PodCastle Essay: We Have Always Fought

[Voresia]

Another issue I had with the essay is that there is a bit too much "I" in it. Now, it's natural to make an essay personal and put personal stories in there. The part about how she reacted in crowds sounded a bit too self-congratulatory to me, as well as the bragging about handling guns. Before you get me wrong, it would have pissed me of as much when a man would have said it.

And there was also a section where she called herself a misogynist, listing some pretty embarrassing narrative mistakes. It takes guts to admit that you have those personal biases, that the first thing that comes to your head when you write is the standard fare garbage that you see in most movies. It’s especially embarrassing as a woman. I know very few people who will admit to something like that, though you know we all do it, but that’s the whole point of the essay. We need to see more diverse and complex female roles so that we don’t (any of us) continue to make those mistakes. The personal anecdotes, positive and negative, just serve to strengthen the message.

I also don’t quite get the “this is not a perfect metaphor” commentary on the Llama bits. To me it’s an example that is exactly as ridiculous as mainstream narratives assuming that all women are either passive, comforting motherly types or dynamo sex objects.

So ya, I loved this essay. Thanks so much for running it Podcastle!

[jkjones21]

Varda's been raving about this essay for weeks (maybe months? I'm not sure), and then she told me about PodCastle doing an audio recording of it, so I was like, "I should listen to that so I can say intelligent things about it."  Anna, Anne, and Dave, thanks for selecting this to read.  It was a good listen, and there was a lot more in there than just what I've heard Varda talk about in passing.

Some things that I wanted to respond to (whether these are important are relevant can be left up to other readers; please feel free to tell me I'm derailing, because that's the last thing this thread needs and it'd be better for me to learn something while being silent than to share nothing while yakking):

Varda nailed the thing about being excited when people share that they've had a realization; even if it's not new to you, you should never belittle someone else's epiphany.  I'd also like to add that it's pretty dismissive to suggest that Hurley was younger when she wrote this essay; there are multiple details in her story that indicate these are things she's been learning about from a young age well into her adult life (the point that she studied women fighters in depth for a decade after her grad school experience in South Africa points to the fact that this is not something she just recently realized, but that the essay is a culmination of ideas she's been considering for a long time).  Going against ingrained narratives is hard work, and no matter how experienced you might become in critiquing what you consume, there will always be assumptions that you miss because there's just a lot of stuff in the stream.

My memory is unfortunately fuzzy on this particular subject, but I recall reading a book on the importance of personal narrative in feminist discourse back when I was in grad school.  I wish I could remember it better, but the general gist was that personal stories typically don't get privileged in formal writing because we tend to view these instances of personal insight as intrusions.  A writer tells us about their experience in relation to a subject, and we feel like it's distracting from our own engagement (completely ignoring that this is a case of someone trying to form a connection with the reader).  Going further, personal narratives are often the only form of discourse available to underprivileged groups, and shunning that form of discussion silences those voices in favor of the ones with the resources to participate in methods of discourse (like formal research that before the internet was really only a possibility if you were a part of the academy) that are communally approved.  Hurley's use of personal anecdotes in this essay serves to highlight examples where she had epiphanies related to the subject of the essay; these are good things to share.  That she was the one on the subway train who thought to help the man who was having a seizure shouldn't be considered self congratulatory; it's more an indictment of our mindset that everything out of the ordinary is somebody else's problem (would the realization Hurley had have been more effective if she'd changed the narrative to make another stranger the one who tried to help the man, or is it just that she remembers this instance because it was her moment of epiphany?).

As for the Bechdel Test being the last novel thing to appear in popular feminist theory, I think it's best to dwell on the fact that a concept coined in the '80s is still considered novel (mostly because it's a concept we're still failing to take seriously in our popular fiction).

[Richard Babley]

Varda nailed the thing about being excited when people share that they've had a realization; even if it's not new to you, you should never belittle someone else's epiphany. 

Very true.

