Gendered language (if we know it, we can avoid it)

I had a try with my WiP. I did find that the two female-locked characters never grinned, though the non-binary character was actually the most frequent grinner. There’s only one scream, and it comes from a male character; similarly the only chuckle is also male. And only the MC ever shivers.

People do often pick up the non-binary character as being male, though - I don’t know if this is because I’ve written them in a ‘male’ way, or if it’s just a male=neutral assumption.

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I don’t think any of my characters have ever tittered. Definitely a word I just hate, and would only ever apply to a very empty-headed villain…and, if I’m honest, I think only a female villain (because to me it’s so heavily gendered that using it with a male character would pull the reader out of the story)… but because that villain is such an anti-feminist character, I couldn’t bear to write them either.

My characters are constantly smiling at the moment, so I appreciate the timely run-down of alternate words and their implications for character.

I’m loving this discussion, and I think it’ll make me more aware of my own habits.

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A little disagree there regarding damsel, because that was based on circumstance when we apply the term screaming and weeping, it is logical any character will. Scream and weep while in distress s…

For example soldiers scream and weep in the battle field piled with corpses… are we assuming that soldier is female? Unlikely.

RenaB didn’t mean that only women can scream or weep, they (she? don’t know your pronouns, sorry!) meant that because of a gender bias, there’s disproportionately more women written as screaming and weeping than there are men. I don’t think anyone thinks men can’t be in distress either, just that in media it tends to end up being women.

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I have been thinking about this a lot since @Felicity_Banks made the topic. Thank you for doing so. I do think I “write like a girl.” as Felicity’s friend suggests there is a difference in the majority of authors. The focus of the thread has been on singular words being “gendered” but I, personally think this is only the tip of the iceberg.

There is not only a bias in the author’s background and identification but also in the use of the English language itself. I’m going to link an article about the usage of the phrase: Basically a good guy. . For those interested in the article itself, I’ll post the article then I’ll continue my thoughts after.

Until this thread by @Felicity_Banks and this article I just posted, I really did not think about the influence of bias both on my own writing and on all of our writing in general.

The idea, that in the English language, there is a specific phrase that excuses one gender’s bias but not another’s in common use is troubling to me. The article I link says this is not only unfair to the men and women who avoid exhibiting this bias but also unfair to those who are continually being excused. After thinking about it, I’ve come to the same conclusion.

There is no equivalent phrase in the English language common usage to: He’s basically a good guy for any other gender … no other gender gets a pass for exhibiting disturbing or bad behavior … and it is something that as authors perhaps we should be aware of, so as Felicity states: “… we can avoid it.”

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Hmmm… maybe you are right, seeing most horror movies put females in the screaming role

However, damsel in distress is an interesting case, depend on whether author actually depicts them as being tied to a tree or in reference to a woman requiring aid

I think any trope that perpetuates a stereotype can’t really be called an “interesting case”–any character can be justified by a writer, but the issue is they aren’t being written in a vacuum. There isn’t something inherently wrong with a character who’s only there to scream–but when a majority of female characters are written very plainly and very flatly, it’s an issue. The “damsel in distress” trope isn’t just women who need help, it’s women who are incapable of doing anything themselves. For a good CoG example, look at Samantha from the HG Starship Adventures–in fairness she’s a satire, and intentionally very exaggerated (far more helpless than most modern versions) but still demonstrates what I’m talking about. There absolutely can be well written, interesting female characters who are weak people (weak as a person and not as a character is a distinction), but they’re a minority and generally somewhat controversial at best.

This is somewhat of a derailment of the topic, but I felt like if we’re talking about writing gender anyway it’s worth pointing out.

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I completely agree with you, it could depend on how you treat the character.
I think it works better if you think whether it would make sense for the character in distress to be in that situation rather than, how that situation might affect another characters (like the rescuer/love interest of said character in distress).

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Well… I was just thinking, if I want to apply poetic term to describe a woman in need of aid, maybe I can apply damsel in distress, not thinking it will cause negative reaction
, since based on text alone, a damsel means a fair lady, in distress simply means she needs aid…

And regarding this topic, I don’t think there should be restriction on the words/verbs we apply on a character based on gender. It is more important on how we depict the personality of a character

The issue isn’t necessarily the term itself, the thing is that it isn’t being written in a vacuum. Just by book definition, you’re right: a woman in need of help isn’t a bad thing. But since it has negative and somewhat sexist connotations, it’s something that should be thought a lot about before using.

