# Female Goons, Thugs, Flunkies and Other Cannon Fodder



## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Female characters have made enormous inroads in the past decade, with a growing number of female characters in choice, featured roles. Most importantly, they've really experienced a break-out into the field of evil.

There are now a great many female Big Bads, evil sidekicks and seconds in commands, it's almost compulsory to have a female miniboss or two if your story is expensive enough to have minibosses at all, and enigmatic women with no set alignment are also mainstays.

I never thought about it more deeply than that before I got an email from one of the readers on my site that was rather shocked when at least two of the low level, easily killed bad guys in the first Rune Breaker books are women. The reader (I can't tell if it was a man or woman) commented that they don't think they'd ever seen a female goon in a work of fiction.

The weird thing is, I'm not sure I have either. The default setting for minions, henchmen, thugs, heavies, flunkies, and assorted other sundry bad guys is 'male'.

So that got me wondering if anyone here included female super-minor enemies in their stories.


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## Crime fighters (Nov 27, 2013)

In prose fiction, it would be hard to come up with something off the top of my head. In visual media, it's a lot easier.


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2013)

I'm working on one now that has a female DA.  She's a strong character with a filthy mouth.  She's also sleeping with her chief prosecutor or office flunkie, however you want to look at it.  Of course this is just implied.  She gets gunned-down in the end.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

I tend to have mixed gender heroes/bad guys in my books. I think I need to have one where the big bad is female and wins in the end... just to shake things up a bit


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## Michael Buckley (Jun 24, 2013)

Sometimes in my books the female will beat or kill the boys. I try to make it real and I do not have someone trying to bite Mike Tysons ear off.


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## Quiss (Aug 21, 2012)

The Big Bad in my Flight to Exile is female and I think she's so darn nasty that she's one of my favourite nasties 

I have plenty of female bad guys in the space opera series but not in prime roles. I've wondered about that and realized that one reason for that is pure and absolute laziness!
By having opposite genders, you avoid a lot of "she said" "she said" and issues with making clear who's speaking in a confrontation.

Lots of female minions. I make a point of not pulling punches, either. If they can't get beaten up by male opponents, they shouldn't be in a combat situation.


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## Seanathin23 (Jul 24, 2011)

I don't know why I never thought of that, now I kind of want to put in a female bad guy. And I was always so careful to make sure my main group always had a few women. (hell the adventuring party in part three which I should start in January has more girls than boys in it.)


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2013)

I had an entire army of women goons in Assembly Code (Based on the Russian Red Widows).


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

Mmmm... no, not so much, actually.

My flunky, body-fodder bad guys tend to always be male.

I do not know why that is.

I definitely have lots of female Big Bads, but for some reason, when I think up a bunch of minions to wander in and get slaughtered, I always make them male. The other night on _Supernatural_, however, they killed a whole bunch of female minions (and male ones too).

I will probably think about this in the future.


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## David Adams (Jan 2, 2012)

Vaalingrade said:


> Female characters have made enormous inroads in the past decade, with a growing number of female characters in choice, featured roles. Most importantly, they've really experienced a break-out into the field of evil.
> 
> There are now a great many female Big Bads, evil sidekicks and seconds in commands, it's almost compulsory to have a female miniboss or two if your story is expensive enough to have minibosses at all, and enigmatic women with no set alignment are also mainstays.
> 
> ...


In Pathfinder, if a mook has an unspecified gender I make them 50% male, 50% female. Subtly, too. I'll just say something like, 'she five foot steps go here...'

For fiction I usually split the same way unless there's some reason not to, like, say, in Insufficient.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

I use 25% female minions because I know my genre and want to ease some of the less receptive readers into it. No punches pulled though--I'm not sure it's even possible to pull punches the way Ru fights.

In the Descendants, the percentage is higher because it's built into the world (Women are twice as likely to inherit powers because most power-bearing genes are on the X-chromosome).


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2013)

Well, from a purely sociological level, women flunkies _would _be rare. The last data I'm seen on the issue put women at only 11% of the violent offenders (and some studies have even suggested that this is only because of "upcharging" women offenders with greater offenses then men would be charged with in order to "make an example" of them). I don't think we all need to run out and check our male to female thug ratio to make sure it is politically correct. Unless your setting is fundamentally different sociologically from the real world (like the example of genetic powers more likely to appear in the X-chromosome), I think is it more important to just show women honestly in a variety of roles than just swapping out male thugs for female ones. Let me see "normal" women who aren't too-stupid-to-live in roles as doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, pilots, bus drivers, etc. etc. etc.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

~10% is still an awful lot  compared tot he all of zero female gangbangers et al that typically show up. Plus minions don't have to be violent. You also don't see a lot of ladies in minor thieving crews when it comes time for, say, Batman to capture them in the cold open.

I don't see it as a politically correct thing--in fact, I see it as the opposite. I think the reason you don't see female goons is because overly PC sensibilities see women being disposable goons and minions as encouraging violence against women.


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## Lionel&#039;s Mom (Aug 22, 2013)

My bad  guy is a woman. She doesn't have any minions, so far she works alone. She had a lover, but he's dead. Hmmm.


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> I don't see it as a politically correct thing--in fact, I see it as the opposite. I think the reason you don't see female goons is because overly PC sensibilities see women being disposable goons and minions as encouraging violence against women.


But I would argue that is because it IS very easy for such scenarios to become justification of violence against women unless the writer is paying attention. It isn't a matter of simply swapping out male goons for female ones. We aren't interchangeable (except in Skyrim, but those are Nords and they don't count  ). Outside of professional female athletes, women on average have less muscle mass than men. Unless you are talking about highly trained ninjas, in an average fist fight between the typical "goon" level character and a "hero" it will be a one-sided fight. The female super-ninja is a Hollywood construct. Yes, a well-trained female can take down the average untrained or moderately trained guy. But the average "thug" grade female isn't taking a moderately trained man in a straight up fist-fight, let alone "the hero". Granted, guns are the great equalizer, but the hero has guns, too. And in most cases is still better trained than the goon.