It's very hard sometimes to understand things from other people's background sometimes.  For instance Moritz grew up in West Germany (RAF poster).  So I can kind of understand the natural pacifism because I have lived in Northern Germany for a very long time.  Things that seem obvious to one group, may not be so to others.  Take Angela Merkel as an example.  When there is voting here, the fact that she is a woman doesn't matter, because much of pariment are female in Germany.  The Minister of Defense is Female in Germany (Ursula von der Lein).  BUT when I was in the USA I remember debates about whether enemies to the USA would see H. Clinton as a weakness because she is a woman.  A pundit that would say that in Germany would be ostrisized for stupidity.  BUT Americans would never seen that and Germans don't understand it when they hear it in the USA.

Personally I had trouble understanding fathers and mothers sometimes.  Now that I am a parent, I find my view have also changed.  No more liberal or conservation, just different.  I would not expect most people without children to understand, because I remember how it was without children.

When I am 50, I don't know if I'll remember how that naivity was...

We have to take these comments with a grain of salt, because we all have different background and different ages, and what you see as insulting may just be an everyday comment from someone else (it something I had to learn moving to N Germany because the people are so damn direct), and people most likely are not purposefully being mean.

[Richard Babley]

I'd like to see women marinalized in other typically male areas, not just war, take a larger role.

Men are trained to believe that their theories and anecdotal evidence outweigh the lived experiences of women. They don't. Sometimes you need to just sit down and truly listen to what's being said. Helpfully, this also applies when you are outside any marginalized group discussing their marginalization.

Really, now....

Come on...

Men are trained....  (in a discussion talking about stereotypes)

[jkjones21]

Men are trained....  (in a discussion talking about stereotypes)

Yeah, men are trained.  This isn't a flip comment about a sexist stereotype; we all have narratives that appeal to us, and the reason for that is because we internalize our social training.  It takes a lot of work to recognize that training in the first place, but it is there.  Try not to be so dismissive of what someone else is saying because it doesn't fit your personal narrative.

[Varda]

I'd like to see women marinalized in other typically male areas, not just war, take a larger role.

Men are trained to believe that their theories and anecdotal evidence outweigh the lived experiences of women. They don't. Sometimes you need to just sit down and truly listen to what's being said. Helpfully, this also applies when you are outside any marginalized group discussing their marginalization.

Really, now....

Come on...

Men are trained....  (in a discussion talking about stereotypes)

It's not a discussion about stereotypes. It's a discussion about the marginalization of women's voices and women's contribution. Bees made an excellent and important point that I think we should all keep in mind: this kind of derailing is unhelpful.

Now, to get back to the conversation at hand, this touched on something I thought was really important from Hurley's essay:

And there was also a section where she called herself a misogynist, listing some pretty embarrassing narrative mistakes. It takes guts to admit that you have those personal biases, that the first thing that comes to your head when you write is the standard fare garbage that you see in most movies. It’s especially embarrassing as a woman. I know very few people who will admit to something like that, though you know we all do it, but that’s the whole point of the essay. We need to see more diverse and complex female roles so that we don’t (any of us) continue to make those mistakes. The personal anecdotes, positive and negative, just serve to strengthen the message.

I really resonated this, and with Hurley's point about being a "self-aware misogynist" even while being a woman. We're all a product of our cultures, and I'm not sure it's possible to reach adulthood without internalizing at least some sexist stereotypes if you live in the Western world, even under the best circumstances (see also: #yesallwomen on Twitter). Why not just take that as a starting point and accept the fact we're going to make mistakes, and own up to them when we do? If I assume I already have sexist tendencies buried within my brain, it's easier to recognize it when it crops up and not excuse myself without a moment of hard personal reflection. The same is true of internalized racism, homophobia, ableism, and so forth.

[benjaminjb]

From a rhetorical standpoint, I like the position Hurley takes here of self-critique as a window into a larger social critique. I mean, she could have started from the "society is flawed and everyone is complicit" angle--but finger-pointing has some obvious problems, such as a tendency for readers to feel defensive or argue against the point.

That said, while I thought the essay nicely moved from "my inner struggle with misogyny" to wider, social issues, clearly some people thought the argument lingered too long on the "self-aware misogynist" self-accusation Hurley levels as her opening move. Perhaps, from a rhetorical angle, she would've been better suited by moving more quickly from "my problem" to "our problem with women."

