Misogynistic characters vs misogynistic writing

I’ve talked about this with a number of women who write over the past few years, as we have been exposed to stories where misogyny is featured and stories where the narrative itself – and often the writer – is actually misogynistic.

Conflating those two things is dangerous. One is a way of exploring and confronting realities of life in ways that are intentional. The other is often unconscious and if it’s not, is presented in a way that says, “This is normal,” rather than in a way that says, “This is normal but shouldn’t be.”

So what does that even mean? Isn’t any story that spotlights misogyny or a misogynistic character inherently misogynistic writing?

No. Intention and presentation matter.

This is where I’m going to bust out my credentials. I have two literature degrees with a focus in gender studies. I’ve done a lot of beta reading and participated in a lot of critique groups and seminars, as well as just being a fairly active reader in general, so I’ve seen plenty of examples of both.

Sometimes you can tell the difference in the narrative spaces between the misogynistic character being on-stage and in scene. If the misogyny is pervasive and persists even when you’re not in the POV or internal dialogue of the misogynistic character, you might have misogynistic writing.

As yourself: What language is used to describe characters? Who has agency and who didn’t? What motives are assigned to their actions? Who are the heroes and who are the villains? Who are the victims? Who has a voice and who doesn’t? Is there nuance in the story in how different characters view and interact with women? Are women confined to certain roles and stripped of autonomy? Are there women who are three dimensional characters who are portrayed as whole people who have desires, motives and roles that aren’t solely tied to men?

Misogynistic writing I’ve seen tends to have similar hallmarks:

Objectification of women. This is writing where women are objects of gaze or sexual objects, and is ridiculously common. If a writer tends to see women as objects, that comes out in their writing. There are so many published, well-known stories where the women are solely or primarily there to be gazed at, lusted after, commented on, used, or whose primary role is to serve the men in the story in some way. In my opinion, infantilization of women characters goes hand in hand with this.

The objectifying writer will spend a lot of time describing the appearance of a girl or woman, and often does so in overtly or covertly sexual language. Women can’t escape being reduced to not just their bodies, but parts of their bodies. Lips, breasts, legs, and an assessment by the narrative voice – sometimes overt, sometimes covert – of how fuckable she is. Girls get the Lolita treatment and are described in ways that are sexualized to the point where they sound more like a femme fatale in training rather than a child. By contrast, men are not defined or described solely or primarily in terms of their bodies, but rather by their actions, character, or desires. Boys are rarely, if ever, sexualized.

A great example of this was from a young man whose story draft I read who spent a lot of time describing what every single woman in the story looked like – even ones that weren’t part of the story, like a scene where two main characters are at a restaurant. He devoted two long paragraphs to describing the waitress’s body. I expected that the waitress was about to enter the story in some way. She didn’t. She was simply a woman in a scene who never should have been spotlighted, but the writer interrupted his story to describe her legs and breasts in detail because that’s where his mind goes whenever even a fictional woman walks into his line of sight.

His objectification of women became even more obvious in his treatment of the main characters. There were two, a woman and a man. He constantly described the woman – hair, clothes, breasts, how she felt about her breasts, her anxiety over what other people thought of her breasts, etc. Every scene described her outfit and how she styled her hair. She was constantly looking at and thinking about other women’s breasts, even though in the story she was definitely straight. He never once described any aspect of the man’s appearance except to give the reader his age, nor did the man ever think about his own appearance or other men’s appearances. He did, however, think a lot about how the women around him looked.

I see variations of this too often in unpublished and published works alike, and what it tells me is that some men objectify women to such an extent that they’re not conscious of it, and even project that objectification into the internal dialogue of the women in their stories. What’s chilling, as a woman, is seeing how pervasive that objectification becomes. It can happen in layers, where the narrative voice, the woman herself, and the men around her all describe or focus on her appearance and fuckability, while men are described by their actions or character.

Reinforcement of gender stereotypes. Are the women always in distress, being hurt or killed or needing to be rescued? Are the men always the heroes, the providers, the strong ones? Are the women seen doing a lot of emotional labor, while the men are lazy good-for-nothings? Are the men intellectual and calm while the women are overly emotional and vain? Is everything chaotic until a man shows up and sorts it out? Did the woman trying to solve a mystery need a man to explain some pivotal clue to her? Was the woman ready to quit until a man gave her a pep talk? Gender stereotypes can come out in obvious and subtle ways, and if not challenged in any way by the plot or the overarching narrative, then it has the effect of normalizing misogyny. Challenging them in some way, even if all you do is show their negative impacts on your characters, or give characters moments of agency and awareness, is a way of making sure you’re not simply passively reinforcing them.

