Dear Kevin,

I thought about responding to you in the comments, but found I had far too much to say.

You are part of the problem. I appreciate that you feel you’re trying to “help” by telling me, essentially, that I’m whining into the wind, and nobody cares, and it’s never going to change anything. (Nobody is here defined as “white male creators of media,” because I assure you, a lot of people care very deeply.) That I shouldn’t wait for an “apology from the king,” and that women need to write our own stories and find our own audiences. So, we should be good little girls and go sit in our corners and be quiet, hmm? Scribble for ourselves and each other in our own communities, and be satisfied with that. First of all, those communities already exist. Your charming assumption that I need to be educated on how to create them shows me just how much you actually pay attention, as much as you claim to “sympathize” with me. I am sensing an uncomfortable shift of the shoulders, here.

“Speaking out” is an incredibly important part of changing something. It’s the beginning of change. The personal is political, power to the people, how do you think that happens? If we all just bow our heads to the authorities and scuttle off to our corners to lick our wounds and write our indie stories in a fog of bitterness, it doesn’t. Sharing experiences, realizing that others have the same problems, the same feelings, that’s so powerful. It adds fuel to the fires within us. Because other people feel the way I do. They have the same discomforts, the same needs. You should know this, given that you claimed authority on social movements and change. (You were wrong, by the way. Change only happens if the mainstream acknowledges you. It’s true of the Civil Rights movement, the Feminist movement, right on back down to Constantine converting to Christianity and before even that. There have always been fringe societies operating differently, no one calls them change. They call them crazy. And I have to tell you, personally? As a woman? I am tired of being called crazy.)

Now, you may not be totally happy with what I’m speaking out about, it may be putting your back up in unfamiliar and uncomfortable ways to see lots of posts on and discussions of the state of the female in creative media, how women really oughtn’t be simply sex objects or princesses in other castles, and deserve more attention and depth. By the way, I am so grateful to you for saying “it’s good reading,” and you “like discussing it, sharing it with others.” Wow! Oh, I feel so respected. This next point is important, Kevin. I am not doing this for your entertainment, or anyone’s entertainment. Remember when you so patronizingly said, “You have to dedicate yourself to a worthy cause”? I am dedicated. You just aren’t fully comfortable with the cause, even if you do “get” it.

As well, and I know this is a cheap shot, but telling me, “Bella is such a bad female character that guys find her repulsive” is the blinking neon sign over the seedy motel of your hypocrisy. “Guys” wouldn’t care about her, wouldn’t know about her, if so many women hadn’t begun yelling so loudly over the Twilight books. “Guys” hopped on the Twihate bandwagon because those books were such extreme and egregious examples of misogynistic, idiotic, underestimation of young women and men that it was safe to dislike them. Twilight is safe to hate, too, because it doesn’t threaten any of the media traditionally aimed at men. Also, Twihate scored them serious points with the ladieez.

You say change happens slowly. I agree. Some changes take longer than others. This change wouldn’t be hard to accomplish, in a practical sense. The incubation time on a Hollywood blockbuster is about two years. Novels are generally published about two years after acceptance. For comic books, much less time. For television shows, much less time. We’re all a captive audience for the seriously hyped media. Things could get better tomorrow, and yet, they are getting so much worse. Everyone was so excited for the DC reboot, and what did we get? Tell me. Cast back in your mind to the shocking, insulting reboots of the female characters, at a time when more women than ever are becoming interested in comics. That’s change, all right. That’s overt sexism. That’s practically violence, on the level of pen and ink. “Get away, girls, we only see you as sex objects, don’t you DARE come in to our tree house.”

I don’t give a flying fuck about apologies from the king. I saw this particular emperor naked a long time ago. They’re meaningless, anyway. It frustrates me when my male friends tell me, “I feel like I need to apologize for my penis.” I don’t want that. No one should be made to feel lesser because of their gender. NO ONE. WHICH IS MY POINT. It is not pie-in-the-sky idealism to want my characters to be better written. To be given more depth, more complexity, more lush details so they stand apart from their backgrounds. I don’t want all female characters to be written as sword-wielding monoliths, I want them to be written better, so that I can see them, so that if they are kidnapped or raped or murdered horribly, as sometimes stories demand that they be, I feel something for them other than distaste at the actions and wanting to shake it off as quickly as possible. Because so many of them are worthless, now. It hardly matters. Violence gets more gory, we are desensitized to it, because the characters – male and female – are so poorly written we would hardly care otherwise. It’s like making one’s barbie dolls have sex, plastic bumping against plastic.

And all this, I want for the men in my stories, too. So that all characters are worthy of each other. So that we can move away from cardboard cut-outs. This is a change that could happen right now, if the creators were worthy of their creations, or their audiences. They can be. I know they can be. These are smart people, men and women, but mostly men, I know. They can write better, dream bigger. Make room for others.

There is nothing wrong with me wanting this right now. Because I want it for all of us, so very badly. And don’t you dare tell me I have to convince anyone that I’m a person. “Proving” to the menfolk that I can be just as interesting and important to a story as they are is horrid, because they know. They have wives, and daughters, and mothers and sisters, and they’ve loved strong, interesting female characters in their time as much as I’ve loved the strong male ones. They know. Oh, they know. They just don’t want to admit it, because they would have to work harder. Which is short-sighted and stupid, because I have money to spend like any one else. I just don’t tend to spend it on media aimed at women, because I find that tripe the most insulting of all.

This is an important debate, there are so many sides to it. But at the end of the day, we want the same thing. We want good, entertaining stories with strong characters. I am just increasingly unwilling to settle, on my side of the gender balance. And one final word. Perhaps men will always see women as “women first.” I am willing to state that biology does play a part. But before you dance too far down that essentialist excuse for a path, please remember that those strong, good, female role models you had saw you, the whole person. They did not make a hundred different assumptions about who you were and what you were capable of, simply based on your gender. Just think about that. Think about how our best relationships are not based simply or merely on gender. We see the person beneath. I want more to see. And yes. I want it now. No one should have to wait to be a person.

I thought for a long time before I pressed the “Publish” button on this post. Hell, I thought for a long time before I started to write this post. Worried that it wouldn’t be “nice” of me. That it might hurt your feelings. That other people I know are going to think less of me for such a direct response, or attack, or something. To hell with that. You can take it. You have most of the heroes and superheroes on your side.

All my sincerest regards,
Miranda