But then we'd also miss some of the on-going nature of this struggle: Hurley may be self-aware of her misogynistic cultural training--and knowing may be half the battle--but there's still a whole other 50% of the battle to fight. And a lot of that battle is simply in keeping hold of what you know in the face of a larger society that is pledged to ignorance about this issue.

And perhaps it's only because I'm trying to write my own fiction now, but I feel like "personal struggle" and "knowing the right thing to do" is only a small part of this. I could heal all my faults and try to live a perfect life--always referring to "firefighters" rather than "firefighters" and "lady firefighters"--and still not actually make the world a better place. There seems to be a lot more that needs to be done besides being self-aware. Which is one reason why I like this essay for starting this discussion. And hopefully, also this essay will lead to more than just discussion but action in our own spheres of life.

[Father Beast]

And finally, amidst all those stories about the scaly llamas that eat their young, there have always been llama herders who harvest the llamas for their hair and trust them to raise their own young.

I don't remember the essay saying anything about llama herders. Was someone suggesting llama herders were all leading the llamas to the slaughtering house?

(I'm also uncomfortable with the herders analogy in general, because it reads like you're saying llamas = women, and the human herders = men, who take care of the less than human llamas, and also harvest them. Maybe you're not suggesting that, and you're suggesting the herders are also llamas, but then I don't get why we would differentiate the herders?)

Just because something wasn't mentioned doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I think that is one of the points of this essay. My point is that no matter what the popular stories say, there have always been people who know the reality.

In my viewpoint, the llama analogy refers not to women or men, but to how we hear something popularly believed, and decide whether or not to accept what we first heard when we see the evidence.

[Father Beast]

It's not a discussion about stereotypes. It's a discussion about the marginalization of women's voices and women's contribution. Bees made an excellent and important point that I think we should all keep in mind: this kind of derailing is unhelpful.

As I understand it, the author was talking about the narratives we hear about stuff, and her awakening to the larger reality that those narratives don't accurately portray. In my experience, that kind of popular, inaccurate narrative is called a stereotype.

[Varda]

It's not a discussion about stereotypes. It's a discussion about the marginalization of women's voices and women's contribution. Bees made an excellent and important point that I think we should all keep in mind: this kind of derailing is unhelpful.

As I understand it, the author was talking about the narratives we hear about stuff, and her awakening to the larger reality that those narratives don't accurately portray. In my experience, that kind of popular, inaccurate narrative is called a stereotype.

Fair enough--it might be a difference of what we each got from it. In my opinion, calling "We Have Always Fought" an essay only about stereotypes is pretty surface-level. She uses common tropes involving female characters in stories as a jumping off point for discussing the greater implications, especially in relation to the historical record. I suppose we could call it an essay that talks about the problems that very specific stereotypes create.

Richard Babley's comment toward Bees struck me as dismissive and derailing (perhaps unintentionally so--one of the dangers of online conversation is how easy it is to miscommunicate tone and attitude), especially since there was so much substance to what she had to say. It warranted more than an, "Oh, come on!", which carries the implicit assumption that what she had to say was so obviously far off base that no reasonable person even needs to point out where they disagreed. Saying "because stereotypes!" struck me as false equivalence at best.

That said, while I thought the essay nicely moved from "my inner struggle with misogyny" to wider, social issues, clearly some people thought the argument lingered too long on the "self-aware misogynist" self-accusation Hurley levels as her opening move. Perhaps, from a rhetorical angle, she would've been better suited by moving more quickly from "my problem" to "our problem with women."

This is a very good point, and from a rhetorical standpoint, I totally agree. I imagine she went with the "I" statements as a means of coming alongside her readers and hopefully getting them to really listen before dismissing what she had to say. It's definitely weaker, rhetorically, than coming right out about what a widespread and general problem this is.

