't (to me)
vulnerable to that particular objection. More to the point of
this thread, I don't see that its possible weaknesses have
anything to do with the depiction of male characters as distinct
from characters in general.
Brian
Keith Morrison
>>It's a concept taken from neuropsychiatry, some experiments have shown
>>that there is a difference between the ability to feel a specific
>>'feeling' and the experiencing of an emotion. An accident victim who
>>has suffered brain trauma, may lose the ability to feel shame, but
>>might not lose the ability to feel embarrassment.
>
> I'm afraid that this isn't helping much. How would you
> distinguish this particular pair, for instance?
"Shame" implies a level of social disapproval, or the perception of it,
that isn't present in the meaning of "embarrassment".
For instance, if a man is having sex with a woman in the backseat of a
car and is caught, he can be embarrassed at having been caught. If
he can't feel shame, then who that woman is might not factor into how
strongly he feels about it. For a man who doesn't feel shame, it won't
effect him more to be caught having sex with, say, his girlfriend's sister
than it would for him to have been caught with his girlfriend.
--
Keith
Brian M. Scott
<kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote:
>Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>>It's a concept taken from neuropsychiatry, some experiments have shown
>>>that there is a difference between the ability to feel a specific
>>>'feeling' and the experiencing of an emotion. An accident victim who
>>>has suffered brain trauma, may lose the ability to feel shame, but
>>>might not lose the ability to feel embarrassment.
>> I'm afraid that this isn't helping much. How would you
>> distinguish this particular pair, for instance?
>"Shame" implies a level of social disapproval, or the perception of it,
>that isn't present in the meaning of "embarrassment".
I'm pretty sure that this isn't what Brian means, though; if
anything, he seems to be making almost the opposite distinction.
His 'shame', if I have this right, refers to something with a
large physiological component, while yours seems to refer to a
social construct.
In any case, I don't think that your distinction holds up, at
least as I use the terms: embarrassment seems to me to be
primarily the result of being caught doing something that one
suspects makes one look bad, and that surely depends on perceived
social disapproval, for some value of social. (There is also
what I call 'being embarrassed for someone else', the discomfort
that I feel watching someone behave in a manner that would
embarrass me if I were doing it, but I'm not sure that it's
really the same thing.)
>For instance, if a man is having sex with a woman in the backseat of a
>car and is caught, he can be embarrassed at having been caught. If
>he can't feel shame, then who that woman is might not factor into how
>strongly he feels about it. For a man who doesn't feel shame, it won't
>effect him more to be caught having sex with, say, his girlfriend's sister
>than it would for him to have been caught with his girlfriend.
That might be the case even for one who does, if he doesn't
consider having sex with his girlfriend's sister shameful.
Brian
Mary Gentle
jinx...@sover.net (Chris Johnson) wrote:
[...]
> 'Guy' guys aren't sharp, they're blunt. They don't tease and use
> satire, they use bombast, parody, and slapstick. They don't ask for
> consideration or respect, they arrange to bop each other equally with
> disrespect until they're even. They don't formally negotiate any points
> of respect, but derive them from how continued interaction goes.
Either you're restricting "'guy' guys" to one very small (Western
cultural) grouping, or 'guy' guys have a lot more resources to hand than
you're observing...
And if it's the first case, how are you going to refer to that vast range
of males who are neither effeminate nor fitting the "'guy' guy" recipe?
Mary
Brian D. Fernald
said...
An example might be useful...
One day, you're walking out of your classroom happy. You've been
feeling a bit defeated lately, because one of your students is having
some troubles making the conceptual leap required to understand a
theory. You like this student, you want her to do well. She's smart,
attractive, and has a pleasant disposition. When she smiles at you,
you smile back.
As you're explaining the theory to her for, perhaps, the fifth time,
and getting a little frustrated, you suddenly see the light of
comprehension dawn in her eyes.
As a result, you feel a burst of joy that she has made the conceptual
leap. You feel a smidgen of pride that you've finally found the means
to help her over the problem spot. You feel relief that now you can
move on. The slight feeling of defeat, no longer hangs over your
shoulder. You are happy.
Happy is an emotional state of being, it describes a state that is
comprised of various feelings. Joy, pride, and relief are feelings,
which, appearing together, build up to an emotional state.
If, for example, you had fallen off your bike six months ago and caused
a slight injury to the brain that affected the areas of the brain that
produce a feeling of joy, you might still be in a happy emotional
state as you left the classroom. The loss of the ability of a specific
feeling may not mean that you lose the ability to experience an
emotional state of happiness.
What feelings correspond to what emotions, the phenomological evidences
of feelings, and what-not is a matter of some debate, which might be a
little beyond our present scope.
> >For instance, if a man is having sex with a woman in the backseat of a
> >car and is caught, he can be embarrassed at having been caught. If
> >he can't feel shame, then who that woman is might not factor into how
> >strongly he feels about it. For a man who doesn't feel shame, it won't
> >effect him more to be caught having sex with, say, his girlfriend's sister
> >than it would for him to have been caught with his girlfriend.
>
> That might be the case even for one who does, if he doesn't
> consider having sex with his girlfriend's sister shameful.
You could lump shame, embarrassment, and guilt into different emotional
categories. The object or event that caused the emotional event may be
a result of social conditioning, personal psychology, ethics, morals,
or religious beliefs, but their is a perceptible biological change in
the brain when such states are reached. I can feel shame, guilt, and
embarrassment all at the same time, with varying degrees of emphasis.
It's a murky little question, and making the distinction between
feelings and emotions (some might even include thoughts in the
equation) is one of the answers to that question. There are some
others, but making the distinction seems to have the most scientific
evidence behind it.
Brian M. Scott
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <3f3eaa75...@enews.newsguy.com>, b.s...@csuohio.edu
>said...
>> On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 15:41:40 -0600, Keith Morrison
>> <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote:
[...]
>Happy is an emotional state of being, it describes a state that is
>comprised of various feelings. Joy, pride, and relief are feelings,
>which, appearing together, build up to an emotional state.
Here I understand what you're saying, though I'm not at all sure
that I agree that there's a category distinction between
happiness on the one hand and joy, pride, and relief on the
other.
[...]
>> >For instance, if a man is having sex with a woman in the backseat of a
>> >car and is caught, he can be embarrassed at having been caught. If
>> >he can't feel shame, then who that woman is might not factor into how
>> >strongly he feels about it. For a man who doesn't feel shame, it won't
>> >effect him more to be caught having sex with, say, his girlfriend's sister
>> >than it would for him to have been caught with his girlfriend.
>> That might be the case even for one who does, if he doesn't
>> consider having sex with his girlfriend's sister shameful.
>You could lump shame, embarrassment, and guilt into different emotional
>categories. The object or event that caused the emotional event may be
>a result of social conditioning, personal psychology, ethics, morals,
>or religious beliefs,
Mm. I see at most two genuinely distinct categories there;
ethics, morals, and religious beliefs are in my view largely a
matter of social conditioning impinging on personal psychology.
But in any case I don't understand the last sentence at all. As
I use the term, the relevant emotion is caused by the interaction
of some event (everyday sense) and one's social conditioning and
personal psychology. You seem to have an extra layer in there
somewhere.
>but their is a perceptible biological change in
>the brain when such states are reached. I can feel shame, guilt, and
>embarrassment all at the same time, with varying degrees of emphasis.
I don't think that I could feel shame without feeling (or at the
very least having felt) some embarrassment, and I certainly
couldn't feel it without feeling guilt. I'm not at all certain
that I understand it to have any existence independent of these.
This may of course simply mean that we attach slightly different
meanings to the terms.
[...]
Brian
Heather Jones
>
> On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 15:41:40 -0600, Keith Morrison
> <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote:
>
> >Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> >>>It's a concept taken from neuropsychiatry, some experiments have shown
> >>>that there is a difference between the ability to feel a specific
> >>>'feeling' and the experiencing of an emotion. An accident victim who
> >>>has suffered brain trauma, may lose the ability to feel shame, but
> >>>might not lose the ability to feel embarrassment.
>
> >> I'm afraid that this isn't helping much. How would you
> >> distinguish this particular pair, for instance?
>
> >"Shame" implies a level of social disapproval, or the perception of it,
> >that isn't present in the meaning of "embarrassment".
>
> I'm pretty sure that this isn't what Brian means, though; if
> anything, he seems to be making almost the opposite distinction.
> His 'shame', if I have this right, refers to something with a
> large physiological component, while yours seems to refer to a
> social construct.
I think my usage adds even a different possible shade of meaning.
For me, I think, "shame" has to do with how I feel about the
internal rightness of my actions, whereas "embarrassment" has to
do with my "social face". So, for example, if I farted in a
crowd of people, I would be embarrassed, but not ashamed. If I
did it in private, I wouldn't even be embarrassed. But if I
cheated on a test, I would be ashamed whether anyone else knew
about it or not.
Heather
--
*****
Heather Rose Jones
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
*****
Chris Johnson
Dunno. Argh, my brain has led me deeply into The Stupid today, on
several different threads. Oh well. Consider it excessive squid factor-
if other SF writers are looking at you funny, you're in REAL trouble.
Help?
Chris Johnson
Brian M. Scott
>"Brian M. Scott" wrote:
>> >Brian M. Scott wrote:
This is also part of my understanding of the terms.
Brian
Mary Gentle
jinx...@sover.net (Chris Johnson) wrote:
> In article <memo.2003081...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>,
> mary_...@cix.co.uk (Mary Gentle) wrote:
> > In article
> > <jinx6568-9A9228...@unknown63223005101.ipbbc.net>,
> > jinx...@sover.net (Chris Johnson) wrote:
> > > 'Guy' guys aren't sharp, they're blunt. They don't tease and use
> > > satire, they use bombast, parody, and slapstick. They don't ask for
> > > consideration or respect, they arrange to bop each other equally
> > > with disrespect until they're even. They don't formally negotiate
> > > any points of respect, but derive them from how continued
> > > interaction goes.
> >
> > Either you're restricting "'guy' guys" to one very small (Western
> > cultural) grouping, or 'guy' guys have a lot more resources to hand
> > than you're observing...
> >
> > And if it's the first case, how are you going to refer to that vast
> > range of males who are neither effeminate nor fitting the "'guy' guy"
> > recipe?
> >
> > Mary
>
> Dunno. Argh, my brain has led me deeply into The Stupid today, on
> several different threads. Oh well. Consider it excessive squid factor-
> if other SF writers are looking at you funny, you're in REAL trouble.
>
> Help?
Heh. I was just wondering, 'sall...
And having vague ponderings about the UK idiom of irony, and how that gets
seen elsewhere. And straight guys holding hands, in other cultures. And
that kind of stuff, you know?
Mary
Brian D. Fernald
We are agreed here, at least.
> But in any case I don't understand the last sentence at all.
It's a matter of the psychological effect having a different
'ordering' or 'severity' depending upon the specific situation. The
trouble with lumping ethics, morals, religious beliefs, and plain jane
social conditioning into the same basket, is that it does not
necessarily allow to point to the fact that there may be substantially
different and contradictory impulses within that basket. By the social
conditioning offered by the media, a teenager might get the impression
that sex in the backseat of the car is okay and expected. By the
social conditioning offered by a religious upbringing, a teenager might
get the impression that sex outside of marriage is totally wrong. By
the social conditioning offered by his personal ethical code, he might
have the impression that sex in the backseat of the car is okay, as
long as he cares for the other party.
So, we might break those things out on utilitarian grounds as if they
were separate things, even if they're not completely separate. Whether
this is the best thing to do, remains to be seen, as it does seem to
muddy the waters a bit.
> As
> I use the term, the relevant emotion is caused by the interaction
> of some event (everyday sense) and one's social conditioning and
> personal psychology. You seem to have an extra layer in there
> somewhere.
