Whores and B*tches

[Rndmrunner]

So I am sure i will get myself into trouble here but i wanted to air a topic that has been on my mind.

 

I have noticed quite a few stories in gay male genre that have female antagonists who start to be labelled "whores and bitches". They often are former or hopeful girlfriends of men who come out. Typically these characters react badly and then seek some revenge on the boys for rebuffing them thus setting up major conflicts for the story. I have come across quite a few stories that are like this. For myself it is sometimes a trigger to stop following a story.

 

My point here is not about Political correctness but rather that these characters are often portrayed very one dimensionally which then makes its OK to other characters start referring to them or calling them F***ing B**ches or whores, often to their faces and in front of others as scenes intensify.

 

Males characters who are evil do not get the same treatment for the most part. I guess what i find particularly disturbing is that teen characters do this the most and sometimes adults and parental figures join in.  It bothers me on a couple of levels, firstly that young writers see this portrayal as realistic and dramatic and secondly this leads in my opinion to poorer writing as the stories retreat into simple stereotypes and cardboard characters. In the end i find both the characters' actions and the subsequent reactions troubling. However, i think the story lines are valid and often portray real issues. 

 

Any thoughts??

 

Maybe i should just pen a story called "Mean Girls" and explore it more deeply myself.

[Mann Ramblings]

I think you should write the story regardless.

 

I get what you're saying about the slurs. They are an easy thing to slide into because let's be honest, when arguing it's not unrealistic to use words that hurt as much as possible and calling a woman a bitch or whore is only trumped by the C-word.

 

Female antagonists that are jilted by men coming out is a trope that can easily be cliche. I would love to see more stories where that is not the motivation and see a more inventive origin of hostility.

[Kitt]

On the other side of the same coin - I tend to find that calling women who are loving and supportive of gay men in their lives "Fag Hags" to be demeaning. Why on earth would someone want to put down the good people in their lives?

[Mann Ramblings]

On the other side of the same coin - I tend to find that calling women who are loving and supportive of gay men in their lives "Fag Hags" to be demeaning. Why on earth would someone want to put down the good people in their lives?

 

I'm in total agreement with you Kitt. I hate that term.

[Celethiel]

why do you think they do kitt

 

On the other side of the same coin - I tend to find that calling women who are loving and supportive of gay men in their lives "Fag Hags" to be demeaning. Why on earth would someone want to put down the good people in their lives?

[Thorn Wilde]

On the other side of the same coin - I tend to find that calling women who are loving and supportive of gay men in their lives "Fag Hags" to be demeaning. Why on earth would someone want to put down the good people in their lives?

 

I think this can be a cultural thing... In certain cultures, perhaps particularly in Europe, using negative words about people close to you is sometimes used as a term of endearment. I often call some of my closest friends 'bitch', for instance. Hell, my friend Leo and I express affection for one another by hitting each other and giving each other the finger... It's not about putting people down. It's more a matter of being so close to someone that no amount of insult can tear you apart. Maybe I'm romanticising, but I think the term fag hag can easily be used in the same way.

 

I kind of deal with both these issues in Nemesis 2, actually. Dave's new friend Mandira tells him off for referring to certain types of girls as bitches. Dave is not above calling Mandira his fag hag very occasionally, and she takes it as a compliment, but he is furious when he finds that other people have been referring to her as that. In the end, Mandira is not above calling the girls who have been bullying her over her friendship with Dave bitches either. But then, when you're 16-17 years old, there are limits to your idealism and forgiveness. And sometimes, as writers, we must sacrifice some of our own ideals for the sake of realism.

[Zombie]

Thorn's right. This has a fancy name: "linguistic re-appropriation". So the performance artist Penny Arcade was able to sell her most popular show Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! on the basis of the title alone. Same with Yankee - coined by the British as a derogatory term it's been "re-appropriated" by Americans as in the song Yankee Doodle Dandy. Same with the all the LGBT words which were used against us, we've now reclaimed. Same with people of African origin who are happy to use the N-word amongst themselves. But there is a "rule" that people outside these social groups may NOT use them. This is the thing about language that makes it so complex and interesting - and challenging for those learning the language - it's not just the words themselves, it's also about context and intent.

 

 

 

 

 

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Edited February 12, 2014 by Zombie

[rustle]

I honestly like to see a broader variety of characters across the board - gay, straight, male, female, trans, you name it, with all types of character traits, and relationships. It better reflects real life in today's society in most places.

 

Who among us interacts with only one type of person?

 

It's easy to limit ourselves, and not just to character cliches. One POV I can't say I've seen is coming out as witnessed by a straight person, like a friend or parent. Anybody know of such? Anybody want to try it?

Edited February 12, 2014 by rustle

[crazyfish]

Not sure.

 

On one hand, there's realism ... the goto thing to do if you want to insult a woman is to call in account her sexual purity or suggests that she's emotionally unstable. 

 

The goto thing to do when you want to insult a guy is to  insult his masculinity or call him an asshole.   I suppose calling a guy an asshole isn't as bad as calling a woman a bitch. We can debate that ..

 

"Bitches and whores" don't bother me much. But I get pissed off by piss-poor characterization. 

 

The problem is dictated by the slavish adherence to the rule of creating likable MC's.  Generally readers don't consider a cheating MC likable or sympathetic  A few would tolerate it if the MC was sympathetic, and so many writers default to making the partner "evil" so that the MC can have a sympathetic reason to cheat. Or they want the MC break up with their partner, but they can't make the MC look like the aggressor, so they make partner evil so that breakup is justified. It's like what they say in romance fiction, when a wife cheats, it's because her husband was horrid, but when a husband cheats, it's because, well, evil natural impulses....