If anyone's interested in reading another fantastic little essay that does a GREAT job highlighting how widespread scaly-llama narratives are, check out SFF author Maria Dahvana Headley's "A Short List of Movies You Will Never See". She makes one really great point about the problem of flat female characters: aside from being dehumanizing, they're boring. As is seeing the exact same Straight Cis White Dude starring as Our Hero again and again and again, with no variation and no change. One thing I particularly love about Podcastle is what a great variety of protagonists we hear from week to week. It's refreshing, fun, and not boring. Addressing these problems means a better selection of stories for all of us, and better entertainment.

[Richard Babley]

It's not a discussion about stereotypes. It's a discussion about the marginalization of women's voices and women's contribution. Bees made an excellent and important point that I think we should all keep in mind: this kind of derailing is unhelpful.

As I understand it, the author was talking about the narratives we hear about stuff, and her awakening to the larger reality that those narratives don't accurately portray. In my experience, that kind of popular, inaccurate narrative is called a stereotype.

Fair enough--it might be a difference of what we each got from it. In my opinion, calling "We Have Always Fought" an essay only about stereotypes is pretty surface-level. She uses common tropes involving female characters in stories as a jumping off point for discussing the greater implications, especially in relation to the historical record. I suppose we could call it an essay that talks about the problems that very specific stereotypes create.

Richard Babley's comment toward Bees struck me as dismissive and derailing (perhaps unintentionally so--one of the dangers of online conversation is how easy it is to miscommunicate tone and attitude), especially since there was so much substance to what she had to say. It warranted more than an, "Oh, come on!", which carries the implicit assumption that what she had to say was so obviously far off base that no reasonable person even needs to point out where they disagreed. Saying "because stereotypes!" struck me as false equivalence at best.

Sorry, I didn't want it to sound that way, it was a knee jerk reaction to being called (what I interpreted as) a cookie seeking ally, a concern troller, or laying a notallmen rabbit trails.  I found it slightly offensive and dismissive.

But I probably reacted too soon or misintercepted Bee's comment, the internet sometimes causes things like that to occur. 

So lets just leave it at that. 

[Father Beast]

If anyone's interested in reading another fantastic little essay that does a GREAT job highlighting how widespread scaly-llama narratives are, check out SFF author Maria Dahvana Headley's "A Short List of Movies You Will Never See". She makes one really great point about the problem of flat female characters: aside from being dehumanizing, they're boring. As is seeing the exact same Straight Cis White Dude starring as Our Hero again and again and again, with no variation and no change. One thing I particularly love about Podcastle is what a great variety of protagonists we hear from week to week. It's refreshing, fun, and not boring. Addressing these problems means a better selection of stories for all of us, and better entertainment.

I would like to see the "Fall Phenomena" one. not because it's all women, but because it sounds fascinating. The author of that article seems to think these movies will never get made. I'm not so sure. there is a thriving indie film market these days, and it's easier than ever to make a movie.

But that brings up an interesting question. Just why is the majority of media slanted. I think it's because of the simplest reason of all. Money. That, and fear. I think most studio execs are perfectly aware that women are more important than commonly portrayed. Their big fear is that most people believe the myth, and they daren't run against that because it would be "unbelievable".

By analogy, science fiction was once believed to be unpalatable to the general public. Most people have gotten past that, with a third or a quarter of current TV programming being science fiction, and out of the thirteen or fourteen billion dollar movies, only one is not science fiction of one kind or another.

[Bees]

I'm very excited to share that a friend linked me to Hurley's reading of her essay. He was excited about what she had to say and wanted to share it with me and others. He's since listened to more podcasts, and hopes to someday publish a story with via the Escape Artists' group of sites. It's wonderful to me that her writing proved an entry point to someone, and an inspiration to another (male) writer who has, self-admittedly, struggled with many of the same things Hurley (and others of us!) admits to.

Varda, I would watch WOAD a thousand times. And memorize every line. Frankly every one of those film ideas and casts is a gem. If only!

I'm reminded of Saladin Ahmed's tweet yesterday, about a conversation with his daughter:

4-year-old "Daddy, I know what I want to be."
Me "Yes?"
Her "A princess."
Me "You have to be born a princess."
Her "Then I'll be a knight."