I tend to make a distinction between the 'mind-psychology' of the
individual and the 'body-psychology' of the individual, because the
interface between the two is not quite clear at the moment, and subject
to some debate. To me, it's like one of those interrogation rooms you
see in police dramas. The person standing outside the room, beyond the
one-way mirror, you can see into the interrogation room, but to the
person sitting inside the room, can only see his reflection.
> >but their is a perceptible biological change in
> >the brain when such states are reached. I can feel shame, guilt, and
> >embarrassment all at the same time, with varying degrees of emphasis.
>
> I don't think that I could feel shame without feeling (or at the
> very least having felt) some embarrassment, and I certainly
> couldn't feel it without feeling guilt.
I find this fascinating. Allowing for differences in personalities, do
you ever find yourself alone and feeling shame and perhaps a little
guilt over an action you've done, but because there is no one else
around you're not overly embarrassed about it? I find myself doing
this all the time, but my sense of embarrassment seems to be linked
directly to the presence of others.
> I'm not at all certain
> that I understand it to have any existence independent of these.
> This may of course simply mean that we attach slightly different
> meanings to the terms.
Always a chance of that...
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> So I think I reject your premise (to the extent that I understand
> it) which makes it hard to go further with your analysis of
> the specific example.
Yes; this.
--
Heather Anne Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
They are one person, they are two alone
They are three together, they are for each other.
- "Helplessly Hoping", Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Brian D. Fernald
mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu said...
> In article <MPG.19a7716c5...@news.mindspring.com>,
> Brian D. Fernald <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >Indeed, but there is no life to either the teasing or the
> >embarrassment. It's cardboard and missing much of the little clues
> >that signal feelings and emotions external to the spoken words.
>
> I'm inclined to agree, but I don't see it as having anything
> much to do with gender.
The question (at least to me) is whether the problem is rooted in
gender, not necessarily that the characterization is entirely bad.
I would agree that the characterization is bad in a general sense, but
that does not necessarily mean that there might not be a specific
reason that it is bad.
> The characters aren't responding to
> each other, and their dialog is stilted--that seems to be a big
> problem, but it would equally be a problem if they were women.
While this is true, one can interpret the reason that the characters
aren't responding to each other, as simply being a matter of bad
characterization, or as a characterization that is bad because it
relies on certain set of male stereotypes.
In many ways, that is where the line has to be drawn. The possibility
exists that there is a unisexual sourced stereotype that gets
emphasized in certain genre writings, and that the presence of this
stereotype gets marked out if the author is a female and the reader is
a male.
> I agree with the other poster who said that their remind-the-reader
> use of each others' names/titles is irritating, for example.
True, but not necessarily uncommon. It's a trope in some
military/mens-adventure fiction, that the good and righteous sergeant
uses the fresh faced young lieutenants rank as an insult.
> When only two people are present, they normally use each others'
> names only to make a point or to get an inattentive person's
> attention, not in ordinary conversation.
True.
> I think there are a number of different issues confounded
> here, and it might be helpful to sort them out into separate
> threads. One question is whether this passage of dialog works
> or not, and how it could be improved.
Indeed, I personally don't think the dialogue works at all, but that is
something of a separate issue.
> Another is whether plausible portrayals of male characters need to conform
> to some specific standards of maleness, and if so, what those standards
> are. In a sense you're assuming that that second point has already been
> made and your audience is in possession of all the findings.
I'll have to strongly object to the idea that the second point has
already been made, one of the reasons that my original post was
oriented towards questions, as opposed to answers, was that I am not
assuming a universal standard, other then the standard of realism. I
was hoping that some of the responses would be evidence that could be
compiled to reach a conclusion.
I am however, assuming that the depiction of a male character will be
based on some basic assumptions of what a 'male' is, regardless of
whether that character is written by a man or a woman or read by a man
or a woman. Different perspectives and different assumptions produce
different results, and looking at the ways in which perspectives,
assumptions, and results fit together can produce something useful.
To rephrase your statement, A plausible portrayal of a male character
needs to confirm to a realistic standard, and the realistic standard is
highly dependent upon the perspectives and assumptions of the both the
reader and the writer of said character.
> I don't think this is so *at all* and lack of common
> ground (for either agreement or disagreement) is stifling the
> discussion.
>
> I am, personally, deeply skeptical that there are universal
> male behaviors that cross both cultural and biological
> differences.
I would agree that there may not be universal male behaviours that
cross both culture and biological differences, but that does not mean
that there are broad categories, and some very specific categories,
that male behaviour patterns will fall into. All men will experience
puberty, the biological changes of puberty will be expressed outwardly
in some fashion, and the outward expression of puberty can only be
understood in comparison to other men, and it may fit into one or more
of those broad categories. So to, will behaviours that are related to
the socialization process, some men whose mothers have abandoned them
in childhood will display behaviours that show evidence of a fear of
commitment. This does not mean that all men will fear committment to
the same degree, and yet, it is a common stereotype (imho) seen in the
writings of women authors, that all men fear marriage. It's even seen
in the passage that I quoted, and that is one of the reasons that I
quoted it.
> Part of my conviction comes from being married to
> a heterosexual male who is completely indifferent to visual
> turn-ons (from me or anyone else of either gender).
I would take this as evidence of that your husband fits into a broad
category, 'not turned on by visual signals'.
> "Was that
> supposed to be sexy? Huh." But tactile or situational signals
> are another matter entirely. This goes against everything I've
> read about "how males behave."
Now, we have another category, 'turned on by tactile signals'.
> But I would find it plausible
> in a story, especially since I've seen it in real life, but
> also because I don't think that all males behave the same.
Either category I would find plausible in a story, if the personality
seen is coherent with itself, and is not seen as a surface stereotype.
The trouble that I see in most female penned works, is not that it
doesn't conform to some universal standard, but that conforms to a
basic set of stereotypical characteristics and that these
characteristics are not always coherent within themselves or correspond
to external evidence.
> So I think I reject your premise (to the extent that I understand
> it) which makes it hard to go further with your analysis of
> the specific example.
You're not that far off, but it is some responses like this that I was
really seeking. My full explanation of my premise and conclusions is
currently standing at the 12,000 word length, which would be a bit
large to post here.
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> I am however, assuming that the depiction of a male character will be
> based on some basic assumptions of what a 'male' is, regardless of
> whether that character is written by a man or a woman or read by a man
> or a woman.
I don't think that this is necessarily a good assumption to make. It
may work for looking at some people's work, but to me, that sort of
approach is _spectacularly_ alien.
I don't have male characters and female characters. I have characters,
some of which are male and some of which are female. (And some of which
are other, unspecified, or miscellaneous.) The idea of having some sort
of template based on sex doesn't work for me; I wouldn't know how to go
about building one even if I thought it would be a good idea. (I can't
think of a rule for 'what a man is' for which I do not personally know
multiple exceptions, including 'in possession of XY chromosomes'.)
Is perfectionism male or female? Viciousness? Emotional inarticulacy?
Gracefulness? Vanity? Pride? Arrogance? Affection? Self-control?
These are the things that the depictions of my current major characters
are rooted in, not what they have in their underwear.
sharkey
>
> > I agree with the other poster who said that their remind-the-reader
> > use of each others' names/titles is irritating, for example.
That, and they keep reminding each other of what they're talking
about.
"I just hope the mount you bring to your marriage bed is
easier to ride than this lady here."
Okay, so R has just fallen off a horse. He probably hasn't
forgotten he was riding a horse recently. So "... than this
lady here" is redundant. "The mount you bring to your
marriage bed" is a way of introducing the woman-as-horse
metaphor, so that the ride/ride pun makes sense ... But
with a great sodding horse standing just next to you,
it's not a metaphor which needs a lot of introduction.
"I hope you get an easier ride in your marriage bed!"
> True, but not necessarily uncommon. It's a trope in some
> military/mens-adventure fiction, that the good and righteous sergeant
> uses the fresh faced young lieutenants rank as an insult.
Yeah, and I'd find the "[...], Chamberlain!" ending convincing
for that reason. It's the earlier "your Prince"/"my Palace"
bits I thought were clunky.
> Indeed, I personally don't think the dialogue works at all, but that is
> something of a separate issue.
I'm not sure if one can sensibly discuss the accuracy of a
dialogue's portrayal of gender roles if one doesn't think the
dialogue accurately portrays a human conversation in the first
place.
-----sharks (ooh, now look who thinks he's nobody!)
sharkey
>
> And having vague ponderings about the UK idiom of irony, and how that gets
> seen elsewhere. And straight guys holding hands, in other cultures. And
> that kind of stuff, you know?
... and Aussie males, who in general are polite to male strangers, but
rude, obscene, sarcastic and insulting to their male friends?
(It's a male bonding thing, honest!)
-----sharks
Brian D. Fernald
dark...@mindspring.com said...
> Brian D. Fernald <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > I am however, assuming that the depiction of a male character will be
> > based on some basic assumptions of what a 'male' is, regardless of
> > whether that character is written by a man or a woman or read by a man
> > or a woman.
>
> I don't think that this is necessarily a good assumption to make. It
> may work for looking at some people's work, but to me, that sort of
> approach is _spectacularly_ alien.
>
> I don't have male characters and female characters.
So the big biological stew of hormones, social experiences and
conditioning, and gender expectations, is only a ... secondary aspect
to your characters, an assumption that if presented in fiction, I would
find unrealistic without a plausible explanation.
> I have characters, some of which are male and some of which are female.
I thought you didn't have male characters and female characters.
> (And some of which are other, unspecified, or miscellaneous.)
Understandable.
> The idea of having some sort of template based on sex doesn't work for me;
Please note that 'some basic assumptions' can be as simple as 'has a
dick, doesn't have a dick'. Is a male, is not a male. Is a female, is
not a female. Those are the assumptions, and what logically follows as
a result of those assumptions, are what can be judged as being
realistic or unrealistic.
> I wouldn't know how to go
> about building one even if I thought it would be a good idea. (I can't
> think of a rule for 'what a man is' for which I do not personally know
> multiple exceptions, including 'in possession of XY chromosomes'.)
So, you know some exceptions, how do you know that they are exceptions?
What have you compared them against?
> Is perfectionism male or female? Viciousness? Emotional inarticulacy?
> Gracefulness? Vanity? Pride? Arrogance? Affection? Self-control?
All are also tertiary aspects of personality, do they show evidence of
an intellectualist response to pain, which in psychological terms is a
secondary aspect?
The aspects that I am interested in are not whether they are arrogant,
vicious, vain, or self-control, but why. As a reader, I want to see
evidence of these characteristics in the way that they conduct
themselves, and some type of evidence that they are this way for a
reason beyond authorial fiat.
> These are the things that the depictions of my current major characters
> are rooted in, not what they have in their underwear.
What about the difference in the levels of estrogen in their blood and
the effects that might have on brain, personality, and social
development?
Brian D. Fernald
said...
> Sayeth Mary Gentle <mary_...@cix.co.uk>:
> >
> > And having vague ponderings about the UK idiom of irony, and how that gets
> > seen elsewhere. And straight guys holding hands, in other cultures. And
> > that kind of stuff, you know?
>
> ... and Aussie males, who in general are polite to male strangers, but
> rude, obscene, sarcastic and insulting to their male friends?
This is true of many American males as well.
To put it into perspective, my friends responses would probably have
been something along the order of:
"You feel off your horse."
"Nice fall, I particularly liked how you..."
Applause.
"A ten! A perfect ten!"
> (It's a male bonding thing, honest!)
Indeed, in many male friendships something of a specific dialect gets
developed, especially in long-term friendships. If I say that a friend
of mine is being 'Lloyd' they know instantly what I mean, even if no
one else does.
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> In article <1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
> dark...@mindspring.com said...
> > I don't have male characters and female characters.
>
> So the big biological stew of hormones, social experiences and
> conditioning, and gender expectations, is only a ... secondary aspect
> to your characters, an assumption that if presented in fiction, I would
> find unrealistic without a plausible explanation.
>
> > I have characters, some of which are male and some of which are female.
>
> I thought you didn't have male characters and female characters.
I made a distinction there.
