Belated cleaning out of the email and found all your post notifications has gone to spam. On the other hand, I'm now binge-reading your stack, so that's fun.
I want to give this article 1000 likes! You hit it out of the park with this one! Yes! As a woman, I want strong female characters, but that doesn't mean I want them replacing the men or being better than men or worse, making all the men look stupid and idiotic in comparison.
I want the complimentary stories like you mentioned, the stories where the woman has strengths that may not match the man physically, but that fit where he's weak and so that together, they make a team that can be reckoned with.
I want to see the stories about what's going on with those women at home on the frontier or in the war zone while their husbands and older sons are gone, the women who are protecting their children, hunting for meat on the table, working the garden and doing what needs to be done to keep her family together. The pioneer women who supported their husbands and encouraged them to take the daring chance for a new life and who walked by their sides across that prairie, sometimes with a baby on the hip, and then worked hard beside him to build that new home in the Oregon wilderness. The native American women who kept the camp together or marched beside their husbands following the game that kept the band alive and fed.
Not to mention the women who wielded power from behind the thrown because of the influence mothers have over their sons and wives over their husbands. For pete's sake - how many wars have been started in history because a woman pushed the men to fight? Women do not have to be physically strong to be strong!
And I agree so much that there isn't anything wrong with letting your female characters need to be saved once in a while. As you said - women are not men and there are simply times where a woman cannot compete with a man. Besides, what on earth is wrong with allowing men to follow their own instincts and use the gifts they've been given to protect and to provide for their families? A man defending his woman, a man saving his woman, is a man who is fighting to save something he cherishes and considers precious enough to worth risking his life to protect or win. Who wouldn't want to be seen as that special to another person?
So I'm going to toast my morning coffee to the Scarlett O'hara's, the Victoria Barkley's, Miss Kitties, the Katherine McClintock's, the Eula's, the Rose Sayer's, the Anne Shirley's, the Honor Harringtons, the Eowyn's and real Galadriel's (from the books, not the tv show) of this world!
One of my present reads (Rereads, I read it in the early sixties but today, a different perspective, enjoyable.); MASTERS OF SPACE, By EDWARD E. SMITH & E. EVERETT EVANS (1961) wherein the women end up just a strong as men, destroy together the evil doers and live happily ever after for thousands of years. Dated, debated, Hugo winner, fun.
Much of the strength of the every day everywhere la femme goes unnoticed, understated. More than a few no neck constructions stiffs that worked for me over the years, for example, turned their paychecks over to there wives who then signed their husbands names thereon and controlled all the family's finances. While Ben Franklin was off in England and Washington was at Valley ̶ ̶F̶o̶u̶r̶i̶e̶r̶ ̶ Forge (Yep damn autocorrect got me too!) it was Debbie and Martha that kept the home fires burning, no small feat!
Belated cleaning out of the email and found all your post notifications has gone to spam. On the other hand, I'm now binge-reading your stack, so that's fun.
Great essay!
I want to give this article 1000 likes! You hit it out of the park with this one! Yes! As a woman, I want strong female characters, but that doesn't mean I want them replacing the men or being better than men or worse, making all the men look stupid and idiotic in comparison.
I want the complimentary stories like you mentioned, the stories where the woman has strengths that may not match the man physically, but that fit where he's weak and so that together, they make a team that can be reckoned with.
I want to see the stories about what's going on with those women at home on the frontier or in the war zone while their husbands and older sons are gone, the women who are protecting their children, hunting for meat on the table, working the garden and doing what needs to be done to keep her family together. The pioneer women who supported their husbands and encouraged them to take the daring chance for a new life and who walked by their sides across that prairie, sometimes with a baby on the hip, and then worked hard beside him to build that new home in the Oregon wilderness. The native American women who kept the camp together or marched beside their husbands following the game that kept the band alive and fed.
Not to mention the women who wielded power from behind the thrown because of the influence mothers have over their sons and wives over their husbands. For pete's sake - how many wars have been started in history because a woman pushed the men to fight? Women do not have to be physically strong to be strong!
And I agree so much that there isn't anything wrong with letting your female characters need to be saved once in a while. As you said - women are not men and there are simply times where a woman cannot compete with a man. Besides, what on earth is wrong with allowing men to follow their own instincts and use the gifts they've been given to protect and to provide for their families? A man defending his woman, a man saving his woman, is a man who is fighting to save something he cherishes and considers precious enough to worth risking his life to protect or win. Who wouldn't want to be seen as that special to another person?
So I'm going to toast my morning coffee to the Scarlett O'hara's, the Victoria Barkley's, Miss Kitties, the Katherine McClintock's, the Eula's, the Rose Sayer's, the Anne Shirley's, the Honor Harringtons, the Eowyn's and real Galadriel's (from the books, not the tv show) of this world!
One of my present reads (Rereads, I read it in the early sixties but today, a different perspective, enjoyable.); MASTERS OF SPACE, By EDWARD E. SMITH & E. EVERETT EVANS (1961) wherein the women end up just a strong as men, destroy together the evil doers and live happily ever after for thousands of years. Dated, debated, Hugo winner, fun.
Much of the strength of the every day everywhere la femme goes unnoticed, understated. More than a few no neck constructions stiffs that worked for me over the years, for example, turned their paychecks over to there wives who then signed their husbands names thereon and controlled all the family's finances. While Ben Franklin was off in England and Washington was at Valley ̶ ̶F̶o̶u̶r̶i̶e̶r̶ ̶ Forge (Yep damn autocorrect got me too!) it was Debbie and Martha that kept the home fires burning, no small feat!