Pretty disambiguous here

[aldersprig]

It comes up once in a while - most recently, in a conversation with the_vulture in haikujaguar's awesome party...

... I love playing with gender roles and gender ambiguity. I've had trans friends and other friends for whom gender could change in the middle of a sentence. My dad & mom both had hair halfway to their waists when they were married, my husband does the cooking and over half the cleaning. To quote my dad on power tools and gender: "gender, hell. Your mother has her own chainsaw."

But I have internalized some really really strong gender distinctions (This also came up recently: my best friend and I in high school, honor roll, capable, smart girls, both wanted to be housewives). I get called on them sometimes in Addergoole, which isn't really helped by my co-writer, who, if anything, has sharper and more "traditional" gender distinctions than I do.

This, to put it mildly, confuses the hell out of me.

Comments

[anke]

Somehow the fact that the first fiction link in the summary post in which I found the link to this entry is a story about a girl owned by a guy seems topical. (Mind, that's pretty much the first I've tried to read of yours, so I don't know if that's typical, too. I'm kinda overwhelmed with stuff I could/should read...)

I know I've caught myself doing stuff like making everyone who ran their own business male in the first draft. It's the stuff you assume without ever thinking about it that you get caught in.

[aldersprig]

Somehow the fact that the first fiction link in the summary post in which I found the link to this entry is a story about a girl owned by a guy seems topical

Hee, there is that, although I have about an equal amount of stories where guys are owned by girls.

I think part of the problem is... I don't see anything wrong with strong, protective men and/or motherly, sweet woman, to name two stereotypes I've gotten called on. AS long as ALL of them aren't that way.

[anke]

Yes, agreed.

... personally, the end of Mulan and the after-the-end scene of the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie irritated me to no end because I'm really tired of female characters being REQUIRED to hook up with someone. (Maybe partly because of the placement in the story - "this is your reward for everything, because getting a guy must be the crown of your ambitions, naturally".)
So I guess I can sympathise with someone being so sick of a certain character type they can't stand it at all, though if in the same story or setting there are counter-examples, it'd seem like an over-reaction.

[aldersprig]

Hee... There was a year where every movie I watched had the woman dying! (Wolverine fighting Vampires, that year)...

I try to have a wide variety of roles and people in my stories, but i do default to a certain Very Capable as my Real Man and Real Woman. (Real woman change their own damn tires. :-)