Please go to the effort of trying to figure it out if you want to
actually discuss the question.
If you cannot figure it out on your own, do ask; I am willing to provide
assistance.
Brian Pickrell
> Brian D. Fernald <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > I am however, assuming that the depiction of a male character will be
> > based on some basic assumptions of what a 'male' is, regardless of
> > whether that character is written by a man or a woman or read by a man
> > or a woman.
>
> I don't think that this is necessarily a good assumption to make. It
> may work for looking at some people's work, but to me, that sort of
> approach is _spectacularly_ alien.
>
> I don't have male characters and female characters.
> I have characters,
> some of which are male and some of which are female. (And some of which
> are other, unspecified, or miscellaneous.) The idea of having some sort
> of template based on sex doesn't work for me; I wouldn't know how to go
> about building one even if I thought it would be a good idea. (I can't
> think of a rule for 'what a man is' for which I do not personally know
> multiple exceptions, including 'in possession of XY chromosomes'.)
>
I don't think the difference between male and female is something a
writer can just wish away because she doesn't like it. Even if you
decide not to follow the rules, you have to understand the rules
you're breaking. Your epicene characters may never sound like a woman
trying to write dialog for a man, but they're unlikely to sound like
any real people either.
> Is perfectionism male or female? Viciousness? Emotional inarticulacy?
> Gracefulness? Vanity? Pride? Arrogance? Affection? Self-control?
> These are the things that the depictions of my current major characters
> are rooted in, not what they have in their underwear.
Clearly you're not asking the right questions. At least Brian F. is
trying to figure out what the right questions are.
Dorothy J Heydt
Brian Pickrell <bobth...@brandx.net> wrote:
>>
>
>I don't think the difference between male and female is something a
>writer can just wish away because she doesn't like it. Even if you
>decide not to follow the rules, you have to understand the rules
>you're breaking. Your epicene characters may never sound like a woman
>trying to write dialog for a man, but they're unlikely to sound like
>any real people either.
Well...
"A man once asked me--it is true that it was at the end of a
very good dinner, and the compliment conveyed may have been due to
that circumstance--how I managed in my books to write such natural
conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by
any chance, a member of a larged, mixed family with a lot of male
friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and
had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till
I was about twenty-five. 'Well,' said the man, 'I shouldn't have
expected a woman [meaning me] to have been able to make it so
convincing.' I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem
by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human
beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other
speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One
of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well
as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings
also."
--Dorothy L. Sayers: from "Are Women Human?" 1938.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Brian D. Fernald
dark...@mindspring.com said...
> Brian D. Fernald <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > In article <1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
> > dark...@mindspring.com said...
>
> > > I don't have male characters and female characters.
> >
> > So the big biological stew of hormones, social experiences and
> > conditioning, and gender expectations, is only a ... secondary aspect
> > to your characters, an assumption that if presented in fiction, I would
> > find unrealistic without a plausible explanation.
> >
> > > I have characters, some of which are male and some of which are female.
> >
> > I thought you didn't have male characters and female characters.
>
> I made a distinction there.
Brian M. Scott
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
>dark...@mindspring.com said...
[...]
>> (I can't
>> think of a rule for 'what a man is' for which I do not personally know
>> multiple exceptions, including 'in possession of XY chromosomes'.)
>So, you know some exceptions, how do you know that they are exceptions?
Because they don't fit the proposed rule, whatever it may be.
>What have you compared them against?
The proposed rule. And this apparently happens for every rule
that Heather has considered.
[...]
Brian
Brian D. Fernald
said...
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 21:54:22 -0400, Brian D. Fernald
> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
> >dark...@mindspring.com said...
>
> [...]
>
> >> (I can't
> >> think of a rule for 'what a man is' for which I do not personally know
> >> multiple exceptions, including 'in possession of XY chromosomes'.)
>
> >So, you know some exceptions, how do you know that they are exceptions?
>
> Because they don't fit the proposed rule, whatever it may be.
makes the proposed rule wrong?
I find it interesting that I've offered an example that seems very
stereotypical about how a man acts (however, flawed that example that
might be) and most of the responses seem to indicate that I am
proposing some other stereotype as being the definitive 'man', which is
not my intention at all.
> >What have you compared them against?
>
> The proposed rule. And this apparently happens for every rule
> that Heather has considered.
It's a simple request for more information, what are the rules that
they have been compared against? How do they not fit? How are they
exceptions? At what level of detail were the comparisons made?
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> "A man once asked me--it is true that it was at the end of a
> very good dinner, and the compliment conveyed may have been due to
> that circumstance--how I managed in my books to write such natural
> conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by
> any chance, a member of a larged, mixed family with a lot of male
> friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and
> had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till
> I was about twenty-five. 'Well,' said the man, 'I shouldn't have
> expected a woman [meaning me] to have been able to make it so
> convincing.' I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem
> by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human
> beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other
> speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One
> of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well
> as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings
> also."
> --Dorothy L. Sayers: from "Are Women Human?" 1938.
Thank you.
This is it, precisely.
Brian D. Fernald
beings, they're human beings. There are, however, differences between
the genders, else why would there be such a large selection of books at
my local bookstore about relationships, that go into great detail about
the differences between genders?
Why would statements such as 'men don't communicate', 'men act, woman
feel', or 'there are power relationships in male to male
relationships' be meaningful to the average person?
Basically, I'm trying to find an answer at different level then just
'men are human beings'.
sharkey
> beings, they're human beings. There are, however, differences between
> the genders, else why would there be such a large selection of books at
> my local bookstore about relationships, that go into great detail about
> the differences between genders?
Why is there such a large selection of crappy music at your local
record store? People like music that sounds like music they've
heard before, and people like to read about things they already
believe are true. But just because it's popular doesn't make
it true.
> Basically, I'm trying to find an answer at different level then just
> 'men are human beings'.
I think the problem is that whether or not the _average man_
is more X than the _average woman_, the standard deviations
of social behaviour are so large that you can't say _most men_
vs _most women_ with any confidence.
-----sharks
Dan Goodman
news:MPG.19aa0dd53...@news.mindspring.com:
> I'm not sure that I see your point, of course men talk like human
> beings, they're human beings. There are, however, differences between
> the genders, else why would there be such a large selection of books at
> my local bookstore about relationships, that go into great detail about
> the differences between genders?
>
Because publishers and bookstore owners think they sell. Which is the
usual reason why any kind of book is in bookstores.
In this case, the assumption does seem to be true. Otherwise, it's
unlikely that such books would have continued being on sale as long as
they have been. (The businesses stupid enough to go on trying to sell
large numbers of books not wanted by large numbers of people would have
gone out of business.)
This does not mean that the people who buy the books need them. It does
not mean that the books contain anything useful. It isn't even
circumstantial evidence that all or most humans belong to one of two
sexes and one of two genders.
--
Dan Goodman dsg...@visi.com
Journal: http://dsgood.blogspot.com
Brooks Moses
> dark...@mindspring.com (Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)) wrote in message news:<1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>...
> > some of which are male and some of which are female. (And some of which
> > are other, unspecified, or miscellaneous.) The idea of having some sort
> > of template based on sex doesn't work for me; I wouldn't know how to go
> > about building one even if I thought it would be a good idea. (I can't
> > think of a rule for 'what a man is' for which I do not personally know
> > multiple exceptions, including 'in possession of XY chromosomes'.)
>
> I don't think the difference between male and female is something a
> writer can just wish away because she doesn't like it. Even if you
> decide not to follow the rules, you have to understand the rules
> you're breaking. Your epicene characters may never sound like a woman
> trying to write dialog for a man, but they're unlikely to sound like
> any real people either.
This sounds remarkably like the sorts of debates that we could have had
about outlining, and specifically the claim that if an author doesn't
outline, their plot won't have any coherency or story arcs that end in
the right places and tie together properly.
It may not be something that a writer can wish away just because they
don't like it -- but it is very likely to be something that a particular
writer may find completely orthogonal to how they think about their
characters, and so their not liking it has rather deeper causes, and
those deeper causes are reasons why the writer in question ought not be
trying to follow those particular rules.
To elaborate, a bit, on what I think is one reasonable example of a
viewpoint from which this doesn't make much sense: People have
characteristics, and some of those characteristics are related to other
characteristics, such that people who have some of a group of traits are
likely to have other traits that are of the same cloth, and so in some
sense you can divide human personalities into things a bit like globular
clusters of stars -- things with distinct center regions but fuzzy
edges. So, you've got a set of maybe a few dozen general personalities,
and you generate characters by looking at which cluster (well, clusters
is more reasonable; people are multitraited) they're part of and how
they relate to the center of that cluster.
This will, to an outside observer, generate characters that sound like
real characters, including traits that are specifically male and
specifically female -- because some of those clusters are likely to be
ones that are populated almost entirely by male entities, and some of
them are likely to be ones that are populated almost entirely by female
entities. Since the choosing of clusters is likely to be related to the
role that the character plays, and roles tend to be somewhat
gender-linked, one is even likely to get a high correlation between the
"male" character traits and the male characters (and vice versa). But
this does mean that the author is thinking in anything resembling a
male/female dichotomy.
This sort of thing will also mean that the author in question would get
very little out of using a male/female dichotomy -- they see many more
distinctions than that, and trying to start with a "generic male"
starting point is to take a bunch of distinct things and try to claim
that they're the same thing. There is no "generic male" in this
viewpoint because there are instead a score and three of them, and some
of those are also essentially the same as some of the "generic female"
types, and some of them aren't, so starting with that division is merely
rearranging things with no point to it -- it's doesn't supply anything
new to the system.
> > Is perfectionism male or female? Viciousness? Emotional inarticulacy?
> > Gracefulness? Vanity? Pride? Arrogance? Affection? Self-control?
> > These are the things that the depictions of my current major characters
> > are rooted in, not what they have in their underwear.
>
> Clearly you're not asking the right questions. At least Brian F. is
> trying to figure out what the right questions are.
The right questions for him and for you, yes. Those questions are
clearly not the right questions for Heather.
In addition, I wish to note that in her WIP, which I have been
first-reading, her male protagonist interacts with his female partner in
ways that seem to me to be quite highly rooted in male/female
interaction patterns, if I look at them that way. So the insinuation
that not seeing things from the perspective you do -- where the
male/female dividing line is one of the most prominent and obvious
boundaries -- means not being able to generate characters that "sound
like real people" is, IMHO, demonstrably false.
(I also, I must admit, wonder somewhat whether I would sound like a real
person to you, if some of my conversations were to be transcribed into a
fictionalized form. The descriptions that have been given about
posturing and other such "typically male" interaction patterns seem
completely alien to me -- or, more accurately, somewhere between alien
and reminiscent of times when I've completely failed to have meaningful
interactions with other young men my age.)
- Brooks
Keith Morrison
>>... and Aussie males, who in general are polite to male strangers, but
>>rude, obscene, sarcastic and insulting to their male friends?
>
> This is true of many American males as well.
>
> To put it into perspective, my friends responses would probably have
> been something along the order of:
> "You feel off your horse."
> "Nice fall, I particularly liked how you..."
> Applause.
> "A ten! A perfect ten!"
Having been involved in two different construction projects over the
weekend, the general rule of thumb for males witnessing their male
friends falling, having something land on them or smashing into something
is that, unless the accident is obviously very serious, you laugh at
them, then ask if they are hurt. If the accident is middling serious,
you ask if they are hurt, then laugh at them.
--
Keith
Brooks Moses
> In article <1fzuvw2.18h3fsbbol2gwN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
> dark...@mindspring.com said...
> > Brian D. Fernald <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > > In article <1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
> > > dark...@mindspring.com said...
> > > > I don't have male characters and female characters.
> > > > I have characters, some of which are male and some of which are female.
> > >
> > > I thought you didn't have male characters and female characters.
> >
> > I made a distinction there.
>
> An unclear one.