And before people chime in with stories of women beating up their husbands, boyfriends, etc, in how many of those cases did the man actually _fight back_?

Again, we're talking about the typical gang member/thug/goon. If you have some elite fighting squad of assassins specifically trained to take down larger opponents, that's a different story. But in the grand scheme of the universe, the volume of female goons in literature is far less important to me than the fact that, in 2013, I am still dealing with fantasy artists who insist on chainmail bikinis for women warriors and reptilian humanoids with breasts.


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> Female characters have made enormous inroads in the past decade, with a growing number of female characters in choice, featured roles. Most importantly, they've really experienced a break-out into the field of evil.
> 
> There are now a great many female Big Bads, evil sidekicks and seconds in commands, it's almost compulsory to have a female miniboss or two if your story is expensive enough to have minibosses at all, and enigmatic women with no set alignment are also mainstays.
> 
> ...


Madam DeFarge from A Tale of Two Cities

The White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis

Mrs Danvers from Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier

And there were rumors that Uriah Heep was a transsexual


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Well, from a purely sociological level, women flunkies _would _be rare. The last data I'm seen on the issue put women at only 11% of the violent offenders (and some studies have even suggested that this is only because of "upcharging" women offenders with greater offenses then men would be charged with in order to "make an example" of them). I don't think we all need to run out and check our male to female thug ratio to make sure it is politically correct. Unless your setting is fundamentally different sociologically from the real world (like the example of genetic powers more likely to appear in the X-chromosome), I think is it more important to just show women honestly in a variety of roles than just swapping out male thugs for female ones. Let me see "normal" women who aren't too-stupid-to-live in roles as doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, pilots, bus drivers, etc. etc. etc.


You sort of wonder if this is a chicken-egg scenario to some extent, though, like the fact that black males are imprisoned at more than 9 times the rate of white males.

Is that _all_ because of socio-economic differences that lead certain racial groups to be more likely to commit crimes, or is it because people stereotypically assume that black men are criminals and then accuse of them of such?

It does seem that women are less likely to be violent, and this probably has something to do with testosterone. But we shouldn't conflate less violent with more morally upright, because, well, I taught high school for six years, and girls are mean. 

However, the point about female flunkies is still well taken. It's probably unrealistic. How many gangs are made up of girls? How many wars are fought by female soldiers? Etc.



Willieboo said:


> Madam DeFarge from A Tale of Two Cities
> 
> The White Witch from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis
> 
> ...


Are these super-minor characters?


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## John Blackport (Jul 18, 2011)

Ian't the White Witch equal to Aslan himself? Plus she commands an army... definitely not a goon, and hard to qualify as a minor character


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2013)

John Blackport said:


> Ian't the White Witch equal to Aslan himself? Plus she commands an army... definitely not a goon, and hard to qualify as a minor character


Yes, I think some people are confusing "female villain" with "redshirt cannon fodder"


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## SarahCarter (Nov 8, 2012)

Hmm, good question. My female villains usually have quite prominent roles, I don't think I include them as minor baddies very often.

Part of the issue is that I generally write fantasy, which means no guns or anything that levels the playing field for women. The majority of women just aren't going to be a match for a bloke when it comes to hands-on fighting. So if you have a female character that's kick-arse enough to take out a guy (either physically, or with some sort of supernatural powers), then why waste her on a small part?


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## kurzon (Feb 26, 2011)

I don't generally have 'goons'.  I do have female people on the 'other side'.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Yeah, if they even rank a _name_, that's not what I'm talking about.

What I've got in mind here is the faceless kind of grunt who is destined to be defeated in the span of a sentence upon contact with Our Hero.

And it's not like a lot of these organizations can afford to be picky. Street gangs are made up basically of whoever is in the neighborhood with nothing better to do than crime (and there are a TON of female bangers), just as an example. Considering that the bad guys who field minions work off the cult or freelancer model most often and the whole point is to just throw up meatshields and extra eyes, I don't see gender as a barrier to entry.

Plus, if you're going to be chucking Warm Body #176 into a powered armor suit or handing them an AK to patrol your volcano base, what does the stereotypical '-4 STR' matter? Then we get into magic and powers and other enhancements and there's a point where the 'real world' limitations don't apply.

Thuggery doesn't exactly have a high bar for passing, especially in fiction.



> Part of the issue is that I generally write fantasy, which means no guns or anything that levels the playing field for women. The majority of women just aren't going to be a match for a bloke when it comes to hands-on fighting. So if you have a female character that's kick-arse enough to take out a guy (either physically, or with some sort of supernatural powers), then why waste her on a small part?


Serious question: if the world is constructed anyway and not part of Earth's cultural history and its effects on physiology, why are the women still inherently weaker physically?

It's a thing I wonder about a lot of Fantasy set in constructed worlds--why, with the addition of magic, gods and monsters, did human society still follow the exact same general track as the one we _pretend_ the Middle Ages did? Fantasy could really take a cue from Sci-Fi and explore how its trappings effect society and the people who are part of it.


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## lynnfromthesouth (Jun 21, 2012)

The major villain in the Misfits series is a woman that bears a strong resemblance to a certain pink-themed plastic doll. She's brilliant, crazy, rich, and really, really powerful. She has both female and male goons. There's also another female miniboss in the series.

On the other side of that, the Misfits have a six-foot tattooed spy who often disguises herself as bouncers or security, and is a champion sharpshooter.


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## LarryNW (Sep 6, 2013)

My book is dominated by all kinds of kick ass of the female persuasion.


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## Adrian Howell (Feb 24, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> So that got me wondering if anyone here included female super-minor enemies in their stories.


