I read a very interesting blog post the other day that a favorite author of mine shared on her Facebook page. It was entitled, “I don’t want to play the strong female lead.”
I thought the article’s author made some pertinent points — how female characters are viewed in movies and TV, from the cute girlfriend to the judgmental mother, there are some fairly rigid stereotypes, and none of them are based much in reality, and none of them give the female characters a lot of credit, autonomy, or self-determination.
She went on the talk about the Strong Female Lead — a character we’re seeing in movies and TV more and more, and how it takes female characters in an entirely new bad direction, albeit subtly and seemingly in favor of strong women.
The trouble, the author of this article says, is that the strong female lead is very much strong in a masculine way. She is physically strong, she is smart, she is cunning, she can strategize — but she’s still hot. So she’s basically the male action figure that men still want to see naked. The current strong female lead stereotype doesn’t leave room for compassion, for nurturing, for being strong out of love rather than muscles.
I get this. I really do. I’m all for a woman being physically strong, smart, strategic — but I can see where those traits can be very masculine and not give room to tell a story about an actual woman, doing things from a place of traditionally held “female” values or strengths, like love, compassion, caregiving, etc.
Where the article’s author and I lost agreement was when she brought up accepted plot arc. Inciting incident, rising action, climatic finish, and lulled wrap up. What does this remind you of? The author asks.
Well, I think, having thought this before, sex. Of course it makes me think of sex.
But another author that I read recently also drew the parallel between the human course of grief as well as sex. And that second author was not wrong — the similarities between the stages of grief and the plot points in a well-plotted story match up quite well.
But the author of the blog post about female characters did not say, sex. She said, “It’s strongly reminiscent of the male orgasm.”
And I stopped reading.
Is it?
And, excuse me, what precisely is the difference between a male orgasm and a female orgasm? Aside from the fact that women can more easily achieve multiples, and can be ready to begin again quickly, where men need a rest period? And honestly — both of those things are tendencies, not concrete differences. Men can have multiple orgasms and be ready to begin again fast, depending on circumstances, and lots of women never have a multiple orgasm cluster and definitely need some time between sessions, depending on circumstances.
I’ve heard this term before — “the male orgasm.” I really don’t know what it means.
I get that modern sex — modern porn, let’s be clear, and maybe some modern expectations of sex — seem to revolve around the boys getting their rocks off. But in real life, real sex, real people who have real relationships and have realistic expectations of what sex and relationships are, I don’t see how “male orgasms” and “female orgasms” are all that different. Inciting incident, rising action, climactic finish, lulled wrap up. Um, yep — sounds familiar. And not just as something I’ve watched someone else do. If you catch my drift.
Listen, I am a feminist. Do I want to see more well-rounded characters in movies and TV? Yes. Do I look more to books to give me that, because books are generally light years ahead of TV and movies in issues of equality across the board? Yes. Do I think the patriarchy encourages toxic masculinity in both men and women, while suppressing important feminine traits that humans require in order to be emotionally healthy? Yes. Do I think it harms men as much as women? Yes. Do I think the patriarchy encroaches on our lives in weird ways that aren’t always easy to see? Yes.
Do I think some women look a little too hard to find patriarchy where there is none? Yes.
Do I think the accepted course of plot mimics sex? Yes.
Do I think it mimics the “male” orgasm? Not specifically, no.
Do I think plot also mimics the natural way that humans handle crises? Yes.
Do I think that men and women have vastly different wants and needs and experiences when it comes to sex? No.
No, I do not, and I’m a little tired of hearing about it.
I’ve been studying plotting and the arc of plot for the last few months, and the similarities between plot arc and sex have not been lost on me. However, I’m not about to say that it’s similar to “male sex” vs. “female sex,” and I’ll tell you what — I’m not about to change how I plot my stories to better reflect a more “feminine” arc. I wouldn’t even know what the hell that is. And that other similarity comes up too — the way humans manage grief/crises. Until someone can explain to me how that’s “masculine” vs. “feminine,” I’ll stick with the tried and true, thanks.
“Inciting incident, rising action, climatic finish, and lulled wrap up.”
Sounds like baking bread to me.
I absolutely agree. Sometimes all these debates about the politics of plots and characters just get a little bit tiresome. You are in the wrong if you write women in “feminine” stories as that’s an outdated stereotype. You are wrong if you write women in “masculine” roles that denies their “femininity”. But “femininity” is a social construct that forces women into certain stereotypes, so they really should be more in “masculine” roles … but that just makes them interchangeable to male characters so is only on surface-level observation more inclusive to what it means to be a woman. But …
You can run in circles over these debates forever.
Which obviously isn’t to say that they don’t have a point. But it’s easy to be sweepingly critical when you don’t have to provide any actual solutions.
And it’s depressing when you can’t even debate the quality of a story or characters anymore since everyone is just yelling about whether they are “ideologically correct” (or too correct, or not enough correct, or correct in the wrong way…).
Ugh, the debates rage on! I just do my best to make my characters likable and believable, and roll from there. I try to keep my female characters active in their own lives, and try not to let men solve all their problems for them, but more than that . . . it just starts getting complicated, silly, and overblown.