One place I really liked it’s use was in the Disney movie Hercules. It’s overall a film of debatable quality, but the introductory scene of the love interest includes the male protagonist asking if she’s a damsel in distress–meaning a woman who can’t help herself (which is generally how the phrase is used). The character responds “I’m a damsel, I’m in distress, I can handle this.” Meaning that yes, as by the definition you described she is a damsel and she is in distress, but that doesn’t mean she can’t handle herself.

Damsel is also something of an outdated term–I don’t know that I know many women who would appreciate being called a damsel, just because it also tends to have some connotations of weakness (probably mostly due to being mostly used in this phrase).

I agree with this–but I think part of this thread is also to make people writing think more about the words that they’re using to describe characters, and whether or not, through word choice, they’re unintentionally playing into harmful stereotypes. There isn’t anything bad that can come from thinking more in depthly about what you’re doing as a creator.

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Yeah, they’re bloody sadists is what they are. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Was your writing sample taken from your own wip, if so I can offer my also entirely non-representative mc of why guys in your wip are shivering, maybe it is because they wear rags and go barefoot. Barefoot and shivering indeed. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Only if they’re cute young guys who aren’t children. :wink:
Children and the elderly being in circumstances that cause frequent shivering tend to be tragic, albeit for different reasons and of course not sexy at all.

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Samantha in “Starship Adventures” is more than just satire (and thanks for pointing out that she is), she is pretending to be a damsel in distress for her own reasons. (And it turns out her literally deadly screaming is a weapon she has specifically designed so it looks like she’s merely lucky instead of skilled.) I know better than to write such a cliche, even as satire. It actually says great things that a lot of HG readers were immediately put off the entire story by the (satirical) gender stereotypes. (It was clearly labelled as satire, but satire always sits too close to real life for many.)

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You’re definitely right-- maybe I should have elaborated more, if I were just describing the character to someone else I would’ve called her a deconstruction of the trope. But given that I was trying to just point out the parts where she seems helpless as an example to my point, I didn’t want to ramble on too long about something only peripherally related to the discussion.

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I did also realize that the one female character I had who was responsible for half the screams was in a bit of a “damsel in distress” situation most of the time… but… she did at least actually get out of it herself, just after screaming about it a lot :thinking:

The character in question was also very feminine in presentation, but hopefully much deeper as a character overall. This does, however, lead into a wider consideration about how feminine and masculine presentations may or may not intersect with the same stereotypes we’ve been talking about. One could write a very feminine girl still actively saving herself and other people, and one could write a tomboy who is very sensitive about her emotions.

(There are also considerations about how these interact with sexual orientation, as well. Gay men may be stereotyped as feminine… but sometimes are written as overly masculine in response to this. A mix is nice… but there is also there stereotype of a couple where one guy is the masculine one and the other is the feminine one… so… variety is nice, really. Because there’s nothing wrong with being a feminine gay man [ahem :innocent:] but I sure wouldn’t want that to be all I see. And, again, feminine mannerisms or whatever don’t have to correspond with the “traditional” narrative damsel role, either.)

Very much seconding this. It would look much different if sometimes there’s a helpless woman, sometimes a helpless nb person, sometimes a helpless man… alongside heroic women, nb people, and men… and if these people aren’t almost always traditionally masculine, too.

I’m afraid I did not check my WiP, since I didn’t think it was long enough yet to get much use from. (I mean, I’ve written more than you’ve seen, but that’s more like notes and outlining and background material, which… is hard to test for character verb assignments…)

Most of them are :innocent:

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I always liked titter because to me it gives a very specific sound. It makes me think of someone who’s scheming, not necessarily against anyone, but more for themselves. That and it makes for a good old-timey insult. “You tittering fool!” Or such.

I meant what @HomingPidgeon said. Also just that because there are more women screaming and weeping than men, those two actions have sort of become associated with femininity, therein making it less likely for someone to describe a male character as “screaming and weeping” since those actions are stereotypically associated with female characters, even when it would be appropriate and logical for a man to scream and weep. (Such as your soldier on the battlefield example).

She is correct, you’re all good! :smile:

I mean, there is nothing wrong with screaming…
I’d be more concerned if the character didn’t scream when put into a distressing situation. Unless we’re dealing some kind of invincible being of power I would expect most people to scream when in bad situations. (Or curse, or cry, or just generally express some kinda terror). Otherwise… otherwise I might be more scared of that character than the villain. :sweat_smile:

In the end it all just goes back to what I was talking about earlier- character over gender. It might be one of those cliche “don’t judge a book by its cover” stories but I guess I just always favor putting personality over everything else.