Representation and equity in roles is so important, for this reason right here. I hope she always knows she can be a knight. I hope as time goes on she sees that possibility reflected with increasing frequency in the media available to her. I hope essays like this, and collections like WDSF and Long Hidden, stoke that fire and that it never goes out.

[Unblinking]

Interesting essay.  I don't think it was the life-changing experience for me that it was for some, but I can see how it would be.  I thought the llama metaphor was milked past dryness, and I thought that it could've explored a bit more beyond using ability and willingness to commit fatal violence as a measure of the sexes, but overall I thought it was plenty worthwhile.

Regarding the stories about being the first one to step forward to help and seeing others follow in your wake, had a couple related associations:
1.  One of the Union Dues stories on Escape Pod had a superhero at a Wal-Mart doing a publicity event, something happens that results in an injury (I don't remember exactly what) and the super-strategist is left with an injured person and a crowd of hundreds of gawkers.  He cries out for someone to help him and they all just keep gawking and it just gets worse.  Someone pointed out in the comment thread that the super-strategist's strategy was flawed--to deal with a crowd like that you pick a person, single them out of the crowd, say something like "Hey, you in the red sweater, get some ice.  You, tall dude, help me bandage the wound," etc.   Once that was pointed out, i couldn't unsee it, and a super-strategist should've known what a regular forumite knew about strategy of dealing with a crowd.
2.  Reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird where Atticus Finch breaks up the mob but speaking to the individual people in it, making them aware that they're individual people and not just pseudopods of the amoebic mob.  (yes that last part was not how Atticus referred to it)
3.  From my own personal history, I remember a time when I was maybe 8 maybe 9, out at the store with just my brother (who is 9 years older than me) to pick up some mundane thing on an errand in the winter.  Outside, in the parking lot, just ahead of us, someone slipped in the ice badly enough that they ended up flat on their back.  I remember being focused on continuing to walk--we didn't know the person, it wasn't our problem--it wasn't that I wished the person ill by any means.  I would have thought my brother would do the same--I'd never thought of him as a compassionate person (perhaps because he was enough older than me that there was never much in the way of emotional closeness between us), and wouldn't have thought he'd be compassionate to strangers.  But he stopped.  He asked the fallen person if they were all right, helped them up from the ground, made sure they were coherent enough to answer some simple questions, some other people who'd been with the person but walking ahead a little ways came back and were being very attentive and only then were we on our way.  Thinking back on it, even a short while later, I became less surprised at my brother's behavior and more surprised at my own.  Why did I want to keep on walking?  It didn't cost us anything to stop except a few seconds of our time and we were in no particular rush other than the usual winter behavior of trying to get somewhere warm.  If the person had been badly injured we could've called 911 from the store.  If I had been the one to fall I certainly wouldn't have wanted to just be left there to sort it out myself and under most circumstances I would've lived under the golden rule.  I don't know exactly why I wanted to keep walking.  The best way I can describe how I remember feeling is that I didn't consider that person a part of my personal narrative--that fall was a part of someone else's book and I had my own next chapter ahead of me.  Thinking back, that's a terribly cruel way to think, to leave other people to suffer on their own because they don't look like major characters in my narrative.  As with any memories, it's possible that it's incredibly flawed in a hundred ways, but for me seeing the way my brother behaved in that situation was a major ethical milestone for me, one which comes to mind pretty much whenever a similar situation happens when I see someone that might need help, and now I try to do as my brother had done and offer what help I can offer.  Even if it's not something potentially life threatening and it's something more like a ruptured grocery bag spilling stuff on the ground, to help that person try to gather it all back together again, or something.  It occurs to me that I've never told my brother that story--my guess is that for him there was no particular reason to attach permanent importance to that memory and it has probably gone away completely.

