Gender and Fiction
On 8th March Ayush Mukherjee @its_ayush_here conducted a tweetchat on Gender and Fiction.
The chat began by raising the question whether gender representation is a concern in fiction when fiction isn’t even true. The audience expressed their views about how fiction influences a large mass of people especially young adults. At times people become the character they read, which in turn gives rise to a lot of stereotypes. Hence, gender representation is an important concern. The second important question raised was about which gendered tropes concern the consumer most. The most common answers included misrepresentation of women in advertisements, objectifying her body, creating male characters that become successful leader, etc. Women are often represented as a damsel in distress and their true destiny was finding their prince charming. If more world dominating characters were women, it would instil some confidence in young girls. The third questioned how can authors be encouraged to write more sensitive fiction. Reaching out to the authors, creating mandate laws regarding representation of genders, creating trends that inspire authors and finally critical analysis of works of fiction could encourage the authors. The next question was about how audiences can be encouraged to read more sensitive fiction. To this the audience suggested ways like carrying such fiction around in their circles, spreading a good word, publicizing them in book clubs, providing them in school library, conducting debates and competitions on these books and lastly creating a clean mindset would help in more creation of sensitive fiction. The chat ended with asking the question what gender equations the audience would want in in a fictional piece.
A tweetchat by Ayush!