I had my protagonist gun down a female enemy minion in my third book. She fires a shot at the protagonist from behind, misses, and the protagonist turns around and kills her, only realizing after the fact that it was a woman. She has no lines, and only appears as a tiny part of a larger battle scene. My decision to make this character a woman was based on the fact that she and another minion that the protagonist kills are married, and this becomes relevant later in the plot.

But writing that scene, I never really thought of having a female minor enemy (or major enemy) as any bigger deal than having a male minor or major enemy.


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## blakebooks (Mar 10, 2012)

Sure. I just put JET - Justice to bed. Its main baddy is a female. Then again, its protag is also female. So we have two #ss-kicking females going at it. Which for some reason has me thinking about the Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories, but that's neither here nor there...


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

What were those bad girls called in sword of truth? Something sith like star wars wasn't it? They were very very bad.


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## Nicholas Andrews (Sep 8, 2011)

markecooper said:


> What were those bad girls called in sword of truth? They were very very bad.


So was the Sword of Truth. *rimshot*


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## brendajcarlton (Sep 29, 2012)

There is lots of room in the world for all kinds of books, and I wouldn't tell anyone what to write or to read, but that being said, I don't find this trend of portraying women as testosterone fueled adrenaline junkies as non-sexist.  It always feels to me like people are saying women are OK as long as they act just like a certain sort of man.  I'd like to see more women that are neither men with boobs or sappy schoolgirls mooning over unavailable men.  Certainly most of us are neither of those.  Just my 2 cents.


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## Guest (Dec 6, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> Serious question: if the world is constructed anyway and not part of Earth's cultural history and its effects on physiology, why are the women still inherently weaker physically?


That was the point I was getting at earlier. Unless you've explained it elsewhere in the book, the "default" will always be normal "real world" human physiology. The default is used to fill in the unexplained blanks. In truth, there is no reason your planet's world can't have men giving birth...but if the men are giving birth you would feel some obligation (at least, I would hope!) to explain that in story. If you have set up the world in a way that resets the reader expectations, then this is a non-issue. But if you are leaning on the "default" human then the reader expectations will be for the default human.

If you explain it in story, or at the minimum reset the reader expectations early enough in the story, you can do whatever you want. But it's like saying, why are humans not covered in scales? Well, your humans CAN be covered in scales, but you would feel a need to inform the reader of this up front to avoid confusion. Why can't humans have neon skin? Well, your humans CAN have neon skin, but you would set that up in advance. Hell, your humans can be androgynous or spontaneously change genders like some other animals do...but in the name of all that is good and holy I would hope you would alert the reader to that fact before just assuming it! My original point is that if you are going to stray from the established norms, just set it up right and it will work. But you have to set it up.


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

brendajcarlton said:


> There is lots of room in the world for all kinds of books, and I wouldn't tell anyone what to write or to read, but that being said, I don't find this trend of portraying women as testosterone fueled adrenaline junkies as non-sexist. It always feels to me like people are saying women are OK as long as they act just like a certain sort of man. I'd like to see more women that are neither men with boobs or sappy schoolgirls mooning over unavailable men. Certainly most of us are neither of those. Just my 2 cents.


I actually really like badass girls, but I tend to agree with you that the trend of appropriating male attributes like strength, and popping them on a woman, and then claiming that's feminist always makes me scratch my head. (Buffy, though I love you, I'm looking at you.)

But when I was a little girl reading fantasy stories, I always wanted to be one of the people who got to swing a sword and go into battle too! So, I basically read all of that as wish fulfillment on the part of the writer.

I'd don't know about other people, but what I'd like to say is that women are OK if they act like a certain sort of man, if they are sappy schoolgirls, or if they are whatever they want to be.


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## Guest (Dec 6, 2013)

brendajcarlton said:


> There is lots of room in the world for all kinds of books, and I wouldn't tell anyone what to write or to read, but that being said, I don't find this trend of portraying women as testosterone fueled adrenaline junkies as non-sexist. It always feels to me like people are saying women are OK as long as they act just like a certain sort of man. I'd like to see more women that are neither men with boobs or sappy schoolgirls mooning over unavailable men. Certainly most of us are neither of those. Just my 2 cents.


Exactly, the tendency to claim that "strong" women are only "strong" if they can go toe-to-toe with a man is actually just as bad as portraying all women as damsels that need saving. There are all kinds of strength, but we place the highest value on physical strength (i.e. "male" strength). And thus the only way a woman can be "equal" is if she can act like a man. My boyfriend could break me in half in an actual fight, but in a crisis, I'm the strong one because my strength is in my ability to quickly formulate plans and deal with problems. I can think on my feet, which makes me much stronger than him when the crap hits the fan.


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## Redacted1111 (Oct 26, 2013)

Here is a fascinating article that might add to this discussion called, "I hate Strong Female Characters."

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters

I think the tenancy is to give women male attributes, ie "strong" and see that as creating a well rounded human being. Guess what, women can be weak and still be well drawn characters. Women can be geniuses, or stay at home moms, or waitresses and still be well drawn characters. I'd like to see more women in general, in various roles doing various things, who are complete and whole and have all the beautiful and ugly traits that make us human beings.


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## Michael Buckley (Jun 24, 2013)

In real life the female will be left behind when the SHTF. Examples would be a hotel which one was taken over by the Taliban when I was there. The mission was assigned to a special forces unit to Take back the hotel, no woman were allowed. Infantry type missions they cannot be used. They can be used for convoy escort duty and get in a fire fight that way. Some of the convoys have military police running the convoys and woman can be assigned to those units such as the military police.

I like to use woman in my stories even if it's not real, the stories are fiction.

What I have witness over in the middle east would be some women panicking and freezing in the middle of the road when mortars are going off all around them. And I feel that can be changed if the women experience more mortar and rocket fire, the more you experience the less the fear. Women can shoot weapons as good or if not better than the men and in Isreal a land who as fought more wars than anyone and fought longer they have women who fight in combat units. The last time I heard they were. If they are now or not I don't know. Women when trained in hand to hand or what have you for the most part they just do not have the strength to take on a strong man in hand to hand without getting hurt real bad or killed. But from a far where a weapon can be used they can kill as good as anyone if they get past the fear and that comes with exposure. I would not want to go up against a woman in the Israeli military.

