From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Cross-Writing (was: Books I Got For Xmas)
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 22:59:49 GMT

In article <5JAN93.22002787@vax.clarku.edu> hhenderson@vax.clarku.edu writes:
>Mike Godwin wrote:
>
>>I would not dream of disputing that the Canon "accepts" more male authors 
>>than female ones. ... But this thread originated in a discussion of the 
>>issue of whether it is difficult for an author of one gender to convey the 
>>point of view of a character of the other. 
>
>No, that was not the issue.

Well, it was *my* issue, in the posting to which you responded. I grant
that you raised a different issue. But since you were responding to a
posting I made, I thought you were responding to its content more
directly. (I hasten to state at this point that I see nothing wrong with
response departing from the original thread--topic drift is the life of
newsgroups.) 

> The issue concerned perception: whether
>audiences would be more demanding of accuracy from a female writer writing
>from a male point of view than they would from a male writer writing from a
>female point of view.  We have not touched on the subject of authors' actual
>ability to convey points of view, and whether it is connected to gender.

Again: the thing another Anne Rice fan and I were talking about was
precisely "the subject of authors' actual ability to convey points of
view, and whether it is connected to gender." This, like your subject, is
an interesting subject, and I hope people will continue to discuss it as
well as the issue you raised here. 

>>Representation in the Canon is irrelevant to this issue. 
>
>I don't think it is.

I don't see how it's relevant to the issue of whether one sex can
adequately represent the feelings of another sex, but perhaps you mean for
your comment to be in connection to the issue you raised, rather than what
I was talking about in the posting to which you initially responded.

>In any case, I'm not talking about simple male-female
>representation in the canon, but the incidence of "cross-writing" in the
>canon, and its relative distribution between male and female authors.

Ah, now this was unclear to me--perhaps it became more unclear with Don
Zirilli's explanation of your earlier posting.

>>When have women writers not bid to be taken seriously? 
>
>I'm not sure what you're asking here.  I was talking about women writers of
>genre fiction, like Sayers or P.D. James, as opposed to women writers of
>"serious" fiction, like Oates. 

But I think Sayers, for example, always meant to be taken seriously.
And George Eliot, a nongenre writer of the last century, certainly did. My
question came from my feeling that I could not think of an era in which those
women who wrote did *not* wish to be taken seriously. But perhaps you meant
"bid" in a different sense than the one I took it to have. I thought you
were talking about women's motivations, but you may have been talking
about (say) their potential as a group.

>>I note here that there is a distinction between what is misleadingly 
>>called "writing like a man" and the activity we may call "creating male 
>>characters." 
>
>Hmmm.  Well, if there is a distinction, I haven't made it, because I don't
>know exactly what "writing like a man" means.

Some critics have argued, in their misogynistic way, that women are less
capable or incapable, of the kinds of artistic achievements,
toughmindedness, intellectual prowess, or range that men are capable of.
(I note that Camille Paglia seems to say this in SEXUAL PERSONAE.)

>Anyway, we're not talking
>about writers creating believable characters of the opposite sex: we're
>talking about writers *inhabiting the points of view* of characters of the
>opposite sex.  I think there's a difference. 

Well, when you spoke about the Canon and who was "well-received" or not,
that seemed to me to go more to the issue of creating believable characters
to the issue of "inhabiting points of view." I don't think anyone
has argued before now that the latter is a criterion for Canonical
acceptance.


--Mike



-- 
Mike Godwin,    |"I'm waiting for the one-man revolution
mnemonic@eff.org| The only one that's coming."
(617) 864-0665  |                           
EFF, Cambridge  |                   --Robert Frost 
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