Dissertation Ideas

Time to kick the old brain into gear and start thinking about the dissertation. It's go time!

As enjoyable as it is to write about things you enjoy and love, there's something almost cathartic about writing about things you hate. I think that is going to be the motivation and driving force behind my dissertation. 15'000 - 18'000 words of rage.

Sometimes when reading female characters written by men, I feel like this

I've seen entire articles, Twitter threads and TikTok series's dedicated to chronicling the subpar, ridiculous and frequently anatomically incorrect writing of men. For example, author Stuart Woods seems to believe vaginas are multifunctional, for example, acting as compartments to store essential items.

Credit to @menwritewomen on Twitter

Basic biological knowledge has eluded and escaped many male authors it seems. Or perhaps they just chose to conjure purposes for women's sexual organs specifically to fit their desired narratives. Breasts are equally as confusing to male authors. For example, breasts evoke emotions and can indicate a woman's age.

Credit @menwritingwomxn on Twitter

Credit @menwritewomen on Twitter

It's never ending. You would think that these examples being highlighted and ridiculed would teach other authors what not to do but, unfortunately, that is not the case. Give a male author a pen and watch as his confidence and audacity take over and craft the most ludicrous description of women and their bodies. Not only that but these books are published, they've been edited and reviewed and still made it onto book shelves with these descriptions intact.

An article from The Guardian posed the question, "can you really be considered a great novelist when, in writing characters of a gender that makes up 50% of the population, you consistently fail?" giving authors such as Jonathan Franzen and Michel Houllebecq as examples (Cosslett). One could argue that the above examples that I've included don't come from literary masterpieces but the fact that they exist in the world of literature at all is an insult.

Of course, it's undeniable that sexism and misogyny exist and are inescapable. Especially when analysing and critiquing older texts. However, just because these elements are expected to be present in books from decades gone by, that doesn't mean we can't criticise these elements. Similarly, many people use the excuse of "satire" or "that's a character trait" to justify these portrayals of women. These instances do apply to some texts. Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is sometimes criticised for its portrayal of women. For example, the dinner party guest Maggie White, is described as "a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies. Men looked at her and wanted to fill her up with babies right away" (Vonnegut, p.140).Is this unnecessary sexualisation of a woman? Or is it writing in the same offhand and dismissive style of the rest of the text? Vonnegut writes aspects such as mental illness, death and violence with the same removed and emotionally detached writing style as he writes gender. However, this is not the case for every male author. You can't excuse every sexist or misogynistic passage of writing as satirical or characteristic of the protagonist when it clearly reflects an authors poor understanding of anatomy or their badly disguised opinion of women. It's exhausting.

Tired of thinking about misogyny? Here's some music to cheer you up. Click below to check it out!

Works Cited

Cosslett, Rhiannon Lucy. “All Cleavage and Clunkiness – Why Can't Male Authors Write Women? .” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 6 Apr. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/06/cleavage-male-authors-women-writer.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. Vintage , 2000.