u/zaririi

There was a post someone posted here a short while ago asking about JK Rowling. I understand that she is a feminist and many have mixed views about her views on trans people. However, a lot of feminists don't like or agree with her because of her views, and a lot of non-feminists support her.

She is a successful, talented woman who is still a role model for many. I would like to highlight her as an example of someone who is against modern wokeism but also a successful woman. I understand not everyone here may be in agreement, so we can vote on it. We either allow posts about her or we do not.

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Sylvia Plath has long been cited as a feminist writer. However, this paper discusses how she actually was not writing from a feminist position, nor can she be characterised as feminist. She wrote for self-fulfilment. Her writing anxiety came from a fear of poverty and loss of inspiration. Plath was not writing to fulfil some feminist need. She was writing to fill the need of an artist.

Feminists often say that society doesn't care about female suffering, or any sort of abuse against women. I would actually agree with this to some extent, but in a different way:

Society generally doesn't know how to handle people suffering from abuse or trauma in general. As someone who has gone through a lot, including sexual violence, I will say that most people have no idea how to respond or react to that. A lot of people imagine rape as something that happens down a dark alleyway, even though most cases of sexual violence come from someone the victim already knows.

Contrary to what feminists think, most women are not abused. People generally don't live lives full of trauma. Most people actually don't suffer from clinical depression or C-PTSD. I personally know women (and men) who have gone through similar things to myself, but when I talk to the average person, they look blank and confused, like they have no clue what to say.

Society doesn't care about male abuse, male suffering, or females who have been abused (including emotionally/psychologically) by other females. We don't talk about abusive or dysfunctional friendships. Most people assume everyone enjoys being a kid and has loads of friends and everything is fine, because the average person experiences life this way.

I think we have a social problem of simply not knowing how to handle people who are genuinely traumatised, and not knowing where to place them in society. I am glad there has been a greater conversation around mental health over the last decade, and want it to keep growing. Talking through things helps a lot, and makes others feel less alone.

I love to both read, watch, and write fiction. I really cannot stand the phrase "strong female character" or "strong woman". I'm sick of it now. We never talk about men this way and use phrases like "strong male character". There are men who are complicated, insecure, hopeless, and down on themselves. Men like Holden Caulfield; the narrator from Fight Club, Charles Bukowski's Henry Chinaski, or Connell from Normal People. These are all flawed men.

Because of feminism, we have this obsession with how women are perceived in fiction. Why not just let women be portrayed as the story demands of it? I have written about all kinds of women: resilient, brave women; insecure, neurotic women, evil women, nasty women, kind women, broken women. I think there are many ways to portray people and it depends on the story and how it's going.

Sometimes it's fascinating to see a story where the woman isn't necessarily a "strong female character". She might be highly insecure, troubled, anxious, or struggling in some way. What's wrong with that? Why do female heroines all have to be "strong"?

An example I can give is freida in Louise O'Neill's Only Ever Yours. That book is a feminist book, but I think it portrays women and the female experience very well. It displays girl-on-girl cruelty and nastiness, and we see how females treat each other within that sort of environment. For me, the worst characters (megan and chastity-ruth) are female. They're very well-written and realistic.

freida, the heroine, is written as unlikeable. I actually liked her a lot because I had a lot of sympathy for her and thought she was very realistic within the context of the novel. I don't see why we have to read a book about a woman who is like Katniss Everdeen. Sometimes messy heroines are more interesting.