For the most part what you see on TV is fiction and women will get beat and thrown to the ground by a man. And that is one reason they had no one clearing the hotel with the special forces soldiers. That is why men do not compete against women in boxing. I feel women can make good leaders and in many cases are much stronger than men in leadership, physical strength there not. We are all different and special in our own way.

When I did the Kickboxing seen I saw women who were Black Belts in Karate getting beat in full contact by street fighters who were men. Sometimes the Karate will give a false sense of security. I have seen men kicked so hard between the legs and they did not go down and went on to win the fight before their pain took over, Yes it was overwhelming the pain, still they won the fight.


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## brendajcarlton (Sep 29, 2012)

> Here is a fascinating article that might add to this discussion called, "I hate Strong Female Characters."
> 
> http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters
> 
> I think the tenancy is to give women male attributes, ie "strong" and see that as creating a well rounded human being. Guess what, women can be weak and still be well drawn characters. Women can be geniuses, or stay at home moms, or waitresses and still be well drawn characters. I'd like to see more women in general, in various roles doing various things, who are complete and whole and have all the beautiful and ugly traits that make us human beings.


Good article. Thanks for posting it. I think I (mostly) do what she recommends, which is have an equal balance of male and female characters, so one female does not have to represent half of humanity. I didn't consciously decide to do that. It just seemed natural to me. As it turns out, the book is not really women's fiction that way, but neither does it fit neatly into a lot of other categories. Maybe marketing problems are the reason equality in "screen time" is not that common and I was just too unaware to realize it for a long time.


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## vrabinec (May 19, 2011)

It's funny, one of the things that made Snow White one of my faves when I was a kid, was because the antag was a beautiful woman. It blew me away becasue it was so contrary to my world view at the time. Mom was all hugs and love, and dad was the evil one with the belt and the discipline.


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## brendajcarlton (Sep 29, 2012)

> It's funny, one of the things that made Snow White one of my faves when I was a kid, was because the antag was a beautiful woman. It blew me away becasue it was so contrary to my world view at the time. Mom was all hugs and love, and dad was the evil one with the belt and the discipline.


LOL. I was terrified of the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. I guess there is more than one way to show that not all women are damsels in distress. Of course, in my childhood, Pennsylvania Dutch farm wives were far from helpless. Think of Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain, when she says she can't abide a nasty rooster and wrings its neck, if you remember that scene.


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## Claudia King (Oct 27, 2012)

I think there's a couple of reasons for the lack of generic female goons in fiction. First and foremost is that men are just way more physically (and socially? That's a more controversial topic to get into, but I'm sure it plays a part) suited to being thugs/bruisers than women. Genetics leads to men being more physically capable than women the vast majority of the time, so yadda yadda.

A second, and I think slightly more interesting part of it, is that characters in these roles are usually generic cannon fodder. They often end up getting hurt/maimed/murdered as part and parcel of action scenes, and seeing violence happen towards women rather than men creates quite a different response in most readers.
I think the comment from the OPs reader really nails home the point: We are not used to seeing casual violence against women in most mainstream media.

Most of us have been pretty desensitised to violence against men by this point, but seeing women, children, or even animals getting hurt is far more rare in fiction. There's definitely a psychological element of empathising with vulnerable victims in all of those cases (yeah, another controversial one, but that's often how women are portrayed in a lot of media), but I think the larger part of it is simply that we don't _see_ this stuff very often, and as a result it's more shocking to see women involved in violence than it is men, leading to authors skirting away from it in generic action sequences and perpetuating its rarity, and so on and so on.


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## Guest (Dec 6, 2013)

Claudia King said:


> Most of us have been pretty desensitised to violence against men by this point, but seeing women, children, or even animals getting hurt is far more rare in fiction. There's definitely a psychological element of empathising with vulnerable victims in all of those cases (yeah, another controversial one, but that's often how women are portrayed in a lot of media), but I think the larger part of it is simply that we don't _see_ this stuff very often, and as a result it's more shocking to see women involved in violence than it is men, leading to authors skirting away from it in generic action sequences and perpetuating its rarity, and so on and so on.


And to be honest, I don't WANT to get to a point of desensitizing violence against women in generic fashion when, in 2013, I still can't have a full length Wonder Woman movie and the Wonder Woman I am getting is a sidekick who looks like a stick figure.  Yes, that is a rant for another thread. But the larger point is I don't want to be thinking about the male/female ratio of redshirts or cannon fodder when Hollywood still hasn't figured out how to portray females in genre media correctly.

My favorite scene in _The Avengers_ was when Black Widow tells Captain America to giver her a lift so she can jump up onto one of the alien speeders. He asks her if she's sure and she says yes. And THAT was the end of the discussion. He didn't try to talk her out of it, or tell her it was too dangerous, or take her place. He gave her a boost and trusted that she knew what she was doing and would get the job done. She was throughout the entire movie treated like all other members of the team. Expected to know what she was doing and trusted to get the job done. What was great about the scene was how _normalized_ it was. It wasn't a surprise that, as a woman, she got the job done. The fact that she got the job done was simply a given, as it was of every member of the team.

So for me, the lack of generic female goons is way, way, WAY down on the food chain. In fact, rushing to encourage female goons may actually do more harm than good by allowing writers to "get away" with continuing to ignore fleshed out female characters by simply saying "hey, the women get beat up just like the men!" It's like companies that claim they are equal opportunity employers, but the entire board of directors and all senior management are still white males, and all of the minorities are relegated to "disposable" positions.