 

this sort of attitude bleeds into the corny gay stories.  You want your reader to cheer the MC becoming gloriously queer after eons of repression with the chubby girlfriend.  How do you do that and not make the reader feel sorry for the chubby girlfriend with bulimia? How are you going deal with the moral and queasy dimensions of an MC "finding himself" when his wife is barefoot and pregnant at home?  Easy, make her a lying two-timing bitch. 

 

I wouldn't tell  authors to stop using "Bitches and whores" to insult their jilted female characters, I'd them instead to go read Madame Bovary or Anna Kareninna.  Hell, for a gay and short version, go read Giovanni's room.  if you understand your MC well enough, you shouldn't have to resort to cheap tricks to justify the emotional violence they inflict on others.

[Graeme]

I see this from a different perspective: stereotyping.

 

The authors seem to be taking a simplistic stereotyping to the female characters  and to the male characters reacting to the female characters. Realistically, not female becomes the jealous revenger seeker, and not every male views the females as "whores and b*tches".

 

The W&B character is a stereotype, and the author is being lazy with sticking to that stereotype. The male characters who call the females W&B are also being stereotypes.

 

Having said that, I have a couple of male characters in my current novel who (in a future chapter) call a female character a b*tch (not a W&B ), but that's as a one-off event and they supply the justification for that statement at the time. I find that to be realistic given the context, but it's not a core part of the plot and the male characters in question simply move on. Of course, I'm biased, because I'm the author...

Edited February 13, 2014 by Graeme

[joann414]

What I wonder is how a girl or woman becomes a whore or bitch if the man she thought she loved is gay.  I'd call her disillusioned, and I think very few actually want revenge unless the relationship she has with the gay male is marriage.  Then, I can understand the revenge, still not the whore.  As for bitch, I think at some point, we all can claim that title, and i don't just mean women          If I'm called a bitch at any time, i probably deserve it.  As for the whole my gay boyfriend dumped me for another gay.  Bitch, maybe until she comes to terms with it.  Whore?  Why?  Just my thoughts.

[Graeme]

Even with marriage, not all women want revenge because they learn their husband is gay. From my understanding, they're more likely to want revenge if their husband has been cheating on them, and if it's with another guy there's a sense of betrayal and shock that may amplify it, but the fact that their husband is gay is, generally, not enough to generate feelings of revenge.

 

I also have a problem with people who don't take responsibility for their actions. If a guy cheats on a girl, and then breaks up with her because he prefers his new lover, doesn't she have a right to be upset? That shouldn't make her a b*tch. If she then finds someone new to comfort her while she's upset, that doesn't make her a whore, either.

 

However, the topic at hand isn't whether the W&B phrase is realistic. The topic is why does it appear in so many stories, and is this a good thing?

 

I have to agree that it's not good. It's being lazy. I have no problem with having a female character who is a b*tch and a whore... but I have a problem with a female character who became that because a male character came out. That's so unrealistic to me it's not funny. If this were about one story, I could accept that because these things do happen from time to time, but not a lot of stories because it doesn't happen that much.

 

I have the same problem with fatal car accidents and light plane crashes, but that's another story

Edited February 13, 2014 by Graeme

[W_L]

I like strong women characters, but I also realize that is not a gay concept for plots. Gay readers gravitate towards hot steamy guys, evil women that supress their sexuality, and over religious zealots that hunt them in the shadows. (Shame a lot of readers and writers are "genre locked")

[Trebs]

Graeme beat me to it, but I agree, a lot of it is just laziness on the part of the author.  Now, not every character in a story can be fully fleshed out - we're looking for stories, not encyclopedias.  But to relegate a major character (regardless of gender) to a stereotype speaks to ... well - lol, laziness.

[Cia]

It's rare to find a woman who is 'normalized' in gay fiction. Either they're great moms, or bad moms, or good, loving friends who adore their gay besties or they're the biggest traitor or bitch around. Breaking stereotypes is hard though it can be done. My bigger pet peeve in a lot of gay stories, especially high school ones, is where ALL the guys end up being gay. Unless there's a damn good explanation, that just doesn't make sense! Oh, and friends insulting each other? I kinda get it... I've done that with online friends, but the last person who called my bff a name got a giant dent in the side of his precious car, compliments of me losing my temper. LOL I couldn't imagine insulting her, but that might be because she's someone who wouldn't like that.

[Thorn Wilde]

Very much agree with regards to the 'all the guys are gay!' trope, Cia. Though sometimes it can be hard if you want to create some romantic conflict, not to at least make the inner circle a little extra gay... I stopped myself before it went too far in Nemesis. Aside from my main guys, there's one guy who's bi and one who's gay and they're in a relationship with each other.

[Rndmrunner]

I agree Cia, we fall back into easy comfortable pigeon holes be it having all lead characters of one gender, stereotypes about sexuality and certainly stock characters particularly for female characters in gay fiction. On GA it starts to stand out partly because there are outstanding examples of really creative fiction that simply tell powerful and nuanced tales. Then it becomes particularly noticeable when good writers fall back on easy if tired solutions. The online world is changing things too and not for the better. In life if you insult a friend or frenemy face to face, there are real consequences because you continue to see this person, online people show less restraint because they have more distance. But as a lengthening lists of suicides show, there are still very real consequences sometimes.

[C J]

If you follow a crowd, you follow their customs.  There are too many crowds, and not enough individuals.

[Stellar]

Clichés aren't so interesting to me as story telling devices, and the placement of women into 'villainous divider' or the 'perfect mom' role Cia described seems disturbingly commonplace. It's nice to see women portrayed any other way at all, as there is a massive variety of potential for rich character depiction. In Hidden Sunlight my most prominent female character was the smartest in the book and very scientifically minded, while in the sequel Earth has a very shrewd female politician as head-of-government. Breaking stereotypes is always a good thing.