If no women of colour had been included, there'd be an outcry too.
This is an unprovable assertion, since we only have the chart as it is. Besides, is it supposed to be better that a great many supposedly broken female characters are POC? Is it supposed to be better that a work that discourages the writing of female characters to begin with is especially hard on WOC? Would it have been better for Uhura not to have existed because she wasn't on the landing parties?
Considering how to write female characters who more accurately reflect the threedimensional reality of actual women would be excellent, and considering how fictional works and their creators consistently fail female characters (which is to say, placing the responsibility with the creators rather than with the characters) would be even better, but this chart encourages the opposite conclusions by its condemnation of such a wide swath of female characters. The only conclusion I can see the chart encouraging is that there's one proper way of writing female characters, that it's vague and indefinable, and really women just aren't worth writing. I for one absolutely can't agree with that.
(sarasvati, I'm here from Metafandom, and I love the way you've plugged yourself into the chart and illuminated its flaws from within.)
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regna
Re: Here via metafandom
Date: 2010-10-17 09:18 pm (UTC)This is an unprovable assertion, since we only have the chart as it is. Besides, is it supposed to be better that a great many supposedly broken female characters are POC? Is it supposed to be better that a work that discourages the writing of female characters to begin with is especially hard on WOC? Would it have been better for Uhura not to have existed because she wasn't on the landing parties?
Considering how to write female characters who more accurately reflect the threedimensional reality of actual women would be excellent, and considering how fictional works and their creators consistently fail female characters (which is to say, placing the responsibility with the creators rather than with the characters) would be even better, but this chart encourages the opposite conclusions by its condemnation of such a wide swath of female characters. The only conclusion I can see the chart encouraging is that there's one proper way of writing female characters, that it's vague and indefinable, and really women just aren't worth writing. I for one absolutely can't agree with that.
(