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Girl on girl action: A rant
Jun. 1st, 2011 11:46 pmRecently I read a post by a writer of my acquaintance which said that she is reluctant to write books--in this context urban or contemporary fantasy--with female leads, for fear of not being taken seriously, or being tarred with the brush of Romance.
Reader, this makes me angry. I'm talking flames on the side of my face angry. And not even so much angry at the writer in question, who I like and whose work I enjoy, but at the fact that this is probably a valid concern on her part.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nojojojo's epic fantasy books--and the books of many other female authors--have been called "Romance"*, presumably in a dismissive way, and presumably because a) the author is a woman, b) the main character is a woman, and c) someone has sex somewhere in the book. I'm guessing the only reason I haven't heard this said about The Necromancer Chronicles is because I don't have Google alerts turned on. To this fear and to the sexist fuckwits who engender it, I have only this to say:
Fuck. That. Noise.
My books are full of women. Fighters, spies, witches, academics, queens, starving artists, acrobats, whatever. They're cis, trans, lesbian, straight, bi, or asexual. They may have relationships or not, they many fall in love, fall out of love, seduce, betray, sacrifice, save the world, destroy the world, or not. Some of them may even end up happy, for a while. (But everyone dies alone.) Which is not to say that my male characters won't also do all those things, but the gender or sex of my protagonist has no fucking bearing whatsoever on the merit of my books.
My job is not to cater to sexist twits. My job is not to try to change their minds. My only job is to write the best book I'm capable of at any given moment, and by Cod the best book I can write will have women in it.
Some of them even have back tattoos.
*My deep and abiding hate-on for genre writers slagging on other genres is a rant for another day.
Reader, this makes me angry. I'm talking flames on the side of my face angry. And not even so much angry at the writer in question, who I like and whose work I enjoy, but at the fact that this is probably a valid concern on her part.
nojojojo's epic fantasy books--and the books of many other female authors--have been called "Romance"*, presumably in a dismissive way, and presumably because a) the author is a woman, b) the main character is a woman, and c) someone has sex somewhere in the book. I'm guessing the only reason I haven't heard this said about The Necromancer Chronicles is because I don't have Google alerts turned on. To this fear and to the sexist fuckwits who engender it, I have only this to say:Fuck. That. Noise.
My books are full of women. Fighters, spies, witches, academics, queens, starving artists, acrobats, whatever. They're cis, trans, lesbian, straight, bi, or asexual. They may have relationships or not, they many fall in love, fall out of love, seduce, betray, sacrifice, save the world, destroy the world, or not. Some of them may even end up happy, for a while. (But everyone dies alone.) Which is not to say that my male characters won't also do all those things, but the gender or sex of my protagonist has no fucking bearing whatsoever on the merit of my books.
My job is not to cater to sexist twits. My job is not to try to change their minds. My only job is to write the best book I'm capable of at any given moment, and by Cod the best book I can write will have women in it.
Some of them even have back tattoos.
*My deep and abiding hate-on for genre writers slagging on other genres is a rant for another day.