But it was clear that a distinction was being made. Your particular
personality type appears to be one which is exceptionally unlikely to
make a statement along the lines of "you appear to be saying something
that I don't understand; could you please explain what you mean in more
detail?" -- instead preferring a statement on the lines of "That's
obviously wrong", presumably expecting replies on the lines of a more
detailed explanation by way of proving that it isn't wrong in that way.
This is, proving bits of your point, a personality type that is much
more commonly associated with males than with females, but it is not
exclusively so, nor are males exclusively afflicted with it.
The distinction, I believe, is one between primary defining traits, and
traits that are secondary. A "male character" is one that cannot
properly be described at all without reference to the fact that they are
male; a "character that happens to be male" is one that can be described
without that particular reference (although it may be required in a
complete description of them).
She also has characters that happen to be tall, and characters that
happen to be short, and characters that happen to occasionally be
berzerkers without full ability to control when it happens, and
characters that are strong in the skills expected of their family, and
characters that are weak in those skills, and characters that are used
to being in control, and characters that are used to being controlled,
and characters that are used to having to fight for control, and
characters that are used to having things be handed to them, and
characters that have photographic memories, and characters that can't
remember important things.
Every single one of the characteristics that I have named has had very
strong impacts on the character that it applies to -- in most cases,
impacts that are as strong as their gender. If you require that the
male/female dichotomy be primary, you imply that the other things are
lesser. Further, you create the impression that any two female
characters will have more commonalities between them than one of them
would with a male character who has similar other characteristics --
which I think tends to lead one to creating fictional worlds in which
that is in fact very true; a situation that tends to lower my enjoyment
of the book, and lower my sense that it corresponds to my reality (and
to remind me of the very false expectation when I was a teenager than I
had more in common with the boys my age than the girls -- which, as I
had a maturity level closer to that of the girls, was at times deeply
frustrating).
- Brooks
Brian M. Scott
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <3f40357e....@enews.newsguy.com>, b.s...@csuohio.edu
>said...
>> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 21:54:22 -0400, Brian D. Fernald
>> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >In article <1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
>> >dark...@mindspring.com said...
>> [...]
>> >> (I can't
>> >> think of a rule for 'what a man is' for which I do not personally know
>> >> multiple exceptions, including 'in possession of XY chromosomes'.)
>> >So, you know some exceptions, how do you know that they are exceptions?
>> Because they don't fit the proposed rule, whatever it may be.
>Which is what I'm asking, how do you know they are exceptions, what
>makes the proposed rule wrong?
It seems completely obvious. Given a proposed rule of the form
'x is a man if and only if x has property P' for some property P
-- and it seems clear to me that Darkhawk is thinking of rules
that can be formulated in essentially this way -- you know that
you have an exception if you find an individual p such that p is
a man who doesn't have property P. (You also know that you have
an exception if you find an individual q who has property P and
who isn't a man, but Darkhawk was clearly thinking of the first
type of counterexample.)
To take essentially Darkhawk's own example, if the proposed rule
is 'has Y chromosomes', and she knows a man who doesn't have Y
chromosomes, then that man is obviously an exception.
>I find it interesting that I've offered an example that seems very
>stereotypical about how a man acts (however, flawed that example that
>might be) and most of the responses seem to indicate that I am
>proposing some other stereotype as being the definitive 'man', which is
>not my intention at all.
You do seem to have a much more definite notion of what
constitutes male behavior, or at least of what doesn't, than I
have.
[...]
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
[...]
>I'm not sure that I see your point, of course men talk like human
>beings, they're human beings. There are, however, differences between
>the genders, else why would there be such a large selection of books at
>my local bookstore about relationships, that go into great detail about
>the differences between genders?
Because people buy them.
>Why would statements such as 'men don't communicate', 'men act, woman
>feel', or 'there are power relationships in male to male
>relationships' be meaningful to the average person?
The question isn't whether they're meaningful; the question is to
what extent they're true. The only one of whose general truth I
feel quite certain is the last, but I'm equally certain that
there are power relationships in female to male and female to
female relationships.
>Basically, I'm trying to find an answer at different level then just
>'men are human beings'.
And some of us either have decided that there isn't a significant
question to be answered, or are trying to decide whether there is
one. (Note that one might feel that there isn't one without
claiming that there are no differences between genders or sexes,
if one thinks that the overlap between men and women is large
enough.)
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <3f3ec351...@enews.newsguy.com>, b.s...@csuohio.edu
>said...
>> On Sat, 16 Aug 2003 19:19:45 -0400, Brian D. Fernald
>> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
[...]
>I tend to make a distinction between the 'mind-psychology' of the
>individual and the 'body-psychology' of the individual, because the
>interface between the two is not quite clear at the moment, and subject
>to some debate. To me, it's like one of those interrogation rooms you
>see in police dramas. The person standing outside the room, beyond the
>one-way mirror, you can see into the interrogation room, but to the
>person sitting inside the room, can only see his reflection.
I simply don't find the distinction very useful in thinking about
behavior at the level of characterization and social intercourse.
>> >but their is a perceptible biological change in
>> >the brain when such states are reached. I can feel shame, guilt, and
>> >embarrassment all at the same time, with varying degrees of emphasis.
>> I don't think that I could feel shame without feeling (or at the
>> very least having felt) some embarrassment, and I certainly
>> couldn't feel it without feeling guilt.
>I find this fascinating. Allowing for differences in personalities, do
>you ever find yourself alone and feeling shame and perhaps a little
>guilt over an action you've done, but because there is no one else
>around you're not overly embarrassed about it? I find myself doing
>this all the time, but my sense of embarrassment seems to be linked
>directly to the presence of others.
No. It doesn't matter whether anyone is around now; what matters
to me is whether someone was around at the time. Oh, and the
dominant emotions would be embarrassment and guilt. Shame seems
to be a derived emotion for me, and rarely if ever a strong one.
[...]
Brian
R. L.
wrote:
>dark...@mindspring.com (Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)) wrote in message news:<1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>...
Pickrell:
>I don't think the difference between male and female is something a
>writer can just wish away because she doesn't like it. Even if you
>decide not to follow the rules, you have to understand the rules
>you're breaking. Your epicene characters may never sound like a woman
>trying to write dialog for a man, but they're unlikely to sound like
>any real people either.
Darkhawk:
>> Is perfectionism male or female? Viciousness? Emotional inarticulacy?
>> Gracefulness? Vanity? Pride? Arrogance? Affection? Self-control?
>> These are the things that the depictions of my current major characters
>> are rooted in, not what they have in their underwear.
I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful stuff
about male and female language differences in Deborah Tannen's books,
especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN
ARE FROM VENUS.
R.L.
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> In <MPG.19aa0dd53...@news.mindspring.com>,
> Brian D Fernald <bfer...@mindspring.com> onsendan:
> > I'm not sure that I see your point, of course men talk like human
> > beings, they're human beings. There are, however, differences between
> > the genders, else why would there be such a large selection of books at
> > my local bookstore about relationships, that go into great detail about
> > the differences between genders?
>
> women instead of people?
"I have a notion that one of the functions of gender myths is to half
incapacitate both sexes in complementary ways so as to force them into
couples." --Nancy Lebovitz
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful stuff
> about male and female language differences in Deborah Tannen's books,
> especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN
> ARE FROM VENUS.
Yes; Deborah Tannen thinks that I'm a man.
Brooks Moses
[...]
> >dark...@mindspring.com (Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)) wrote in message news:<1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>...
> >> Gracefulness? Vanity? Pride? Arrogance? Affection? Self-control?
> >> These are the things that the depictions of my current major characters
> >> are rooted in, not what they have in their underwear.
>
> I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful stuff
> about male and female language differences in Deborah Tannen's books,
> especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN
> ARE FROM VENUS.
Since this is a speculative fiction newsgroup, I think it's worth
pointing out that these differences are ones that pertain only to a very
specific range of cultures.
In what I've read of Deborah Tannen's works, she focuses very much on
the idea that social expectations guide what people say and how what
they say is interpreted. In a culture with different social
expectations, one would not expect the distinctions that she draws to
remain valid, except in a way that's suitably altered to correspond to
the expectations. And this applies to real-world cultures (and
microcultures, which abound greatly) that differ from the norm that she
wrote about; it would apply far more strongly to fictional ones that do
not even have a common source with real ones.
- Brooks
Chris Dollin
> Why would statements such as 'men don't communicate', 'men act, woman
> feel', or 'there are power relationships in male to male
> relationships' be meaningful to the average person?
Because they're writtin in striuaghtforward English?
"Meaningful" and "true" don't mean the same thing.
--
Pendant Hedgehog
http://www.electric-hedgehog.net/reviews/2003-03-merlin-conspiracy.html
Mary K. Kuhner
>beings, they're human beings. There are, however, differences between
>the genders, else why would there be such a large selection of books at
>my local bookstore about relationships, that go into great detail about
>the differences between genders?
This is what I think:
Basically, because our society is in a state of flux in which the
old relationship between the sexes is breaking down, and people
are not comfortable yet with the new one--indeed, there is no
clear consensus on what the new one is. I was called for jury duty
on a date rape case, and one of the things said by many of the
older jurors was "I don't think I can judge this. I don't know what
is expected of young people in terms of their dating behavior.
I wouldn't be able to tell ordinary from unusual. It's just too
foreign."
This flux makes people uneasy, and there is a market for books which
try to provide them with a roadmap and soothe their uneasiness. The
stuff in the books does not have to be true. Some of it has some
statistical truth. None of it applies to all men or all women.
Much of it does not even apply to most US men or most US women.
(Someone posted a "size matters" comment to a mailing list I was
on, for example; he had read in one of these books that a large
penis was sexually attractive. But by far the majority response
from female posters was "What do you think I am, a mason jar?"
though there were one or two of the "Yes, big is nice" kind.)
But being given "the answers" reassures people who are insecure,
and that sells. If the answers don't work out, they will buy another
book--the shelf-life of such books is very short.
I read a couple of chapters of _Men are from Mars, Women are
from Venus_ over someone's shoulder on a plane, and I can certainly
say that it did not describe me, nor did it describe the man I
live with, very well at all. I don't think this is self-deception.
He said "Women like this" of things I hate (example: I like to
light fires myself, I would hate to be forbidden to do so by a
male partner). He said "Women hate this" of things I like.
He said--the example I cited earlier--that men are visually
aroused; mine isn't.
It seems to me that if there were a single definitive "how men are"
or "how women are" we would not need books to tell us about it.
The existence of the books, like the existence of millions of
diet books, is actually a hint that their contents do not settle
the matter very well.
(I am basing a lot of these statements on personal observation,
but the college "Psychology of sex differences" course also gets
in there. It has a lot of concrete experiments on these points.
Its main conclusion was that gender is a very, very complex
matter.)
>Why would statements such as 'men don't communicate', 'men act, woman
>feel', or 'there are power relationships in male to male
>relationships' be meaningful to the average person?
There is some truth to some of them, and generalizations can
be helpful, especially when you are trying to generalize. But
none of them predict the behavior of individual men very well.
I have been studying the writing of a world-class player of the
boardgame Diplomacy, and no one can tell me that guy doesn't
communicate--he staggers me with his ability to communicate.
I've also been trying to comfort a miserable young man whose
big problem is that he *doesn't* act, he mopes about and emotes.
And in the witches' coven I run, the two males are the least
power-oriented--there are two recurrent power struggles, one
female-male and one female-female. The male-male relationship
is incredibly uncharged. If there's any power stuff going on
there, neither they nor I can see it. (Earlier, with one more
man, there was *plenty* of male/male power stuff happening.
And male/male sexual stuff. But not with these two.)
>Basically, I'm trying to find an answer at different level then just
>'men are human beings'.
But at the same time you're railing against stereotypes?
I think that people are people--and gender is part of that package.
If you can get inside a character's head far enough you can feel
how his gender is part of that package--how his physicality shapes
his thinking, how the gender roles of his society shape it, how
the men and women around him shape it. I don't think, though, that
...okay, I won't say "recipes don't work." Nine and sixty ways.
