Saturday, December 8, 2012

Historically ... Authentic (Sexism)

As much trouble as I have, as an author, with anachronistic Mary-Sue feminism, there is a flip side to the coin.  This is a good post about how counter-productive it can be to lean on "but history was sexist" as an excuse to write chauvinism instead of *character*.  I'm madly in love with the graphic, too:

Tansyrr.com
Not to mention this quote:

History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.  --Tansy Rayner Roberts

It's as true of histfic as it is of fantasy, the authenticity of an overarching principle is (a) not necessarily beyond question, but (b) no reason to sacrifice *writing*.

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