Shaming Women in Stories - Comments

I like this.

But also, I feel like this sort of thing can be a reflection on life. Not how things should be, but how they often are. Because women that are blonde, women that cheerlead, women that like attention - they're always judged inappropriately. I feel like a story where no one thought twice about this sort of character would be incredibly unrealistic.

i do however believe that person does exist. because I personally know several women like that.

I just feel like putting my opinion here, by no means am I trying to start anything.

I myself, am guilty of this. I'd like to say however, I didn't write it like that because of some sexist internal drive or dislike of such things. I get 'in' my characters. Characters are like regular people, so my character may hate confident girls who get all the boys - That doesn't reflect me at all, nor my feelings towards girls that do get all the boys. It's simply my character's outlook.

I've written a story where one of my main characters was a skinhead who hated jewish people, but that doesnt mean I do. I've also done the same thing with a character who hated drugs, yet I don't.

What I;m trying to say is that none of my characters are an embodiment of me, my feelings or anything else. I've seen girls described exactly such as in these stories, in real life - My best friend is one of those girls. They do exist, just like racists and sexist's exist. But I'm not basing any of my characters feelings on what I feel, I'm basing them on what my character feels.

A person's characters is not a reflection of their thoughts and feelings, it's just their characters thought's and feelings. I mean, I write about cold blooded killers, but I have no real desire to kill myself. I write about how my character hates pop music, but I like a large majority of pop music.

It might just be me, but idk.

I'm getting really tired of seeing writers do this, too. My best friend is an extremely confident young woman who is very outspoken, owns her sexuality, and wears what makes her happy. To see people take a woman and degrade her for that is disgusting. And I don't think it's a lack of education, not anymore. Feminism taking this type of writing to task is plastered over every corner of the Internet from Twitter to Facebook to Tumblr to probably Instagram. And considering how much time the average teenager spends on social media, it's unlikely they haven't noticed yet. A lot of people choose to write it off or claim it's not bad instead. It's time for people to own up to the fact they need to work on fixing their misogyny.

With the writers, I think it's less "I'm a judgmental and under-confident person" and more "I have issues with deeply internalized sexism and have been taught to believe that these types of girls are bad." A lot of people aren't educated on this, especially since most people on Mibba are young writers.

This trope does need to stop, though. It seems like a double standard; confident or even downright guys are almost never ridiculed in stories. Hell, Gary Stus are sometimes praised.

I completely agree with everything in this blog, and I'm so glad you've brought it up. It's something that ran rampant a few years ago here, and even though it's died down a bit, it's still definitely everywhere regardless of genre or whether or not it's fanfiction or original fiction. It's crappy enough to have to hear casual slut-shaming offline - why do people do it in their writing?

It happens a lot in slash, too. There's sometimes a "slut" who tries to "steal" one of the boys away from his love interest and it all just reeks of misogyny.