On another of the topics, gender roles:
1.   When I had to register for the draft for the first time, I found it incredibly unfair that women didn't also have to register for the draft.  I don't know what I would've done if I had been drafted.  I would be a terrible soldier.  I sucked at sports not because I was unathletic or unskilled but because I consistently overthought everything until the moment for action had passed.  Add to that that I have never intentionally caused physical harm to anyone in my life and I'm not sure I'd be able to, and I'd be a major liability on a battlefield.  I wanted to know why merely being a dude somehow made me more suited for being a soldier than a randomly chosen woman.
2.  Left unchecked, my wife is by far the more aggressive of the two of us, at least in private when we're being ourselves--our worst fights tend to be when one or both of those traits run rampant.  In public we both tend to go against our nature... perhaps because of societal training or possibly because of our chosen vocations.  She's a pharmacist which holds an element of customer service so being too aggressive is something to resist, while I'm an engineer where I am most valuable to my organization if I am more pushy because I will try to resist the organization making decisions that do not mesh with the realities of the engineering.
3.  In the company I work for, there is visible misogyny kind of taken for granted that seems to come from the highest parts of the organization.  Nothing that is so obvious that I would know how to report it as harassment, just kind of a general environment thing.  It's almost always women who clean up the kitchen when someone makes a mess, almost always women who plan the catering for company meetings, things like that.  This in an organization that's more than 80% men (I don't think that part is necessarily misogynistic on the company's part but due to us being an engineering company and there aren't a lot of engineers who are women).  This includes women in several departments in several different roles and positions.  I try to at least clean up the kitchen if I see something that needs cleaning, but anything that requires more time I feel like I'm jeopardizing my job if I'm not focusing on engineering because I always have tight deadlines to deal with.  Not really sure if/what I can do about that.
4.  Even if you had parents who didn't try to push you into particular gender roles, and even if you're aware of those gender roles, it doesn't always mean it's easy or possible to disregard the rules.  Some are so ingrained.  My parents were never pushy about those kinds of things.  My parents were divorced before any memory I have, but my dad was always part of the picture and he was far from a stereotypical man and he didn't try to make me a stereotype either, he was always very cool with whoever and whatever I wanted to be.  But despite that, crying is pretty much impossible for me.  I can probably count the number of times I've cried in the last five years on the fingers of one hand.  There have been times when I've needed to, to get an emotional release, but it just doesn't happen.  When I do cry it's almost always when I'm alone, and if I become aware that someone can see or hear me, it just shuts off like a closed tap--both the waterworks and the emotions that go along with them.  I am aware of this block, and I think it would only improve things if I could remove the block, but that self-awareness doesn't make the block go away.

But that brings up an interesting question. Just why is the majority of media slanted. I think it's because of the simplest reason of all. Money. That, and fear. I think most studio execs are perfectly aware that women are more important than commonly portrayed. Their big fear is that most people believe the myth, and they daren't run against that because it would be "unbelievable".

I don't think it's believability that Hollywood is concerned with necessarily, but conformity.  I think they and we recognize that many of the tried and true movie tropes don't represent reality, but there is so much momentum.  People buy lots of tickets for movies that are Hollywood formulas, which means that producers and movie studios fund more of them, then people buy lots of tickets.  Movie studios give us whatever content the most people vote for with their money, but people in general like ruts, they like the familiar, they have no motivation to shift momentum and Hollywood is a powerful echo of that. 

[Unblinking]

For an example, Seanan McGuire wrote a particularly outstanding military SF story featuring women in WDSF ("Each to Each"), which also managed to be critical of the war machine itself. I also thought Podcastle's "Feed Me the Bones of Our Saints" earlier this year was an outstanding story about women, war, and violence that strayed outside the box.

I love Seanan McGuire's work in general, but that was my least favorite of the podcasted WDSF stories.  It's not that the points it made were wrong, it's just that I felt its message went kind of superliminal.  Yes, yes, I get what you're saying, but ow, my head is ringing from you shouting directly into my ear from half an inch away.

[benjaminjb]

The author of that article seems to think these movies will never get made. I'm not so sure. there is a thriving indie film market these days, and it's easier than ever to make a movie.

You're right that, thanks to technological developments, it's easier to make a movie. But that doesn't contradict the main argument of the piece--which I think we could all agree with--that major studios are still leery about woman/women-centered movies. Which leads us to your next line, which I totally agree with:

I think it's because of the simplest reason of all. Money. That, and fear.

