Women and men

[mmcirvin]

chicken_cem mentioned a (not always applicable) difference between female and male science-fiction writers with regard to characterization. In that same Women of Wonder appendix, Alice "James Tiptree, Jr." Sheldon said she thought that "by their sins shall ye know them, which is to say that there are separate styles of bad writing." She said (crediting the idea to Rebecca West) that when their writing goes bad, men tend to spiral into grandiose speculation with cardboard characters, and women tend to write obsessive, over-internalized stories about trivialities. The good writers can walk the line and transcend the traps characteristic of their sex (note that Robert Silverberg insisted that Tiptree was a man). Of course it's a sweeping generalization, but I've seen enough to find it an interesting idea.

Comments

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Good point. I remember that appendix now. The whole thing with Silverberg and a few others insisting and insisting that she was really a man just cracks me up. I'm glad the phrase "tend to" is in there, because itn nicely sidesteps the sweeping generalization thing.

Of course if you read a lot of Ursula LeGuin, you start to wonder if the woman/man/both/other/sometimes-one-or-the-other thing just points out how fundamentally artificial and culturally induced some of these differences are.