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## SBJones (Jun 13, 2011)

I think why you don't see female thugs is that it's just not believable.  If you're in the business of thuggery, one of the most powerful weapons thugs have is intimidation.  I don't care how brutish the woman is, she isn't ever going to intimidate the cast from Sons of Anarchy.  If it ever were to happen it would throw us out of the story the same if Dr. Who dropped into an episode at random.  Also as a society we don't put, women to be in those rolls.

Most women in the villainous roll over come the brute gap with training, seduction, stealth and cunning.  But now they are not a thug, they are the mini-boss and their own character.

That's not to say you can't have a woman thug, but you're going to need something in place to pull it off.


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## Claudia King (Oct 27, 2012)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> So for me, the lack of generic female goons is way, way, WAY down on the food chain. In fact, rushing to encourage female goons may actually do more harm than good by allowing writers to "get away" with continuing to ignore fleshed out female characters by simply saying "hey, the women get beat up just like the men!" It's like companies that claim they are equal opportunity employers, but the entire board of directors and all senior management are still white males, and all of the minorities are relegated to "disposable" positions.


Mhm, I totally agree, at this point I feel like adding in female goons just for the sake of it is going to feel like a forced appeal to some kind of "equal opportunities" mentality rather than, you know, actually being something that services the story in any meaningful way.

My beef is more with the use of violence in general, though. I actually _like_ that certain types of violence are still shocking to me. When used effectively it's one of the most powerful storytelling tools in a writer's arsenal. I really don't want it to be diluted down to the point where I don't care about _anyone_ getting punched in the face any more, because there's nothing more boring than violence happening for the sake of violence.


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## Sandra K. Williams (Jun 15, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> So that got me wondering if anyone here included female super-minor enemies in their stories.


Yes.

There are two peoples in my trilogy. One comes from a tradition of being used for labor, and the women of that people are used to doing any jobs that need to be done; they didn't have an option of saying they weren't strong enough to do it. The other people are nonhuman, and females and males are differentiated by eye color, not strength and size.



Vaalingrade said:


> I use 25% female minions because I [...] want to ease some of the less receptive readers into it.


I've read that when 25% of the characters are female, people (probably men only, but I can't remember for sure) think the cast is mostly female.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Well, from a purely sociological level, women flunkies _would_ be rare. The last data I'm seen on the issue put women at only 11% of the violent offenders [...] Let me see "normal" women who aren't too-stupid-to-live in roles as doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, pilots, bus drivers, etc. etc. etc.


_Rare_ doesn't mean _zero_. A writer who includes female goons as a matter of course (rather than a titillation factor) might be expected to include women of all types.



SarahCarter said:


> So if you have a female character that's kick-arse enough to take out a guy (either physically, or with some sort of supernatural powers), then why waste her on a small part?


So that the only female in the book isn't exceptional and not like all those other typical (read "worthless") girls.



Vaalingrade said:


> Serious question: if the world is constructed anyway and not part of Earth's cultural history and its effects on physiology, why are the women still inherently weaker physically?


Laziness. Inability to see the constraints we've absorbed. Unconscious satisfaction with (some of) our privileges. Unwillingness to challenge our beliefs. Et cetera.



brendajcarlton said:


> I don't find this trend of portraying women as testosterone fueled adrenaline junkies as non-sexist.


Not sure a goon is necessarily a testosterone-fueled adrenaline junkie. Maybe she never got an education and couldn't get a job, or she did get an education but still her wages were dirt-low. Her neighbor across the hall, or her cousin maybe, or even her parents, asked for her help one time. She didn't know what she was getting into, exactly, but the pay was good. The pay was good enough she could buy some of the things she'd been doing without, and eventually she quit the other job - if she ever had one - and focused on goonery.

It's far more sexist to always make the poor woman a hooker. Yeah, that shows some imagination. Oh, and oodles of sensitivity. Thank you, unnamed author, for pandering to your female readers by including a prostitute as your only female character!



Claudia King said:


> We are not used to seeing casual violence against women in most mainstream media.


I hear about plenty of violence against women in TV shows and on the news. It's there.

(Hmm. Would I rather be killed by being run through with a sword by someone on the other team, or by being beaten to mush by my husband after filing for divorce? Decisions, decisions.)

How many mysteries start with the lovingly detailed murder of a nubile woman? How many books have the hero's dead raped wife/fiancee/mom/sister as his primary motivation? Snort.

It's hard work to not be sexist when writing - I have to guard against it all the time and still slip up - but it makes a better book, one that provides a glimpse of how things could be.


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## Guest (Dec 9, 2013)

Sandra K. Williams said:


> Not sure a goon is necessarily a testosterone-fueled adrenaline junkie. Maybe she never got an education and couldn't get a job, or she did get an education but still her wages were dirt-low. Her neighbor across the hall, or her cousin maybe, or even her parents, asked for her help one time. She didn't know what she was getting into, exactly, but the pay was good. The pay was good enough she could buy some of the things she'd been doing without, and eventually she quit the other job - if she ever had one - and focused on goonery.


Nobody thinks about goons that much. If you have given the goon that much of a backstory, it is no longer a goon. It is a character. A minor character, perhaps. But a character nonetheless. I think this is what some people are missing. The purpose of a goon is faceless cannon fodder. Something random to be overcome by the hero. Replace the word "goon" with "goblin" or "droid" or any other generic monster for the hero to beat up on and loot. If it has a sympathetic backstory, it is no longer a goon. You aren't supposed to have empathy for the goons or worry about their neighbor or cousin or parents. They are faceless goons.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

That's... kind of the point. If we're not supposed to over-think goonery, then why are we trying to read '-4STR' into every woman who answers the call to the thug life? She obviously got the job, so she's good enough for it and that's the end of it.

Okay, well she's not good enough for it, but neither are her male coworkers. They'll all be hanging upside down from a lamppost in about thirty seconds.


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

So, because of this thread, I totally made my no-name police officer questioning my MC a female. Character had maybe five lines, and I thought, "Why are you automatically making this person male?" 