Also, with text-based media, people will see the characters in different ways. Sure, the author can state that the character had long hair or short hair, brown eyes or green eyes, that the character wore a hoodie half the time or was always in shorts, but imagination overpowers most things when it comes to the reader. (I’ve certainly had times when a certain aspect of a character wasn’t mentioned until later in the story and was completely shocked to find out that the person I’d been thinking of as having black hair was blonde the entire time). So even if an author purposefully describes a character against a stereotype, it’s going to be up to the reader to fill in the minute details. And a lot of times, personality and the way the character interacts with the protagonist is going to be the key factor in what helps them fill out the picture.

But yeah, I think you really hit it on the head with variety.

In anything, variety in characters is pretty key.

You wouldn’t want to read a story where everyone was just John Doe doing John Doe things. (Although actually that might work as a cool dystopian, 1984-style book…)

But I digress. I agree, variety is nice when it comes to characters, no matter their gender or sexual orientation its nice just to see characters as people with different personalities.

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Oh, one other rant I wanted to make about gender differences in character descriptions! And that’s physical descriptions :angry:

I’ve noticed more times than I could mention, cases where female character descriptions are based on the quality of their appearance, and male descriptions are based on distinctive features… “a svelte girl with pretty hair” or “a guy with a scrunched nose and a scar through his cheek.”

This ends up prioritizing attraction to women (and women’s attractiveness) over attraction to men (and men’s attractiveness). It really only makes sense with a 1st person narrator who only likes women. Otherwise, it’s something to be aware of, because the discrepancy is unfair, distracting, and alienating.

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I’d put this down to western culture personally. It is from where I’m sitting a culture where male = default given no other information. Even these days, given all I know about gender equality and fluidity, I still catch myself being surprised when I see a woman doing a job I wouldn’t have expected a woman to be doing - despite the very real fact there was no reason I should have considered the job male only.

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Fortunately we have people like you and the watcher of parrots to rectify that, no?
Some of the others also try and I think that, for me at least, the reverse would also be true.

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@RenaB @HomingPidgeon

Hope you all don’t mind some discussion on this…

Regarding outdated form of English term such as “damsel”, i am wondering…English as a form of language had evolved in many ways (whether better or worse), is it necessary to “outdated” certain text from modern usage ? For me, i am always fascinated with the older text of English in a way it feel that they are / were more poetic and alive, 2 examples will be Lord of The Rings and the Arthurian Legends…where during the cause of events within the legends, the characters within couldn’t help but mix some form of poem within their speech or conversation, which i believe will make a conversation less boring…even if we are living in a modern society now, thus i was (am still) inspired by certain form of older/ ancient text within it… i never imagine there will be any form of “distaste” or “uncharacteristic” intention within them, one of these words is of course “damsel” and another will be “milady”, i understand nowadays most writing already converted it as “My Lady”, but i can’t help but fascinated with the older text of “milady”…which i can imagine the pronounce of “mi” as something like “mee” and not the usual “my”… So i am wondering and hoping the applying of “milady” is not some sort of disrespect towards women in general, and to the greater extend, reference term such as “damsel” and “milady” are actually better than modern terms such as “noob” or other disrespectful term which were invented in modern days.

It isn’t just that people are deciding what terms are outdated and what aren’t–it isn’t some arbitrary cut off, it’s just that the words aren’t in common use anymore, so their meanings are taken differently from how they were originally intended. “Damsel” and “milady” nowadays can come off as very patronizing. Keep in mind that this language came from a time when views of women were very, very different, and they were treated as much less of equals in society.

Comparing terms that are somewhat unintentionally offensive to something “noob” is a bad false equivalency, and you shouldn’t think about it in those terms. Just because it’s better than something else, doesn’t make it good. “Noob” was designed specifically to be an insult, yes, and your terms weren’t, but that doesn’t make it more comfortable for the women who are hearing it.

I’d advise you to think very hard about why you want to use those terms, and in what context you would be using them in. You might be being unintentionally disrespectful just because you’re using words that no woman I know would be comfortable with, even if their dictionary definitions don’t really cover that. Even if that facet of language is fascinating to you, that doesn’t make it comfortable for the people you’d be using it to talk to and about. Chances are, you can find better modern language to convey the same meaning.

I’ll definitely grant the caveat that this is not universal, I am not a girl and this is based on personal experience and conversations I’ve had. But I’m pretty confident saying it applies to most women.

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