Little things matter in storytelling. Like a story I read in which every time a woman talked to her husband, she was doing a chore while he was just sitting there. At no point is that challenged by the narrative, so all it did was reinforce the unequal division of labor and normalize the idea that it’s totally fine for a man to just sit around while a woman handles all the housework.

Normalization of violence against women. This one drives me crazy and is also super prevalent in film. One of the inciting incidents I loathe in any story is a man rising to action because a woman in his life is raped or murdered. That’s a more extreme example, but there are other ways that violence becomes normalized. Relying too heavily on violence against women, not allowing women any agency or giving them a POV in the story, and overuse of violence as a backstory for women are all ways that this gets normalized.

Does that mean you have to avoid violence against women in stories? No, and you shouldn’t, because it’s a reality of women’s lives. What you should avoid is creating women characters who are two dimensional and exist in the story only to get beat up in some way without having any agency. That doesn’t mean they have to prevail, or get justice, or have happy ending – they just can’t have things only happen to them, without driving the story forward on their own in some way. They need to make decisions, even if they’re the wrong decisions. They need to act, even if the consequences are negative.

Essentially, don’t have women just be inciting incidents, punching bags and helpless victims. Give them some agency, even if they ultimately don’t get what they want.

Lack of agency for woman characters. If every woman in your story is being led or victimized by men, and don’t or rarely act or make decisions for themselves, you have an agency problem. Agency is the ability to make decisions and take actions on one’s own. You don’t have to have a story where a woman is successful to allow her to have agency – the story can still have a tragic ending, but women need to be doing things in the story.

One example I’ve seen of women lacking agency in a story was a woman who wouldn’t act until she knew what the man was doing or thinking. Another is how a woman who had a strong sense of purpose was immediately deterred when she met a man she liked, and the man takes over all the action, including solving a mystery that the woman had been working on up until that point and just hands her the answer – which she isn’t interested in anymore because she just wants to focus on him. And yet another was an entire scene I read once where a young man monologues at a young woman, who gazes at him adoringly and assures him that she’s not bored with his rambling backstory. (Unfortunately, those of us reading it were.)

It can be challenging to write a story where women have agency in oppressive environments, but not impossible. A good example of women who are slaves in a highly violent and misogynistic society but still demonstrate agency within a very restrictive world is a book called The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin – a decidedly male author. Is the agency they exercise always successful in that does it achieve what they want it to? No, not always. But when bad things do happen, you’re not left feeling like the women were merely reacting or being stepped on – they’re as proactive as their situation allows. You can give characters agency in even the worst of situations.

Use of derogatory language. This one is hard because it’s a bit more of a gray area. Derogatory language can also be subtle – like when a writer describes women in childlike ways, or likens her to a little girl, or writes about young girls in ways that focus on womanhood or burgeoning sexuality instead of letting them be children. It can also be quite overt in describing women in a variety of negative ways. This is one in which context matters. Does the narrative challenge that language in any way, or challenge the character who uses that language? How do the women behave in the story – how are the characterized? Are they actually well-rounded, realistic, fully human characters who drive the story forward in their own right? In that case, it’s probably fine to have a foil who speaks about them in a derogatory way, because the women are being portrayed as people who have worth within the narrative. However, if you have women who are two-dimensional, passive, reactive, victims, nags, or any other reductive stereotype and they never develop beyond that, then you have a problematic narrative.

Bonus trope I hate: The man who thinks women are gold diggers who are using him for his money and she’s painted as a villain but he very obviously uses women for sex and/or as a status symbol and no one challenges that.

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I’ve seen pushback in recent years from women who are just tired of misogynistic writing in books and screenplays. Many of us are able to tolerate a story that explores misogyny in some way, if it’s done with intention and provokes some level of thought or discussion.

Where it gets infuriating is when the narrative itself is misogynistic – when women’s pain and deaths are used as a crutch to lift up men’s stories, or when our pain and oppression is pervasive in the narrative due to misogynistic beliefs, aesthetics, and worldviews that are so normal that they’re accepted, or at least tolerated.

How does one avoid creating misogynistic writing?

Remember that women are not plot devices to inspire men to do things. They’re not objects to be gazed on, used, won, or lost, nor are they two-dimensional beings that exist to a embody a particular idea, such as sex or domesticity or submission or victimization. Girls are not women and don’t become women any faster than boys become men – they’re simply forced to tangle with adult attitudes and desires at a much younger age and in a much different way than boys are. Most importantly, women are people – we have intelligence, thoughts, dreams, aspirations, and challenges. We are capable of making independent decisions and have no less of an instinct to fight back and survive than a man does.

Most important to remember when you’re a non-woman writing women is that we are not our bodies. We are so much more than that. If all else fails, just practice describing women in ways that don’t reference their body.

If you find that difficult, you need to do some soul searching.