Setting aside for a moment the mostly-women/women-only movies that Headley posits here, I have some friends/acquaintances in entertainment, and I've heard many stories of people going in to the studio with big projects that feature women and being asked if they could just swap out the gender of the protagonist: "Does it have to be a woman?"

You're right that a lot of that isn't coming from an active dislike of women in media, but from fear that women-focused entertainment won't sell. (That is, either the studio person's boss won't like it or the audience won't go for it.)

But a lot of that fear is (or hopefully was) confirmation bias: "men won't go see a movie with a female lead" was such common wisdom that whenever a movie with a female lead flopped, people would say "see, just what I thought." And any time such a film succeeded, people would find some excuse for why this one film was an exception to the rule. "Oh, well, Sigourney Weaver is special."

I've put some of this into the past tense, because there's some evidence that this is changing; at the very least, Hollywood executives seem to realize that women go to movies too. ZOMG.

But that said, to return to Headley's list, I think it'll be a while still before we see a film that really focuses only on women in the way that today's films portray a world primarily of men. It's pretty easy to think of films that have mostly men with one or two women--that Jack Ryan film (Chris Pine, Kevin Costner, Keira Knightley, Kenneth Branagh); Ride Along (Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, John Leguizamo, Bruce McGill, Tika Sumpter, Laurence Fishburne); I, Frankenstein (Aaron Eckhart, Yvonne Strahovski, Bill Nighy, Miranda Otto, Jai Courtney, Kevin Grevioux, Socratis Otto), etc.--and that's just from January of 2014! How easy is it to find a film that has mostly women with one or two men? Or heck, how easy is it to find a film where the main characters are even split on gender?

Again, this could be changing, but it's still got a long way to go. (Maybe in Hollywood, it has a longer way to go for the reasons you pointed out: money and fear. That is, movies are so expensive now--not just to make, but to market--that it's a lot easier to say "no" to anything a little out of the ordinary. Of course, again, we've got the problem that "ordinary" is really made up of some really biased common wisdom.)

[Unblinking]

Another example of something that's been heavily man-skewed, but which I feel that has had been some movements in the right direction:  comedy. 

Saturday Night Live comes to mind in particular.  I remember thinking that Cheri Oteri just wasn't funny, but when I hear some recent interviews of what the SNL culture was at the time where the best written comedy was given to the male actors and the lesser stuff was given to the female actors, I think it was just a matter of the skits she ended up starring on were the ones where the writing was phoned in--the filler skits.  At the time I didn't really appreciate or think about the effect of writing on the quality of a show or of a role on a show, that's something I've only come to appreciate much later, but looking back I can see how that really hurt SNL's women.  I think that Cheri Oteri has talent for comedic delivery, they just gave her crap.

But I feel like since then there's been a gradual shift to trust women in comedic roles both at SNL and in the wider entertainment biz.  Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristin Wiig are some of the funniest people ever, bar none and their performances on SNL were some of the best bar none.  And all of them have gone on to bigger careers with lead roles.

Bridesmaids was amazing in this respect, a comedy movie with an ensemble mostly-female cast.  And although the movie was about a wedding and the trappings around it, the groom is almost never onscreen and I wouldn't even call him a major character--the movie is more about the stress of how an impending marriage can affect a long-time friendship, and about the stress of the wedding proceedings themselves. There is a romantic subplot, and maybe that wasn't needed, but given all of the strengths of the movie I can hardly fault it for that, but even that I thought felt more genuine than most romantic plots.

[Devoted135]

Slowly getting caught up after a few weeks of being behind in my podcast listening. I think it's very cool for PodCastle to branch out into essays, particularly ones that are as relevant as this one. This is an interesting thread to read through, and I'm glad to see how productive it has been.

One of the essay's points that I don't think has been particularly touched on here is the issue of confirmation bias. It's such an easy trap to fall into that oftentimes we don't even realize that it what is going on in our subconscious. As with the Sigourney Weaver example above, we notice things that confirm what we already thought and find ways to write off as an aberration things that don't fit into our worldview. I feel that this one is a lot harder to overthrow than more overt stereotypes/isms: it's hard to stop doing something you don't even realize you are doing!