Claudia King said:


> My beef is more with the use of violence in general, though. I actually _like_ that certain types of violence are still shocking to me. When used effectively it's one of the most powerful storytelling tools in a writer's arsenal. I really don't want it to be diluted down to the point where I don't care about _anyone_ getting punched in the face any more, because there's nothing more boring than violence happening for the sake of violence.


I guess I think that violence becomes shocking when consequences are shown and it's done to characters we care about.

People get desensitized to violence when it's all blam-blam-blam twenty people died, and no one give any lip service to their families or the people who are mourning them or anything like that.

I watch a lot of horror movies, and there's lots and lots of really graphic violence done to women in those movies. I don't know how shocking that really is these days. (?) In a horror movie, it's no big deal when one of the red shirts get hurt or killed, but when the final girl gets badly injured, it's very, very upsetting. That's because that's the character we care about and identify with.


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## Guest (Dec 9, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> That's... kind of the point. If we're not supposed to over-think goonery, then why are we trying to read '-4STR' into every woman who answers the call to the thug life? She obviously got the job, so she's good enough for it and that's the end of it.


The point of a generic description is that it is short hand. In fiction, there is a difference between being "real" and being "realistic." Anything in your book that does not conform to the generic norm will be read as being important.

For example, my detective is investigating a murder in a trailer park in rural Kentucky. He goes into the trailer park and is attacked by a group of goons. By saying "trailer park" and "rural Kentucky" I have established a certain shorthand. If I then describe the goons as all being first generation Japanese immigrants, I completely throw off the reader. Not because Japanese people can't be thugs. But because I set a certain set of generic parameters and then broke them.

Another example, my detective is investigating the murder of an illegal immigrant in New Mexico and goes to a farm where the murder occurred to question any migrant workers. He gets attacked by a group of goons. The goons turn out to be illegal immigrants from...Germany. Now of course, it is reasonable that there could be illegal migrant workers in New Mexico who are German citizens. But it isn't normal or even remotely common. So if I call that out in fiction, readers will assume it has some significance.

And in both of the above cases, if I maintain the norm for all but, say, 20% of the goons, I throw the reader off even more. In my trailer park, in ten goons attack my detective but 2 of I specifically identify as Japanese, the reader is going to be wondering why I made a point of identifying two of the goons as Japanese. With my illegal immigrants, if I specifically call out one immigrant as from German and one from France, the reader is going to be stopped in his or her tracks and wondering if there is some special meaning.

It's the same thing with female goons. The fact that they may rarely exist in the real world is not the point. In fiction, when we draw attention to something that is statistically rare, we give it meaning. The fact that there are female goons in the real world is not the point. The moment you specifically call out the one or two female goons in your group of males, you are shining a light and saying "LOOK, THIS IS IMPORTANT!" even if you think you are just filling a quota.

Unless, of course, you have already set parameters in the world-building that would say otherwise. For example. if my story is in some alternate reality where Kentucky was settled by Japanese after World War II, then I've set up the reader to expect the people in the trailer park to be Japanese. If my alternate Earth had a large Japanese population in Kentucky, then it won't seem out of place to mention that some of the goons are Japanese.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

First off, they're not as statistically rare as people keep saying. Women tend not to get punished in line with men for violent crime and gang activity because, well, people even in this day and age refuse to believe that them down to earth and docile women folk would cut a dude for his wallet.

Just look at all the recent 'knockout game' videos to see how much 'less' inclined to random violence teen girls are.

The argument here (besides '-4STR', which apparently also applies to _guns and magic_) is a lot like the 'white gangbanger' argument I remember from the turn of this century. 'Oh no, it's _totally_ not realistic to show white gangbangers.' Not because they don't actually exist but because a big chunk of the audience doesn't _want_ them to exist.

In that respect it's kind of like how people disbelieve it when a horse's footsteps don't sound like coconuts being clopped together.

*Edit:* Wait a minute. I just processed that. The number of women who might engage in violent crime in the entire world is just as low as the number of first year Japanese immigrants doing the same in Alabama trailer parks?

'first year Japanese immigrant in Alabama in a trailer park is pretty freaking specific. Way more specific than 'woman who exists'. Also, why would we be treated to a random thug's history of immigration?


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

brendajcarlton said:


> There is lots of room in the world for all kinds of books, and I wouldn't tell anyone what to write or to read, but that being said, I don't find this trend of portraying women as testosterone fueled adrenaline junkies as non-sexist. It always feels to me like people are saying women are OK as long as they act just like a certain sort of man. I'd like to see more women that are neither men with boobs or sappy schoolgirls mooning over unavailable men. Certainly most of us are neither of those. Just my 2 cents.


So you are assuming that a woman who can fight is a "testosterone fueled adrenaline junky" or a "man with boobs"?

You might want to think again. This thread made me think of my 8 year old granddaughter who is the sweetest, gentlest little girl you could ever meet, but has been a pretty serious martial arts student since she was four years old. Anyone who managed to get her into a fight would be in for a very, very nasty surprise. (They are taught to not seek violance though)

All my fantasies have female kick-*ss female protagonists. Not ONE is a "testosterone fueled adrenaline junky". Thank you very much.

ETA: There ARE female cops (who at times do violent cop-type things) out there. There ARE female violent criminals out there. And there are sweet-lookng women who have learned to fight and can kick-*ss if you get them cornered. Simple fact.

The "weak little woman" myth somehow overlooks that much of the hard physical labour in the world has always been done by women.


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## Sarma (Oct 11, 2013)

I think it has something to do with goons and cannon fodder typically being dumb. IRL, if they want to last long, violent women need to be intelligent, I think that's why you see them more often as the big bad instead of the red shirt. They can't rely on brute strength, so they have to use their heads. Sure, men are stronger, but that's why we're often quicker, more cunning, and not too proud to mess you up when you sleep. Or eat   People tend to think of violence as hand to hand combat, but a lot of it happens when backs are turned. Big dumb oaf cannon fodder charging in seems like a male role to me, but add magic/ranged weapons and a society with limited options and anything goes.


