Quote:
Originally Posted by Geralt
Is the author of the article an Sf-F writer? No? Then why should her opinion/critique matter to any writer? Or any commonly accepted norm?
I'm not trying to be obtuse on purpose but why should an author succumb to writing something along the lines of PC if they alone didnt come to that conclusion?
The only valid answer to this is to make money by pleasing the SJ demands. I find that understandable and reprehensible at the same time.
Fantasy and sci-fi writers, good ones at least in my opinion are first and foremost there to tell a great frickin' story. That's no.1.
Number 2, if they have enough talent, they'll use it to shake things up, question the norm, or make a political statement, without, and this is important, ruining the story.
They are not there to correct social injustices or pander to SJ on twitter.
They write because they have things bottled up inside them that need to come out.
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Because it can result in a better story, mainly better characters. As I said, demanding that authors should describe a "better world" is stupid. But just because some people misuse a concept (gender describes social behaviour. You can look at books and sometimes see, how gender was constructed at the time, the book was written.) doesn't mean the concept has no merit. At least it helps to avoid clichés. Things like the test in the article are just useless. And confusing character views with authors views is stupid too.
But I do think, it makes a book better, if an author at least thinks about this. What you descibed in your other post is exactly, what gender tries to show: that there are social behaviors in cultures, that make arbitrary distinctions between genders. It is important to be conscious about the arbitrary nature of that. Because normally we aren't. It is just like it is, and we just repeat it in literature.
Another aspect of it is of course, looking if books incorporate some of the findings. This is were it becomes difficult and often ideological. Sometimes there are good reasons, why a book focuses on characters of one gender and of course books can lack in one compartment but excell in others. One observation is that often books show a narrow view on society. Misrepresenting certain genders. For example never having gay characters, even if there must be some. Or having women only as objects. Not that such a book couldn't be good.
Of course there is a social movement, that often goes to far, but at its core it has merit in my opinion.