But they don't work for me, and they inspire a nasty set of feelings
when I see them visibly in use. I was left almost ill from
reading MafM/WafV because it seemed like such an ugly denial of
my reality, and my man's reality, as individual human beings.
I guess you may be saying that one should start with the stereotypes
and build toward an individuated male character. I don't think I
could do that. I don't think the internal process, whatever it is,
that produces my better characters can work with a starting stereotype
that I know is wrong. Nor do I think I can correct my characters to
the dictates of a stereotype without losing them as human beings.
I had a male reader write to me after the webbing of
_School of Midnight_ and tell me that he wondered how I'd gotten
Markus, the male lead, right--that he saw himself in Markus'
actions and reactions. Of course, a different male reader might
have a totally opposite reaction. My husband will allow that
there are real people who behave like Markus, but he doesn't
get it himself. But whatever success I had there, I didn't get to
it by checking him against an external template of "how a
man behaves" but by...well, he was a roleplaying character, so
really by speaking his lines, feeling his reactions, and finding
out that way that where I might have been either wary of
Schaak or fascinated by him, Markus was invariably pushy and
aggressive and territorial. Testing. They finally got to fight,
for practice, and that relieved the tension noticably, which is
not what it would have done for me at all.
I think you may be right that Rawn is working with stereotypes.
I think she has a recipe and doesn't really understand it. I
know that in the one book of hers I've read, none of the
characters, male or female, felt alive or real to me. That's
why I never read any more. But I don't think this problem can
be fixed by improving the accuracy of the stereotype. It's
still overgeneralized to produce a real human being.
I suppose little bits of the men I know, have met, read about,
seen in films, etc. are all in my portrayal of Markus, but not
as a template, more as a toolbox. In his reaction to Cher
taking a female lover, I see some reflections of a simulated-
lesbian strip show I went to many years ago in Montreal. I
*don't* see reflections of the friend I had whose partner
did this; he reacted in a totally different key. Both men, but
not the same man.
If someone told me that I was failing to get a male character
right, honestly I would feel helpless and totally demoralized
if I thought I had to determine some external rules and apply
them. I could do that for little things ("Men don't giggle,
they chuckle" said someone who critiqued my writing) but I
don't think it would be any good for something like the Schaak/
Markus interaction. If I didn't internalize the behavior, it
would ring false in a million little ways I wouldn't be able
to catch.
What I'd try instead would be to find where I'd cut corners with
that character, gone with a stock response or allowed them to
be a clone of me rather than investigating their own individual
personality in more detail. I'd try to find out about his
youth, about his culture, about the people who influenced him.
Markus' father, and his father's death, has a lot to do with
where he is and why he *doesn't* fear commitment nearly so
much as he fears dying stupidly and alone.
What Rawn's writing felt to me, honestly, is lazy. She knows
what emotional effects she's going for and that's all she
cares about. I don't think this is her gender. It's a big
turnoff for me in romances, and many of those are in fact
written by men, under assumed names.
Maybe I just have a stake in saying it's not her gender, because
that seems so intractable. I'm female, I can't know directly
the physicality of being male. I'm too stubborn to accept that
this prevents me writing male characters, and constitutionally
unable to do it in an external way by learning and applying
rules. I have to hope that I can imagine my way into it.
Someone whose characterization process works differently might
have a different set of options. I know from rec.games.frp.advocacy
that the character-internalization approach is only one of
several, and that people who don't do it find it really, really
opaque.
A last thought....
I know of several books in which I feel that male writers
captured with complete perfection the feelings and physicality
of female characters. Tevis' _The Queen's Gambit_ made me,
as a teen-aged chessplayer, say "Yes, that's me." Stewart's
_Mockingbird_ talked about an experience, pregnancy, I haven't
had, but again he convinced me completely that he was talking
about a real woman. I don't have the same perspective on
female portrayals of male characters, but it seems equally possible
to get it right, deep-down right.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Mary K. Kuhner
Brooks Moses <bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu> wrote:
>Further, you create the impression that any two female
>characters will have more commonalities between them than one of them
>would with a male character who has similar other characteristics --
>which I think tends to lead one to creating fictional worlds in which
>that is in fact very true; a situation that tends to lower my enjoyment
>of the book, and lower my sense that it corresponds to my reality (and
>to remind me of the very false expectation when I was a teenager than I
>had more in common with the boys my age than the girls -- which, as I
>had a maturity level closer to that of the girls, was at times deeply
>frustrating).
This was what convinced me, on reading _The Great Hunt_, that I
was never going to read any more Jordan. He has a theory like
this, and by the end of the book I was *very* tired of it. Fans
told me, "No, these aren't all the same woman! Morgaise is
P and Nynaeve is Q and Elayne is R!" But I could never escape
the conviction that they were all the same woman, the only
woman that Jordan could do, and all the men were the same man.
(And I didn't care much for either of them as people.) And
there was only one relationship dynamic between them.
It does sell. But it doesn't convince me that these are people.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Mary K. Kuhner
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll) <dark...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>R. L. <sssss...@sssssspam.comsssssss> wrote:
>> I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful stuff
>> about male and female language differences in Deborah Tannen's books,
>> especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN
>> ARE FROM VENUS.
>Yes; Deborah Tannen thinks that I'm a man.
I come out as neither fish nor flesh, with the stereotypically-male
orientation to ideas rather than people, and the stereotypically-
female use of indirection. On the other hand, the indirection is
familial. It's interesting to listen to my brother and sister-in-
law. They have some of the same issues as my husband and I, but
whereas my husband and I have them in the Tannen-predicted direction,
my brother and sister-in-law have them in the opposite direction.
He is too indirect for her.
Both of us were raised in a family where a major form of teasing
was to say "I could make a nasty joke about what you just said"
and leave the victim to work out what the joke might have been and
react accordingly. My husband and sister-in-law find this...odd.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Mary K. Kuhner
Brian D. Fernald <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Please note that 'some basic assumptions' can be as simple as 'has a
>dick, doesn't have a dick'. Is a male, is not a male. Is a female, is
>not a female. Those are the assumptions, and what logically follows as
>a result of those assumptions, are what can be judged as being
>realistic or unrealistic.
But there are so many other categories. I have come to feel that
introvert/extrovert is a really key one, that the reason I have
a very hard time understanding my male covenmate is not that
he's male, but that for him multiple transient contacts with other
people are energizing rather than exhausting.
Whatever it is that makes some people say "My characters come alive,
they talk to me" and experience 'immersion' when roleplaying, and
other people scratch their heads and wonder if we're crazy--that's
a huge divide in perception. Much easier to get into my husband's
head than into the head of a writer who says "No, my characters
are just created by me, how could they possibly do anything else?"
I've seen that particular debate come close to blows, with accusations
of mental illness and moral degeneracy flying around. It's a hot
one.
And the gap between me and my female covenmate, having to do with
my growing up in a safe family and her not doing so...sometimes we
realize that we inhabit totally different worlds. Very basic
assumption clashes. Sometimes spectacular fireworks.
And then there's the sensory stuff we discussed here a while ago.
Imagine the gap between someone like me, who thinks and constructs
her world in words and in abstract concepts behind the words, and
someone who conceives and constructs it in images or tactile
sensations. Sack's _An Anthropologist on Mars_ is great here.
An example from that same book: Temple Grandin, an autistic person
who writes on autism, is female like me, but that's a feeble commonality
across the gap of such a different way of thinking about the world. Not
to understand friendship or falling in love; not to be able to
read the subtle code of interpersonal communications...and
whatever modes of thinking she has that are equally closed,
unimaginable, to me (and I'm pretty sure she has some).
In the same book, someone blind from infancy speaks of the blind
organizing the world temporally where sighted people would
organize it spatially. Things are related because they appear
and disappear in synchrony.
There is irreducible complexity here. I don't see much point in
focusing on gender, though if it's helpful to one's writing, one
is certainly entitled. Actually I think this debate is illuminating
one of the divides I mention above, approximately between
internalization and non-internalization of characters. If you
do characterization only by internalizing, the idea of gender-based
rules is going to be rather unhelpful. For someone (and we
have, as I recall, several such writers) for whom characters
are external and designed, careful attention to gender markers
might possibly help. Though you'd want to avoid the trap Jordan
falls into, at least if you want to sell to me.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> I come out as neither fish nor flesh, with the stereotypically-male
> orientation to ideas rather than people, and the stereotypically-
> female use of indirection. On the other hand, the indirection is
> familial. It's interesting to listen to my brother and sister-in-
> law. They have some of the same issues as my husband and I, but
> whereas my husband and I have them in the Tannen-predicted direction,
> my brother and sister-in-law have them in the opposite direction.
> He is too indirect for her.
My husband was raised with indirection as a dominant conversational
trait; we've had some interesting conversations around the subject.
(One of the other newsgroups I read has a floating periodic argument
about which is more evil, direct or indirect-mode communication, which
occasionally leads to interesting conversations.)
Many forms of indirection drive me to blind throat-chewing rage, which
made some of our early interactions notably fraught.
> Both of us were raised in a family where a major form of teasing
> was to say "I could make a nasty joke about what you just said"
> and leave the victim to work out what the joke might have been and
> react accordingly. My husband and sister-in-law find this...odd.
I suspect had I the training I wouldn't have issues with that one; my
family's modes tended to be significantly less oblique, except when
engaging in the default dominance rituals (which tended to be
one-upsmanship either through displays of trivia or puns).
(As an illustration, my father sent me the URL of a flash animation some
several years ago; as a footnote, he asked me if I knew who had done the
original song. I replied, "Belafonte", and he wrote back with, "You
pass. You get to stay my daughter.")
Brooks Moses
> In article <1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
> dark...@mindspring.com said...
>
> conditioning, and gender expectations, is only a ... secondary aspect
> to your characters, an assumption that if presented in fiction, I would
> find unrealistic without a plausible explanation.
A bit of an elaboration to what I said earlier, because it occurs to me
that it might clarify things: One of the differences, I think, between
having maleness be treated in the way that I understand you to be
claiming it should be, and the way that Darkhawk is explaining, is in
how being male (or, correspondingly, female) affects the
characterization.
Your comments appear to be putting forth the claim that all male
characters are subspecies of an overall basic "male character" type. A
conclusion that follows from that claim is that all male characters will
be affected by their maleness in largely the same way, because the
effect of the maleness comes in at a level before they are divided out
into individuals. Thus, Fred is male in the same way that Grignr is
male; they will have generally very similar "male" traits, traits that
will be shared by any other male character created by the same author.
On the other hand, if maleness is a "secondary" aspect that only comes
in after the character has been defined as an individual, then it can
affect different characters in different ways. The Fred and Grignr
created by this process may be just as laden with and defined by "male"
traits as the ones created in the preceeding paragraph, but they will be
"male" in ways that are unique to them, or at least different from each
other. This is the process that I think Darkhawk's explanation is
embodying, although I don't think she pays attention to which of the
secondary aspects are generically "male" and which ones come from
"having X social status in their culture" (a category which, I note,
covers a vast amount of "male" stuff without doing so explicitly).
I think that a lot of this explanation depends on what one means by
"secondary" aspect; here, I'm using it to mean something that comes in
after the character is defined as an individual and so interacts with
their individuality in ways that mean that its contribution is unique to
that character; you seem to be using it to mean something that is
largely irrelevant to their character. I gather that your objection to
maleness being a secondary aspect is an objection that refers to the
latter definition, rather than the former; is that correct?
- Brooks
Mary Gentle
(sharkey) wrote:
> Sayeth Mary Gentle <mary_...@cix.co.uk>:
> >
> > And having vague ponderings about the UK idiom of irony, and how
> > that gets seen elsewhere. And straight guys holding hands, in other
> > cultures. And that kind of stuff, you know?
>
> ... and Aussie males, who in general are polite to male strangers, but
> rude, obscene, sarcastic and insulting to their male friends?
>
> (It's a male bonding thing, honest!)
