Check out this thread. A man tries to prove that he can write good woman characters, and all of his writing samples are like cheesy porn.
I am reading a thread of people complaining about #ownvoices and it is the cringiest thing. The term "SJW" appeared.
— Gwen C. Katz (@gwenckatz) March 30, 2018
Then it descends into parody as the women on the thread are challenged to “describe yourself like a male author would”.
So I thought about how a male author would describe me, and given my experience with the nastier side of the internet, it was easy: they would just write “cuck”.
I could read a whole romance book written by a woman imitating a man that regularly uses the word, “cuck.”
I especially love the references to the appearances of starlets.
Kinda related: this thread about Harlequin.
I tweeted my description by a male author today.
“There was a soft scratchy whisper in the dark, empty corner…”
This also seems related: https://twitter.com/savethemayotee/status/906173367908229120
@4, davidnangle:
Bahahaha, that’s so funny.
About the topic, to be honest, it is not necessarily a problem of male vs female authors for this particular issue. Writing good fiction is very hard. It requires that you create at least a handful of different characters with different backgrounds and different personalities and different life experiences. This guy’s problem is that he has no clue how to do that. He obviously cannot create a believable woman character which makes me think he probably cannot create a believable rich character, or a believable poor character, or even a believable guy character who is not a horny idiot like himself.
I think it’s more that it simply never occurs to him that he wouldn’t be able to do it. And it’s painful because he is exceedingly awful at it.
I doubt that the *entire* rational of #inourvoice was we need diverse writers because that is the only humanly possible way we can ever have stories of diverse perspective because no human being can ever write from another perspective, but that we need diverse writers because … it brings diversity… That this guy misses the point and demonstrates that left to their own devices “traditional” voices will congregate on the tin-ear and unempathizable and not even recognize there is a problem is just ironically sad.
If I *hadn’t* thought we need diverse writers to have diversity in content before, he did a very good job convincing me.
They might call you a cuck; but, looking at your eyes in the Cancer Quack video, they might also accuse you of being a Reptoid.
(What caused that effect?)
Aw, yes, the thread that murdered both my Twitter AND Tumblr notifications (apparently a lot of people HADN’T seen the pee passage before………)
I’m going to suggest something amazing and revolutionary to this twit: write women the same as if they were ‘normal people’ i.e. men. Once this becomes habitual, you will realise that women are normal people, and have been so all along.
I should open a writing class.
*reads some of the quotes* Ohh, yeah. That guy is one of those. I don’t write much. Most of that sort of talent I use in roleplaying games. You run into guys like that sometimes who can’t really be bothered to portray a female as a person. I’ve never had much problems playing either sex although I generally find female characters more interesting.
Diversity in authorship gets you diversity in stories. The primary reason I can actually portray convincing characters from different perspectives that are not much like mine is due to other people’s stories. I’ve read about them and had more knowledgeable people with more nuanced viewpoints than mine describe them to me. It’s that whole standing on the shoulders of giants, only it’s not giants. It’s just a big pile with an awful lot of people living differently and being willing to write stories that use their perspectives.