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## brendajcarlton (Sep 29, 2012)

> First off, they're not as statistically rare as people keep saying. *Women tend not to get punished in line with men for violent crime and gang activity* because, well, people even in this day and age refuse to believe that them down to earth and docile women folk would cut a dude for his wallet.


I have to respectfully disagree. I met my fair share of female goons in the high school girls locker room, so yes they definitely do exist, but the ones who perform their own violence are smaller numbers, because many would rather let the guys do the dirty work and then share in the loot in exchange for sex. Looking back with the benefit of much I have learned since then I would say that most of the ones I encountered had borderline personality disorder or were outright psychopaths. But the part I have to disagree with is that they tend not to get punished in line with men for violent crime. The truly violent ones were in jail by the time they were twenty if not before because they did not have the network of people covering for them that the guys did. They p*ssed off all the other girls too, who were more than happy to rat them out.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

From what I read, female bangers are more likely to be offered and to take plea deals to narc on their compatriots.


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## brendajcarlton (Sep 29, 2012)

> So you are assuming that a woman who can fight is a "testosterone fueled adrenaline junky" or a "man with boobs"?


No, that's not what I meant and not what I am assuming. What I was objecting to was writing them that way.


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## Lummox JR (Jul 1, 2012)

In _The Affix_ I have a pretty big number of "villains", whose degree of evil varies considerably; they go from interested parties to out-and-out villains. There are two interested parties in the book who are female, one of which is more of a protagonist and the other mostly a good egg who's willing to cut a few moral corners. The second was really fun to write--partly because of her great frustration with the MC's flippant attitude, as she meets him at a turning point where he slowly gains more control over his irrational situation. I've wanted to write her into a sequel at some point as the main character.

I have half an idea in mind as a sequel to my WIP, however, and a female villain or henchman would fall very nicely into that scheme. This being more of a medieval world, the setting is already very male-dominated and a little more balance there would be terrific. Mostly I think it'd just be a fun challenge to see if I could write a female character in such a role.

Still I'd have a hard time making a female villain unsympathetic, if only because I don't even like to write any villains that way. My most evil villains always have a reason for what they do, even if it's objectively stupid, and how they approach moral decisions makes perfect sense to them. Henchmen I tend to humanize even more. Writing a female henchman or villain who's competent, intelligent, and poses a huge challenge to my protagonists is something I can do; writing one who's pure evil would be much, much harder. Bad guys who are in it only for power tend to be a challenge to write in a way that isn't cartoonish.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I am not positive but I do believe a 100 pound woman with a cast iron skillet could easily take out a 300 pound sleeping male.    though she better make that first whack count.


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## Guest (Dec 9, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> First off, they're not as statistically rare as people keep saying. Women tend not to get punished in line with men for violent crime and gang activity because, well, people even in this day and age refuse to believe that them down to earth and docile women folk would cut a dude for his wallet.


The actual research suggests otherwise. Women are more likely be be charged with a violent crime in situations where a man would have been sent home to cool off or hit with a lesser charge. Two guys get into a fist fight at a bar, the bouncer throws them out and sends them home. Two women get into a fight, and they both get slapped with assault charges.



> Just look at all the recent 'knockout game' videos to see how much 'less' inclined to random violence teen girls are.


Contrived social media is not research. Particularly when you realize how much of it is in fact contrived and staged. using viral media as evidence of anything is not a good judge, because a single act is often made to seem more widespread by virtue of the fact that the same scene is reposted over and over. And also because much of it IS faked. (i.e. like most of the "waitress getting no tip but instead being insulted" viral photos. If you go strictly based on the volume of social media on people writing "gay" or "N*****" on receipts, you would think the world was overrun with racist homophobes. But then you realize that all of the recent viral posts were actually faked.



> The argument here (besides '-4STR', which apparently also applies to _guns and magic_) is a lot like the 'white gangbanger' argument I remember from the turn of this century. 'Oh no, it's _totally_ not realistic to show white gangbangers.' Not because they don't actually exist but because a big chunk of the audience doesn't _want_ them to exist.


No, the argument is that what is "real" doesn't actually always work in fiction.

Let's talk about something similar, such as dialogue. Think about how people talk in the real world. Most people can't go two sentences without "um" "er" "ah" or some other filler word. Most of us spend a great deal of time saying absolutely nothing. If you wrote dialogue as if it was spoken by real people, your dialogue would be boring or unreadable. So we write "realistic" dialogue that trims out the ums and ahs and ers and filler. And when we DO use those filler words, we do it for IMPACT. In normal conversation, people use filler words all the time. But in FICTION, we only add those filler words to dialogue for specific effects. In the real world, a very confident person might still use filler words when giving a presentation in front of the office, because most of us are not trained in public speaking and thus use filler words all the time, and nobody would think twice about it. But when we write out those filler words, it indicates someone who is unsure or nervous. My boyfriend has a habit of muttering when he has to explain something. If something takes more that a minute, he mutters. But in fiction, when we have someone mutter, it is for impact or to convey a specific character trait. We don't have them "mutter" every sentence of dialogue. We have them mutter when the muttering matters and we want to draw attention to it.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Are you arguing for or against them at this point?

Either women are in fact adorable, docile creatures with -4 strength that just don't do serious crime all that often and all the cultural myths Gor novel readers so love are correct.

Or women are just as capable of violent crime as anyone else and it's just reader expectations we're catering to be keeping goonery as a boy's club.

If it's the former I'm going to need time to formulate some mockery for the idea and to dig out the actual research that disproves it.

If it's the latter, then I'm really doing a service to the readers by disabusing them of that BS.