Except that I grew up among teenage girls who were very polite to
strangers, but rude, obscene, sarcastic and insulting to their female
friends... <g>
Maybe we were just a whole lot more butch than we looked. :)
Mary
Mary Gentle
> In article <slrnbk0399....@killjoy.zoic.org>, sha...@zoic.org
> said...
> > Sayeth Mary Gentle <mary_...@cix.co.uk>:
> > >
> > > And having vague ponderings about the UK idiom of irony, and how
> > > that gets seen elsewhere. And straight guys holding hands, in
> > > other cultures. And that kind of stuff, you know?
> >
> > ... and Aussie males, who in general are polite to male strangers, but
> > rude, obscene, sarcastic and insulting to their male friends?
>
> This is true of many American males as well.
>
> To put it into perspective, my friends responses would probably have
> been something along the order of:
> "You feel off your horse."
> "Nice fall, I particularly liked how you..."
> Applause.
> "A ten! A perfect ten!"
Actually, /my/ normal response would be along the lines of "Can you do
that again, please -- I missed it!" :)
Mary
Mary Gentle
[...]
> I'm not sure that I see your point, of course men talk like human
> beings, they're human beings. There are, however, differences between
> the genders, else why would there be such a large selection of books at
> my local bookstore about relationships, that go into great detail about
> the differences between genders?
There doesn't have to _be_ a difference, there only has to be a
_perception_ that there is a difference.
> Why would statements such as 'men don't communicate', 'men act, woman
> feel', or 'there are power relationships in male to male
> relationships' be meaningful to the average person?
Because, if there's a perception that there's a difference, then that's
the lens through which (many) people will perceive themselves?
Never mind the 'average person' (who is probably as much of a chimera as
the 'normal person' I've been trying to encounter for the last 40-odd
years) -- do you find these statements match up to the real people that
you know?
How many exceptions break a rule?
> Basically, I'm trying to find an answer at different level then just
> 'men are human beings'.
If there are perceptions -- or "rules" -- for "this is male" and "this is
female", then a number of people will attempt to follow those rules.
That's just socialisation. Some will find it easy, some difficult, and
some impossible.
Others won't even attempt to follow the rules, because the concepts don't
make sense to them.
How this relates to actual differences, or whether there _are_ any actual
differences... <shrug> We're not yet in a position to say.
But if you read the "differences in gender" books in conjunction with,
say, history and anthropology, and you travel to different cultures and
watch different gender behaviour, it's quite likely you'll end up thinking
that those particular books refer not only to social rules, but a very
small subset of the available social rules.
Humans are partly self-shaped animals. That's one of the confusing parts.
Can you tell the difference between a man (of any given culture) acting
"naturally", and acting as he "ought" to act?
And there's a lot that could be said about in whose interests it is for
there to be fixed male and female roles in a given society, but that's a
looooong discussion, and probably not immediately relevant to portraying
them in fiction.
I have a suspicion that if I were to give you half a dozen examples of
socially-usual male behaviour as it operates across the globe this
morning, you'd find several of them "male" and several of them "not male".
Because according to various cultures, various other cultures' behaviour
_isn't_ the "correct" one.
Which makes it even more difficult if you're writing, and you think "Will
another male find this male convincing?" Because the answer, always, is
"Yes, and no."
That said, I'm convinced that there _are_ particular ways that some male
and some female writers have of writing the other gender, that isn't to do
with the mimetic representation of character -- it's something else. I've
seen it; I've read it. But so far I'm no nearer being able to describe
it. :)
I do suspect that investigating the mimetic social construct of "male" is
slightly red-herring-ish. We might do better going deeper into the other
things a writer can be using a character for.
Mary
Mary Gentle
> R. L. <sssss...@sssssspam.comsssssss> wrote:
> > I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful
> > stuff
> > about male and female language differences in Deborah Tannen's books,
> > especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN ARE FROM MARS,
> > WOMEN
> > ARE FROM VENUS.
>
> Yes; Deborah Tannen thinks that I'm a man.
Brother! :)
I'm kinda tired by how many books tell me I'm a man...
Mary
Mary Gentle
(Graydon) wrote:
[...]
> As it stands, it's like asking if ten pounds of sand is a convincing
> piece of window glass, and if not, why not.
I think there's two questions being asked of the same piece of text -- "is
this bad writing?" and "is this bad writing _because_ of a particular
stereotype/failure to grasp a reality?"
As regards the first question, I'm with you: it's a bag of sand. Which
makes it really difficult to answer the second question.
What would be useful would be to have a _good_ piece of writing that also
fails the 'stereotype' test. Then we could compare.
Brian, have you got something of that nature? It would be a lot easier to
pick out a single factor if the "noise" from the generally crap writing in
this one wasn't drowning it out.
Mary
Mary Gentle
(Graydon) wrote:
> In <eed75299.03081...@posting.google.com>,
> Brian Pickrell <bobth...@brandx.net> onsendan:
> > I don't think the difference between male and female
>
> Which is, for literary purposes, what, precisely?
>
> You're assuming that there is one; I think this is a silly assumption.
Especially in SF, where one hopes for far more than "just" male and
female.
(Well, you could hope for the same thing in general fiction, but I feel
it's more overt in skiffy.)
Mary
LK
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>I'm not sure that I see your point, of course men talk like human
>beings, they're human beings. There are, however, differences between
>the genders, else why would there be such a large selection of books at
>my local bookstore about relationships, that go into great detail about
>the differences between genders?
Popular culture. And by convincing people they _will_ have
communication problems it sell books and talk show appearances.
>
>Why would statements such as 'men don't communicate', 'men act, woman
>feel', or 'there are power relationships in male to male
>relationships' be meaningful to the average person?
Because those are bumper sticker statements. Vast generalization
frequently said in frustration over a specific situation. Rubber
stamp the problem rather than dealing with it or accepting that it is
might just different style or something that the party is going to
have to live with rather than drive themselves nuts trying to change.
Has it occurred to you that more books, etc are written about dealing
with rough edges than outright abuse and violence. Those things you
can't simply coffee klatch and gripe about. Domestic violence is fact
not simply an annoyance.
>
>Basically, I'm trying to find an answer at different level then just
>'men are human beings'.
There is no one answer, because so much of this is life experience and
paying attention, being real. Searching too hard for "an answer" can
be another bumper sticker distraction.
Opening eyes and heart will teach far more than a quest.
LK
pas...@ira.uka.de
> P: "What's so damned funny?"
> R: "From here, it was hilarious ..."
> P: "You've no respect for my dignity, Rialt -"
> R: "Or your arse. I hope you got an easier ride from -"
> P: "... Or for my privacy!"
> R: "Temper, temper! How about a nice hot bath ..."
> P: "Don't try and manage _me_, Chamberlain!"
That's much better!
> On the other hand, I have no idea what the story is about, who
> the characters are
Well neither do I, but the piece you posted would actually
keep me reading, while the original only made me think 'here's
one author I needn't check out'.
Kathrin
Karen Leonard
in news:bhprh3$qa8$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu:
> In article <3F405899...@cits1.stanford.edu>,
> Brooks Moses <bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>>Further, you create the impression that any two female
>>characters will have more commonalities between them than one of them
>>would with a male character who has similar other characteristics --
>>which I think tends to lead one to creating fictional worlds in which
>>that is in fact very true; a situation that tends to lower my enjoyment
>>of the book, and lower my sense that it corresponds to my reality (and
>>to remind me of the very false expectation when I was a teenager than I
>>had more in common with the boys my age than the girls -- which, as I
>>had a maturity level closer to that of the girls, was at times deeply
>>frustrating).
>
> This was what convinced me, on reading _The Great Hunt_, that I
> was never going to read any more Jordan. He has a theory like
> this, and by the end of the book I was *very* tired of it. Fans
> told me, "No, these aren't all the same woman! Morgaise is
> P and Nynaeve is Q and Elayne is R!"
Actually for two of those there is some (small) reason for similarity, as
they're mother and daughter and brought up in the same milieu.
The peculiarity of Jordan's female characters is considerable, and of the
lot the weirdest is Nynaeve. (IMHO) The peculiar tendency of the women
in Jordan's works to manage men, society, and each other by means of
temper tantrums and blows is just odd. And I don't think he's thought
through the implications of the back story he sometimes presents with the
female in question.
The popular author whose women most impressed me as all identical
actually presented two women: the rape victim, who was invariably an
influential character later on, and the neurotic insane control freak.
And *every* female character was one or the other. (John Jakes' american
history books) I quit reading them after the 2d or 3d paperback because
it was a waste of time.
> But I could never escape
> the conviction that they were all the same woman, the only
> woman that Jordan could do, and all the men were the same man.
There is a pathetic dependence on males as being boggled and confused by
the female of the species for characterization, which confusion is
expected to be disabling. Perhaps he thinks that readers will accept it
because of these male characters' ages.
IMHO
Karen
Brian D. Fernald
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 22:47:33 -0400, Brian D. Fernald
> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >In article <3f40357e....@enews.newsguy.com>, b.s...@csuohio.edu
> >said...
> >> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 21:54:22 -0400, Brian D. Fernald
> >> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >> >In article <1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
> >> >dark...@mindspring.com said...
>
> >> [...]
>
> >> >> (I can't
> >> >> think of a rule for 'what a man is' for which I do not personally know
> >> >> multiple exceptions, including 'in possession of XY chromosomes'.)
>
> >> >So, you know some exceptions, how do you know that they are exceptions?
>
> >> Because they don't fit the proposed rule, whatever it may be.
>
> >Which is what I'm asking, how do you know they are exceptions, what
> >makes the proposed rule wrong?
>
> It seems completely obvious.
Not to me, but then my ability to see the obvious seems rather suspect.
> Given a proposed rule of the form
> 'x is a man if and only if x has property P' for some property P
Which does not match my thinking at all. If I was to break what I've
loosely come up into such a simple rule it would be more like ' x is a
man if x has property P or property R or property S, or he experiences
current events in way Y or way T or way U, or he has experienced past
events in way E or way W or way Q. I'm thinking broad classes, with
subclasses, types, and conditionals, not a straight line equation.
> -- and it seems clear to me that Darkhawk is thinking of rules
> that can be formulated in essentially this way -- you know that
> you have an exception if you find an individual p such that p is
> a man who doesn't have property P.
In my model, I don't conceive of exceptions, I would consider them just
another class or type.
> (You also know that you have
> an exception if you find an individual q who has property P and
> who isn't a man, but Darkhawk was clearly thinking of the first
> type of counterexample.)
There is that. This might be problematic, but not overly so, in what
I've already come up with.
> To take essentially Darkhawk's own example, if the proposed rule
> is 'has Y chromosomes', and she knows a man who doesn't have Y
> chromosomes, then that man is obviously an exception.
See, in my model that wouldn't necessarily be an exception, it would be
a new category to drop such a person into. The model would grow to
include, not exclude individuals, as they are encountered.
> >I find it interesting that I've offered an example that seems very
> >stereotypical about how a man acts (however, flawed that example that
> >might be) and most of the responses seem to indicate that I am
> >proposing some other stereotype as being the definitive 'man', which is
> >not my intention at all.
>
> You do seem to have a much more definite notion of what
> constitutes male behavior, or at least of what doesn't, than I
> have.
Yes, I do. I don't necessarily see why having a 'definite' idea is
considered odd in this context. I'm not handwaving it into being, but
based it on a pretty broad scope and some empirical, experiential, and
intellectual evidence. Perhaps, it's my blindspot...
--
BDF.
FSOBN.
"Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus"
Alma Hromic Deckert
there was a book called "brainsex" whose author now escapes me, which
had a "test" in there and the scores would tell you whether you came
out on the "male" or "female" end of the spectrum.
i came out so far on the female end that the needle was quivering off
the end of the gauges.
that is not to say that there is any particular merit or lack of it in
that particular test - in fact, i'll go so far to say that the
questions were reasonably loaded to goad individuals into going into
whichever direction seemed necessary, and were more often than not
based on common stereotypes (i.e. if you walk out of a door would you
know which direction was north? - i said no, because i can't, i am not
a homing pigeon and other than being able to tell east from west
because the sun rises in the one and sets in the other, directions are
not intuitive for me. this seemed to typify me as a female because men
appear to have a built-in compass in their brains...)
just throwing it into the ring...