[Father Beast]

But a lot of that fear is (or hopefully was) confirmation bias: "men won't go see a movie with a female lead" was such common wisdom that whenever a movie with a female lead flopped, people would say "see, just what I thought." And any time such a film succeeded, people would find some excuse for why this one film was an exception to the rule. "Oh, well, Sigourney Weaver is special."

Also, they credit a woman led cast as being the reason some shows do less well. My favorite example is Star Trek: Voyager. the ratings on it were not nearly as good as they were for Next Generation or Deep Space Nine. But I know why that was, it was because it was on the UPN network, which wasn't available in many locations, (I know, because I couldn't watch the last 2 seasons of Voyager on TV for that reason.) while the first two were syndicated and available everywhere. But some people still blame Janeway.

[Scattercat]

Janeway was about the only GOOD thing about the early seasons of Voyager.  :-P

I was so excited when it came on because I'd only ever seen the previous Treks in reruns and was stoked to have one that I was in on from the ground floor, as it were.  After they took out all the interesting plot bits of limited resources and after about the tenth encounter with a sentient godlike spacetime anomaly, I ended up giving up.  I always liked Janeway herself, though...

[Unblinking]

For those who are voting for the Hugos this year (final ballot deadline July 31st, next week):

This work itself is not on the ballot--I'm actually not sure there's a category that allows individual short nonfiction works to be published.  I guess it could be in Related Work category but those are usually longer works.

But the author Kameron Hurley is on the ballot for Fan Writer.  And the publisher Dribble of Ink is on the ballot for Fanzine.  This essay was published in May 2013, so it was within the eligibility period for your consideration for the award.

So, if you felt this essay was moving or at least worthwhile, you could consider voting for one or both Kameron Hurley and Dribble of Ink on your ballot in support of those who brought the essay to you.

[DKT]

Actually, the essay itself is a finalist for Best Related Work 

http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2014-hugo-awards/

[Unblinking]

Actually, the essay itself is a finalist for Best Related Work 

http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2014-hugo-awards/

Ah!  Can you tell that I haven't even bothered to read the titles in the categories I don't follow?    I was thinking related works were always longer

Anyway, can also vote for author and publisher if you feel so inclined...

[Unblinking]

I'm actually really glad you pointed that out, DKT, because I am voting for the Hugos and I didn't have that marked on the ballot.

[SpareInch]

I've just read through this thread a few days after listening to the essay, and I found something interesting, and more to the point, possibly relevant happening in my head.

Like someone else earlier in the conversation, it did come as a surprise to me that someone did NOT know that women have always fought. But then, this fact has repeatedly surprised me over the years, so I have sort of come to see that some people have suffered a woefully inadequate education.

Here in The UK, it is simply taken as read that women have been warriors. Women fought OPENLY (Not pretending to be men.) throughout WW2, in roles as varied as Spy, AAA Gunner, and even in one case as the commander of a Maquis Brigade.

And here is where the funny thing happened in my head...

It dawned on me that some of the things people might think they know better than the inaccurate stereotype, are themselves inaccurate stereotypes.

Ever heard of The Air Transport Auxiliary?

Their role was to take on air transport jobs in Britain which didn't actually require military pilots, and because one of those jobs was to deliver combat aircraft to operational airfields, a myth has grown up of an ATA made up of female pilots who regularly got mixed up in combat.

Yeah?

Most ATA pilots were actually men, and very few of them ever got mixed up in combat, though of course it was a risk.

And who was the first identifiable British military leader?

Boudicca, who led a Brythonic army in AD60 or 61?

What about Caraticus in AD43? Or Cassivellaunus a century earlier?

What I'm trying to say is that it is important to remember the role women have played in all areas of human endeavour, but it is equally important not to over glamourise that role and attribute the qualities of fact to a whole new fiction, just because it contradicts the old fiction.

Sounds obvious, but I thought it worth saying.