*Edit:*

Actually, whether or not 'real' women can be mooks is completely irrelevant because the idea of mooks is a completely fictional construct in that the reader and author already knows that these are people who will lose no matter what as a direct result of genre conventions and plot armor.

Even the idea that they need to be 'capable' of beating a man is anathema to the essence of gooning because no, this person is not capable of beating this particular main character (male or female). That is literally the point.


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

brendajcarlton said:


> No, that's not what I meant and not what I am assuming. What I was objecting to was writing them that way.


I agree that they shouldn't be written that way, but they aren't necessarily. Many people write well rounded "kick-ass" female protagonists. I think Elizabeth Moon really started the trend to believable female 'tough guys'.

If you aren't acquainted with the many writers who do so, you've missed some great writing.


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

JRTomlin said:


> I think Elizabeth Moon really started the trend to believable female 'tough guys'.


Just a quick hooray for Elizabeth Moon!


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## Guest (Dec 10, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> Are you arguing for or against them at this point?


I'm saying that the entire concept is a contrivance that does nothing to actually improve the portrayal of women in fiction and allows people to fill fabricated quotas of women with cardboard cutouts without having to think about creating "real" women characters. It is a false attempt at equality that does nothing to portray women as real entities, but instead merely replaces an unimportant, forgettable generic male character with an unimportant, forgettable generic female and pretends it is done in the name of "equality." It's cover for people who want to claim they have "plenty" of women in their fiction without actually having to create women characters. If the characters are nameless goons with no value, the entire notion of whether or not some of them should be women is a false argument that allows a writer to feign feminist sensibilities without having to worry about all those pesky real issues like character development.

The world does not need female goons. Nor will the presence of them improve the nature of how women are portrayed in fiction. It becomes merely another easy out for male writers. Who needs to add female police officers, or doctors, or politicians, or business owners, or generals, or pilots, or scientists, or computer programmers, or any sort of woman in a position of authority, power, or self-reliance when you can fill the "woman" quota by adding 20% female goons? it isn't about "-4 Str". It's about not tolerating a lame attempt at faux equality by accepting 20% female goons as progress. It is not progressive to make 20% of your non-speaking, nameless, non-valued, throwaway characters female.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Okay, like BOTH of my series have a 70% female main cast.

So yeah, no, this isn't about a quota.


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## Sandra K. Williams (Jun 15, 2013)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> The point of a generic description is that it is short hand. In fiction, there is a difference between being "real" and being "realistic." Anything in your book that does not conform to the generic norm will be read as being important. [...] The fact that there are female goons in the real world is not the point. The moment you specifically call out the one or two female goons in your group of males, you are shining a light and saying "LOOK, THIS IS IMPORTANT!" even if you think you are just filling a quota.


If the presence of female goons draws the reader out of the story, I have to assume that either (a) the writing is heavy-handed or (b) the reader has a whole raft of preconceptions that I prefer not to perpetuate.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> I'm saying that the entire concept is a contrivance that does nothing to actually improve the portrayal of women in fiction and allows people to fill fabricated quotas of women with cardboard cutouts without having to think about creating "real" women characters.


There seems to be an assumption that a book containing female goons has no other female characters. I don't think the OP said the only female characters were goons.

Including women as a matter of course in all areas of the world - goonery, business, the trades, home life - is not a contrivance. It's the world I happen to inhabit. Women's contributions are routinely made invisible. Using only male characters as a generic default for any character role continues an offensive practice.


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## Lummox JR (Jul 1, 2012)

Sandra K. Williams said:


> Including women as a matter of course in all areas of the world - goonery, business, the trades, home life - is not a contrivance. It's the world I happen to inhabit. Women's contributions are routinely made invisible. Using only male characters as a generic default for any character role continues an offensive practice.


I like the idea of female goons not because of tokenism but because it's a thing a lot of people simply never think to do. Goons are such nondescript characters that people tend to write them for type. While they may be overwhelmingly male, writing anything against type is often far more interesting.

I'm like this with names. In my first book I deliberately allowed for overlap in some characters' first names, because in any decent-sized group that always happens; I just made sure to avoid any ambiguity, since as in real life people tend to resolve that with nicknames, initials, etc. In my second book, three of the protagonists have four-letter M names: Matt, Mike, and Mark. At first it was not a deliberate choice, but I realized as I went along that this kind of thing can easily happen in real life, so why not use it to make the story feel more believable?


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## Claudia King (Oct 27, 2012)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> The world does not need female goons. Nor will the presence of them improve the nature of how women are portrayed in fiction. It becomes merely another easy out for male writers. Who needs to add female police officers, or doctors, or politicians, or business owners, or generals, or pilots, or scientists, or computer programmers, or any sort of woman in a position of authority, power, or self-reliance when you can fill the "woman" quota by adding 20% female goons? it isn't about "-4 Str". It's about not tolerating a lame attempt at faux equality by accepting 20% female goons as progress. It is not progressive to make 20% of your non-speaking, nameless, non-valued, throwaway characters female.


I'm inclined to agree. Outside of specific stories where women taking up the mantle of generic thugs is relevant to the setting and tone, I think it's pretty much a non-issue.
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not going to kill your story having a few females doing the dirty work, but neither does it add anything meaningful if these characters are just generic throwaways, and it runs the risk of making readers raise an eyebrow at things that aren't supposed to evoke that response.


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## Guest (Dec 10, 2013)

Vaalingrade said:


> Okay, like BOTH of my series have a 70% female main cast.
> 
> So yeah, no, this isn't about a quota.


And I do think that I said in like my first or second post in this thread that, in your case, where your entire setting is built up around the fact that females tend to have these powers, then it makes perfect sense. But in a generic sense, when the author has not provided any worldbuilding and is merely relying on people to use established expectations, then my comments stand.

You asked a question about general terms. My point was if your world building calls for it, then it makes sense. But if there is no world building basis for it, at best it is a quota and at worst it will just draw the reaser out because they will be looking for some meaning that is not there.


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