A.
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
>In <memo.2003081...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>, Mary Gentle
><mary_...@cix.co.uk> onsendan:
>> Brother! :)
>If it's any consolation, most of them tell me I'm female.
I seem to have been assembled by someone with a passion for mix
'n' match.
Brian
Brian M. Scott
>sharkey <sha...@zoic.org> writes:
>That's much better!
It's certainly better, but I consider the two versions pretty
nearly identical in terms of the point that Brian F. wanted to
make. This comes across to me as better writing of the same
characters and the same interaction.
Brian
Mary K. Kuhner
Karen Leonard <nospamk...@hiline.net> wrote:
>Mary Kuhner wrote:
>> But I could never escape
>> the conviction that they were all the same woman, the only
>> woman that Jordan could do, and all the men were the same man.
>There is a pathetic dependence on males as being boggled and confused by
>the female of the species for characterization, which confusion is
>expected to be disabling. Perhaps he thinks that readers will accept it
>because of these male characters' ages.
I think this helps me get at the underlying thing that bothered me
a bit better.
People have mental roadmaps which tell them what to expect, what they
can understand and what they can't, and how they're supposed to
behave. Gender, one's own and others', certainly gets into those
roadmaps; but in real people it gets in variably, in all sorts of
individual ways.
All of Jordan's characters, it seemed to me, had the same roadmap
for how the sexes interact. Both men and women expected a specific
pattern of male bewilderment and female manipulation. And they were
always correct; at least in the one book I read, nothing challenged
this map at all.
We never saw someone who was croggled because he couldn't understand
how people older than himself behaved, which for many teenagers
I've known is at least as big an issue as gender. Or someone
who found a particular woman easy to understand, but was puzzled
by some men. Or who was chiefly bewildered by *himself*, which
was rather my experience of adolescence.
For me the mental roadmap is such a big part of characterization that
this produced the impression they were All One Woman/Man. And the
reinforcement of the roadmap by everyone's behavior made it feel
like authorial intrusion rather than just intense cultural conditioning.
You can brainwash people all you like to see the other sex as
inscrutable, but there should be counterexamples and glitches in this
theory sooner or later (and ten books is a lot of sooner or later).
The male character who "doesn't get girls" is certainly a cliche.
I have probably met real-life examples, but I don't actually
recall any. The young men I was close to had a lot of different
puzzlements, but not particularly that one. You could do it
believably, I'm sure, but not every male character in the whole
work, please!
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Manny Olds
> In <eed75299.03081...@posting.google.com>,
> Brian Pickrell <bobth...@brandx.net> onsendan:
>> I don't think the difference between male and female
> Which is, for literary purposes, what, precisely?
> You're assuming that there is one; I think this is a silly assumption.
I think that Usenet should have provided an excellent chance for people to
disabuse themselves of the idea that there is one nice, normal curve over
here that marks out "femalishness" and one, nice normal curve over there,
scarcely overlapping, that marks out "malishness".
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it. We are born from
it. One might even say life has been empowered by the universe to figure
itself out." -- Neil de Grasse Tyson
Manny Olds
> Dunno. Argh, my brain has led me deeply into The Stupid today, on
> several different threads. Oh well. Consider it excessive squid factor-
> if other SF writers are looking at you funny, you're in REAL trouble.
Has Trip responded to you yet?
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"To betray, you must first belong. I never belonged." -- Kim Philby
R. L.
<bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu> wrote:
/snip/
R.L.:
>> I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful stuff
>> about male and female language differences in Deborah Tannen's books,
>> especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN
>> ARE FROM VENUS.
>
>Since this is a speculative fiction newsgroup, I think it's worth
>pointing out that these differences are ones that pertain only to a very
>specific range of cultures.
>
>In what I've read of Deborah Tannen's works, she focuses very much on
>the idea that social expectations guide what people say and how what
>they say is interpreted.
Yes, Tannen made it clear (to me at least) that she was talking about
learned patterns within specific cultures. She also talked about
cultures where both sexes 'interrupted/overlapped', and cultures where
both sexes used indirection, etc etc.
Iirc TALKING NINE TO FIVE focused on male/female speech differences in
some US corporate cultures: she'd been hired to find out what was
causing a 'glass ceiling'. She brought in the other cultures to clarify
points.
She also somewhere said that some non-US man (Brit?) had said that
visiting US male culture was like visiting a 'war zone'.
R.L.
Mary Gentle
(Graydon) wrote:
> In <memo.2003081...@roxanne.morgan.ntlworld.com>, Mary Gentle
> <mary_...@cix.co.uk> onsendan:
> > In article <1fzv6lg.1j52unqo5kaN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
> > dark...@mindspring.com (Darkhawk (H. Nicoll))) wrote:
> >> R. L. <sssss...@sssssspam.comsssssss> wrote:
> >> > I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful
> >> > stuff about male and female language differences in Deborah
> >> > Tannen's books, especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN
> >> > ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS.
> >>
> >> Yes; Deborah Tannen thinks that I'm a man.
> >
> > Brother! :)
> >
> > I'm kinda tired by how many books tell me I'm a man...
>
> If it's any consolation, most of them tell me I'm female.
It's a cheering thought about the limited observation of such books.
Mary
Brian M. Scott
<bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>In article <3f405892....@enews.newsguy.com>, b.s...@csuohio.edu
>said...
>> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 22:47:33 -0400, Brian D. Fernald
>> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >In article <3f40357e....@enews.newsguy.com>, b.s...@csuohio.edu
>> >said...
>> >> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 21:54:22 -0400, Brian D. Fernald
>> >> <bfer...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >> >In article <1fzuk9d.10ouzkr1am8clcN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
>> >> >dark...@mindspring.com said...
>> >> >> (I can't
>> >> >> think of a rule for 'what a man is' for which I do not personally know
>> >> >> multiple exceptions, including 'in possession of XY chromosomes'.)
>> >> >So, you know some exceptions, how do you know that they are exceptions?
>> >> Because they don't fit the proposed rule, whatever it may be.
>> >Which is what I'm asking, how do you know they are exceptions, what
>> >makes the proposed rule wrong?
[...]
>> Given a proposed rule of the form
>> 'x is a man if and only if x has property P' for some property P
>Which does not match my thinking at all. If I was to break what I've
>loosely come up into such a simple rule it would be more like ' x is a
>man if x has property P or property R or property S, or he experiences
>current events in way Y or way T or way U, or he has experienced past
>events in way E or way W or way Q. I'm thinking broad classes, with
>subclasses, types, and conditionals, not a straight line equation.
I don't pretend to know what sorts of rules Darkhawk actually had
in mind, apart from the one that she mentioned, but I do want to
point out that your rule is in fact of the form that I gave:
there is nothing in my formulation that requires P to be simple
property. P(p) could perfectly well be '[Q(p) or R(p) or S(p)] &
[A(p) or B(p)]', for instance.
>> -- and it seems clear to me that Darkhawk is thinking of rules
>> that can be formulated in essentially this way -- you know that
>> you have an exception if you find an individual p such that p is
>> a man who doesn't have property P.
>In my model, I don't conceive of exceptions, I would consider them just
>another class or type.
What you're really saying here is that if you have constructed a
tentative model and then find that p is an exception to it, you
change the model by adding a new type to accommodate p. This is
fine, but p was still an exception to the previous (version of
the) model.
[...]
>> >I find it interesting that I've offered an example that seems very
>> >stereotypical about how a man acts (however, flawed that example that
>> >might be) and most of the responses seem to indicate that I am
>> >proposing some other stereotype as being the definitive 'man', which is
>> >not my intention at all.
>> You do seem to have a much more definite notion of what
>> constitutes male behavior, or at least of what doesn't, than I
>> have.
>Yes, I do. I don't necessarily see why having a 'definite' idea is
>considered odd in this context. I'm not handwaving it into being, but
>based it on a pretty broad scope and some empirical, experiential, and
>intellectual evidence. Perhaps, it's my blindspot...
I'm not sure that I consider it odd, precisely, since you're
certainly not alone in this, but I observe that your picture, to
the extent that I understand it, doesn't seem to match my
experience, and that I'm also not alone in this.
Brian
R. L.
Kuhner) wrote:
>In article <Xns93DB6D4A17CFk...@216.168.3.44>,
>Karen Leonard <nospamk...@hiline.net> wrote:
>
>>Mary Kuhner wrote:
>>> But I could never escape
>>> the conviction that they were all the same woman, the only
>>> woman that Jordan could do, and all the men were the same man.
/snip/
This reminds me of Heinlein's later characters (and Louis L'Amour's).
Not the gender issue, but what is said below about them all having the
same roadmap.
>People have mental roadmaps which tell them what to expect, what they
>can understand and what they can't, and how they're supposed to
>behave. Gender, one's own and others', certainly gets into those
>roadmaps; but in real people it gets in variably, in all sorts of
>individual ways.
>
>All of Jordan's characters, it seemed to me, had the same roadmap
>for how the sexes interact.
/snip/
>For me the mental roadmap is such a big part of characterization that
>this produced the impression they were All One Woman/Man. And the
>reinforcement of the roadmap by everyone's behavior made it feel
>like authorial intrusion rather than just intense cultural conditioning.
Yes. Different characters may play contrasting roles within this map
(frex Heinlein's old woman and young women in NUMBER OF THE BEAST) but
as long as they all share the same map, I get the sensation of them all
being 'the same person'.
R.L.
Manny Olds
> I don't think the difference between male and female is something a
> writer can just wish away because she doesn't like it.
This is just a nice-looking hook for something I was thinking about at
lunch today. I was eating in the train station at a place with counter
seating and observed an interesting interaction. I am curious what people
think is going through the minds of the two main players; what internal
dialog would you write for each of them? How do youse think that the
interaction would have been different if both had been men? Both women?
A woman was sitting at the counter, eating and reading. A man came up and
asked her to move her bag so he could sit on her left instead of her right
because he didn't want to sit at the end of the counter where the waiters
went back and forth. She moved the bag and shifted her weight onto her
right elbow, away from him. They exchanged a few words about preferred
seats, then she went back to her book.
He placed his order. He also asked the waitress where she was from and
complimented her dimples. The woman beside him shifted her weight further
away from him. Then he turned to her again and asked her if they had met
in the restaurant before. She said not. He asked her if she was a
traveller or if she worked nearby? She answered that she worked across the
street, and turned back to her book, this time raising it up off the
countertop. He asked her where, but she did not respond.
The waitress brought the first part of his order. He looked her in the
face and thanked her. Then he asked the woman for the salt shaker, which
was in front of her; she moved her book so he could reach it himself. She
offered him the napkin dispenser so he could take some. He thanked her
while turning his attention to his food.
They ignored each other from then until I left.
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"Six times during the past year, a 13-year-old has been charged with
stealing cars, at times leading police on chases. ... 'This could be a cry
for help,' [Said the prosecutor.] 'On the other hand, he could just be a
car thief.' " -- AP news story (28 Nov 2000)
Brian D. Fernald
mkku...@kingman.gs.washington.edu said...
> In article <3F405899...@cits1.stanford.edu>,
> Brooks Moses <bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
> >Further, you create the impression that any two female
> >characters will have more commonalities between them than one of them
> >would with a male character who has similar other characteristics --
> >which I think tends to lead one to creating fictional worlds in which
> >that is in fact very true; a situation that tends to lower my enjoyment
> >of the book, and lower my sense that it corresponds to my reality (and
> >to remind me of the very false expectation when I was a teenager than I
> >had more in common with the boys my age than the girls -- which, as I
> >had a maturity level closer to that of the girls, was at times deeply
> >frustrating).
