A meditation on the strong female character

My Facebook feed has been circulating this article from Sophia McDougall recently: "" A headline guaranteed to catch the eye.



See, Ms. McDougall doesn't hate female characters. She hates that there's a type called the Strong Female Character, who's usually a kung-fu-expert asskicker who beats the crap out of men yet winds up having to be rescued. She hates that people feel the need to tack on 'strong':


The obvious thing to say here is that this is because [a male character is] assumed to be "strong" by default. Part of the patronising promise of the Strong Female Character is that she's anomalous. "Don't worry!" that puff piece or interview is saying when it boasts the hero's love interest is an SFC. "Of course, normal women are weak and boring and can't do anything worthwhile. But this one is different. She is strong! See, she roundhouses people in the face." Sometimes the phrase "not your typical damsel in distress" will be used, as if the writing of pop culture heroines had not moved on even slightly since Disney's Snow White and as if a goodly percentage of SFCs did not end up, in fact, . This is a genuine problem, and one that's worth considering. Be sure to read the whole post.



As for me, well, it got me thinking.



First, I don't think of myself a feminist. I believe in plain racial and gender equality across the board, and if people are going to be jackasses on the basis of someone else's physical characteristics, then they can go piss up a rope. Nobody gets any special breaks or special handicaps based on how they were born. To me, that's how the world should be.



In my mind, a Strong Female Character should be a well-rounded character who happens to be female. A Strong Male Character, ditto. Give me some dimensions, for God's sake!



Let me give a quick personal example. A certain female character of mine tends toward the timid and pacifying in her personal life, because she hates conflict: after an early marriage that ended in divorce and a near-fatal attack by a magical monster, she doesn't like surprises. However, she has a moral core that pushes her to step up and help against said magical monsters, even though it leaves her spooked and generally unhappy. She was raised to be helpful and efficient, and in a way, she's the sort of den mother of her group.



I'm pretty happy with her, and enjoy writing scenes from her point of view. But sometimes I'll be looking and her and thinking "Am I making her too sensitive? Shouldn't a good female character be tougher, more self-assertive? Especially in urban fantasy? If she's the hero, shouldn't she set a positive example?"



No. Not necessarily. I may fail at personally writing her, but that means I need to put in more effort, not scrap her.



All characters are different, just like all people are. I honestly think that female characters need to be as multifaceted as male characters, right down to the negative qualities. We need to allow our female characters to sometimes be cowardly, passive-aggressive, eccentric, nervous, bitchy, angry, crazy, ugly, or just genuinely wrong about something. If we're reluctant to give a woman a trait that might make her look bad, then we're just working the Mary Sue from another angle.



The Strong Female Character is as stifling a role as the Damsel in Distress, and writing a Non-Strong Female Character doesn't mean you're a misogynist. It just means that you think of women as people, and people are flawed.
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