>
> This was what convinced me, on reading _The Great Hunt_, that I
> was never going to read any more Jordan. He has a theory like
> this, and by the end of the book I was *very* tired of it. Fans
> told me, "No, these aren't all the same woman! Morgaise is
> the conviction that they were all the same woman, the only
> woman that Jordan could do, and all the men were the same man.
> there was only one relationship dynamic between them.
>
> It does sell. But it doesn't convince me that these are people.
For what it is worth, it doesn't convince me that these are people
either.
Brian D. Fernald
said...
> In <MPG.19a9ecd1b...@news.mindspring.com>, Brian D Fernald
> <bfer...@mindspring.com> onsendan:
> > So the big biological stew of hormones, social experiences and
> > conditioning, and gender expectations, is only a ... secondary aspect
> > to your characters, an assumption that if presented in fiction, I
> > would find unrealistic without a plausible explanation.
>
> with gender.
How so, when your follow on statement indicates that cooking and
washing dishes is/was a gender role because they are 'default-male
activities'?
I'm not saying that things are not highly variable, but just because
they are highly variable does not necessarily mean that they cannot be
put into a series of broad categories of relation.
> (yes, really; I grew up in a family where cooking and washing dishes
> were default-male activities, frex.)
Washing dishes was something my father always did, whereas my mother
cooked the dinner.
Remus Shepherd
> I think that Usenet should have provided an excellent chance for people to
> disabuse themselves of the idea that there is one nice, normal curve over
> here that marks out "femalishness" and one, nice normal curve over there,
> scarcely overlapping, that marks out "malishness".
But Usenet is composed of freaks and weirdos with no other significant
interests in their lives. ;) When we write characters in a story we need
them to be, with a few exceptions, normal.
Or, to put it in Mark Twain's words: "Truth is stranger than fiction;
fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't." If I wrote a
story about people I met on Usenet, nobody would believe it. :)
... ...
Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com>
Brian M. Scott
[...]
>This is just a nice-looking hook for something I was thinking about at
>lunch today. I was eating in the train station at a place with counter
>seating and observed an interesting interaction. I am curious what people
>think is going through the minds of the two main players; what internal
>dialog would you write for each of them? How do youse think that the
>interaction would have been different if both had been men? Both women?
Dunno, but she's me.
>A woman was sitting at the counter, eating and reading. A man came up and
>asked her to move her bag so he could sit on her left instead of her right
>because he didn't want to sit at the end of the counter where the waiters
>went back and forth. She moved the bag and shifted her weight onto her
>right elbow, away from him. They exchanged a few words about preferred
>seats, then she went back to her book.
>He placed his order. He also asked the waitress where she was from and
>complimented her dimples. The woman beside him shifted her weight further
>away from him. Then he turned to her again and asked her if they had met
>in the restaurant before. She said not. He asked her if she was a
>traveller or if she worked nearby? She answered that she worked across the
>street, and turned back to her book, this time raising it up off the
>countertop. He asked her where, but she did not respond.
>The waitress brought the first part of his order. He looked her in the
>face and thanked her. Then he asked the woman for the salt shaker, which
>was in front of her; she moved her book so he could reach it himself. She
>offered him the napkin dispenser so he could take some. He thanked her
>while turning his attention to his food.
>They ignored each other from then until I left.
Brian
Lori Selke
Suzanne A Blom <sue...@execpc.com> wrote:
>I took the stereotyping as creeping EFP syndrome, not a statement of
>anything.
Me, too. This only reinforces my sense that we're all just talking about
bad characterization, period, and the gender thing is only obscuring
that fact.
Lori
--
se...@io.com, se...@mindspring.com, http://www.io.com/~selk
"It must be art for sure if somebody wants to destroy it."
-- Carol Emshwiller
Lori Selke
Yes! What she said! Because right now, I just can't see what you're
talking about. I *think* I have some sense of it, but I still can't
separate it out in my head from "bad writing is bad writing."
Boudewijn Rempt
> Or, to put it in Mark Twain's words: "Truth is stranger than fiction;
> fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't." If I wrote a
> story about people I met on Usenet, nobody would believe it. :)
But it might be good fantasy, in a Mievillish way.
--
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Marilee J. Layman
(H. Nicoll)) wrote:
>R. L. <sssss...@sssssspam.comsssssss> wrote:
>> I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful stuff
>> about male and female language differences in Deborah Tannen's books,
>> especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN
>> ARE FROM VENUS.
>
>Yes; Deborah Tannen thinks that I'm a man.
Heh. Some of us on rasff took a gender test a while back, and I came
in as male, with 82% probability. Going back over the test found two
questions that made me male:
1. I don't use a straw with drinks (apparently all women are required
to wear lipstick which they don't want to disturb and therefore they
use straws).
2. I carry things in my pockets (apparently all women are required to
use purses instead of pockets).
--
Marilee J. Layman
Handmade Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Darkhawk (H. Nicoll)
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 01:54:37 -0400, dark...@mindspring.com (Darkhawk
> (H. Nicoll)) wrote:
> >Yes; Deborah Tannen thinks that I'm a man.
>
> Heh. Some of us on rasff took a gender test a while back, and I came
> in as male, with 82% probability.
I don't remember what I rated on that; that was the Spark thing, right?
But it pegged me as male too.
--
Heather Anne Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
They are one person, they are two alone
They are three together, they are for each other.
- "Helplessly Hoping", Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Marilee J. Layman
I think he probably thinks he's being friendly, she probably thinks
he's annoying. (I can understand not wanting to sit on the corner, I
try to sit in places where people won't trip over me.)
Lori Selke
>
>> R. L. <sssss...@sssssspam.comsssssss> wrote:
>> > I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful
>> > stuff
>> > about male and female language differences in Deborah Tannen's books,
>> > especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN ARE FROM MARS,
>> > WOMEN
>> > ARE FROM VENUS.
>>
>
>
>I'm kinda tired by how many books tell me I'm a man...
I get kinda tired of how many books tell me that there's just two choices,
for that makes me some sort of patchwork Frankenstein Monster.
Boudewijn Rempt
>
> I think he probably thinks he's being friendly, she probably thinks
> he's annoying. (I can understand not wanting to sit on the corner, I
> try to sit in places where people won't trip over me.)
>
I guessed so, too (btw -- I really liked reading the write-up), but the man
in question wasn't aware of the one cardinal rule of social interaction:
people who are reading are not available for a chat. And no, reading a book
while eating isn't a pitiful attempt at disguising a lack of human
interaction or something. It's most often an attempt at finishing the book
before the job calls.
Manny Olds
> 1. I don't use a straw with drinks (apparently all women are required
> to wear lipstick which they don't want to disturb and therefore they
> use straws).
I use a straw because I have bad enamel and with a straw I don't have to
have the cold liquid on my teeth. I have had work done, but the straw
habit persists.
> 2. I carry things in my pockets (apparently all women are required to
> use purses instead of pockets).
I carry some things in my pockets, some on my belt, and some in my
backpack. What does that make me, I wonder? (Aside from overburdened, that
is.)
Lori Selke
It is worth noting that that particular test is tongue-in-cheek.
Somewhere, I have a URL of a test designed for people who are wondering
if they may be transgender. It measures "brain sex," physical presentation,
and "social sex." Very interesting -- and I still hit the middle with a
loud smack.
Zara Baxter
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2003 11:33 +0100 (BST), mary_...@cix.co.uk (Mary
> Gentle) wrote:
>
> >In article <1fzv6lg.1j52unqo5kaN%dark...@mindspring.com>,
> >dark...@mindspring.com (Darkhawk (H. Nicoll))) wrote:
> >
> >> R. L. <sssss...@sssssspam.comsssssss> wrote:
> >> > I don't know how deep the differences go, but there's very useful
> >> > stuff
> >> > about male and female language differences in Deborah Tannen's books,
> >> > especially TALKNG NINE TO FIVE, and John Gray's MEN ARE FROM MARS,
> >> > WOMEN
> >> > ARE FROM VENUS.
> >>
> >> Yes; Deborah Tannen thinks that I'm a man.
> >
> >Brother! :)
> >
> >I'm kinda tired by how many books tell me I'm a man...
I've been assiduously avoiding such. I firmly believe that I am first
and foremost a person, and the rest is cultural baggage. Of course,
being female, I've got a lot invested in that worldview ;)
As an aside, one of my objections to marriage is that it seems to
solidify some gender roles around people - not that the people married
to each other adopt specific gender roles, but the perceptions of their
friends and family shifts toward gender role-based expectations. I've
watched this happen around 4 or so friends who have married, and it
gives me the willies. Can someone tell me it doesn't work that way
everywhere, or that it's my dislike of marriage making me imagine it?
> there was a book called "brainsex" whose author now escapes me, which
> had a "test" in there and the scores would tell you whether you came
> out on the "male" or "female" end of the spectrum.
>
> i came out so far on the female end that the needle was quivering off
> the end of the gauges.
That's a particularly lovely image. Thank you.
> that is not to say that there is any particular merit or lack of it in
> that particular test - in fact, i'll go so far to say that the
> questions were reasonably loaded to goad individuals into going into
> whichever direction seemed necessary, and were more often than not
> based on common stereotypes (i.e. if you walk out of a door would you
> know which direction was north? - i said no, because i can't, i am not
> a homing pigeon and other than being able to tell east from west
> because the sun rises in the one and sets in the other, directions are
> not intuitive for me. this seemed to typify me as a female because men
> appear to have a built-in compass in their brains...)
My partner believes he has this compass, but in fact it's just home
territory direction sense. Plop him in a foreign city, and he'll do
exactly what I do: look at the sun, and calculate it.
Knowing the time of day is my quirk, accurate to within 15 minutes,
generally.
Zara
--
Zara Baxter
Freelance editor, writer, researcher
www.zarabaxter.com
Trip the Space Parasite From:
>Chris Johnson <jinx...@sover.net> wrote:
>> Dunno. Argh, my brain has led me deeply into The Stupid today, on
>> several different threads. Oh well. Consider it excessive squid factor-
>> if other SF writers are looking at you funny, you're in REAL trouble.
>Has Trip responded to you yet?
Wum?
Trip
--
I write of things which I have neither seen nor learned from another,
things which are not and never could have been, and therefore my readers
should by no means believe them. --Lucian of Samosata
Lori Selke
Zara Baxter <za...@zarabaxter.com> wrote:
>As an aside, one of my objections to marriage is that it seems to
>solidify some gender roles around people - not that the people married
>to each other adopt specific gender roles, but the perceptions of their
>friends and family shifts toward gender role-based expectations. I've
>watched this happen around 4 or so friends who have married, and it
>gives me the willies. Can someone tell me it doesn't work that way
>everywhere, or that it's my dislike of marriage making me imagine it?
It doesn't work that way everywhere.
OTOH, when it doesn't work that way, you may have people ask with mild
astonishment, "you two are married?" Sometimes followed up with "you don't
*act* married."
sharkey
> On 18 Aug 2003 14:10:10 +0200, pas...@ira.uka.de wrote:
> > sharkey <sha...@zoic.org> writes:
> > > P: "What's so damned funny?"
> > > R: "From here, it was hilarious ..." [...]
>
> >That's much better!
Thanks :-)
> It's certainly better, but I consider the two versions pretty
> nearly identical in terms of the point that Brian F. wanted to
> make. This comes across to me as better writing of the same
> characters and the same interaction.
Yep, that was my intention. Which is, I admit, a bit of a
sidetrack from the original 'gender roles' question ;-)
Brian F. originally wrote:
>> The passage bugs me, because it reads like a stereotype, and as we
>> discussed elsewhere it's marked by being from a female author.
... and that passage bugged me too, so I thought I'd abbreviate
it a bit and see if it still bugged me. By the time I'd done that,
it bugged me a whole lot less, but I'd forgotten why I was doing it
in the first place ...
Anyway, so I guess my question for Brian F. would be "Can you
give us another example?"
-----sharks