That is, why would a lesbian write almost exclusively about men? Seriously, I have hardly any female characters in any of my book, and I'm afraid that those I do have, I don't treat very well. They're dead, or they're the baddies, or they're the long-suffering wives / girlfriends / hags of the men around whom the action revolves.
I know I should be more "right-on, sista", especially being part of the rug munching fraternity. Sorry, sorority. It's not that I don't like women - that's the exact opposite of the truth. But I do feel guilty occasionally that I don't give them more time in my writing. There has been a lot of guff written in the past about lesbians writing about male experience, just look at the (admittedly, few) serious critiques of Mary Renault's
oeuvre. The suspicion abounds that the lesbian who glorifies male experience must want to be a man.
This, I would like to state for the record, is so far from the truth as to be laughable. Thanks to my (perhaps, too) understanding parents, I basically grew up a boy. Don't believe me? Well they had various artists record it for posterity. Here is me aged 5:
Yes, I was a surly child. Actually, I'm frowning because I was watching the TV, which was the only way to keep me still. Already, I hated having long hair. My little sister has always had glorious long locks; until I was about eleven I always had a crew cut. Check me out when I was ten:
Not even my friends recognise me in this picture. Personally, I think I was quite a handsome young man. I was often told so by strangers, who usually freaked out and looked pityingly at my parents when I turned around and angrily insisted, "I'm not a boy, I'm a girl." It didn't help that I was usually wearing my favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sweater and was fishing at the time.
My parents' patience was rewarded when I turned eleven. I was coaxed into growing my hair, partly because I had been asked to be a bridesmaid at my cousin's wedding, and partly because I was going to "big school", and I don't think my parents were quite ready for me to end up on a register. Look how I turned out, age 15:
Quite the girly girl. My hair was halfway down my back at that age, and it pretty much stays that way. I hate the hairdresser, and if I am coaxed into going once a year, that's it. I had my annual haircut in June this year, thirteen months after the one previous. Before that, I hadn't had my hair cut in over two years. It was ridiculously long. These days I try to keep it just above my shoulders, and usually think that it's about that length until I have to move it out of the way before sitting down. Then I huff and puff and go back to the hairdressers and draw a crowd who all stand around and gasp as I say "I want you to cut off about twenty-five inches." Last time I made the mistake of telling them that it had been a year since my last haircut and I was promptly surrounded by about six hairdressers, all vying with each other to find a split end. I kid you not. (They failed, by the way. Proof positive that if you don't constantly dye and blowdry and straighten your hair it can be perfectly healthy all on its own for years on end).
The point I am making, in a very roundabout way, is that if I wanted to be a man, I would be. I do not and am not. I am not, admittedly, the most girly girl in the world, but I'm hardly a bulldyke either. Honestly, you might as well have a boyfriend as date some of the women that I have met in gaybars in my time. I am feminine, and I like my women to be so, too.
So my exclusion or omission of female characters is nothing to do with any internalised gender issues that I've got, or even anything to do with the type of women that I'm attracted to. Admittedly I have far more male friends than female, most of them gay. Out of my closest friends, only two are girls (straight). I only hang around with one straight man socially, the rest are gay. And after living for three years in Manchester, that's a lot of gay men that I know. So perhaps I write what I know. My day job is in construction (the office, I'd like to point out. I am not a hod carrier, no matter what my best friend tells you). I work with two women (soon to be one), and fifteen men. Day in, day out I am surrounded by men, both professionally and socially.
I like men. I just don't like them. I am not one of these political lesbians who thinks that they need to hit back at "the man". The world would be a very boring place without men in it. Men are, in my experience, much more easy-going than women, much more difficult to offend, easier to win round when you do offend them, and less likely to hold a grudge. If a man thinks you're being a dickhead, he'll tell you. He might even hit you. But then he'll get over it. A woman will seeth and plot endlessly and never, ever forgive and forget, no matter what she tells you. I know, I am one.
I also understand men. Without bragging, I am very good at "getting" people, I can usually tell exactly what makes someone tick within an hour of meeting them. I usually have people sussed a bit too well, if anything. People distrust what I know about them. And, oddly enough, I have always had more sympathy with men. Perhaps I'm jaded. I have met far too many women in my time who will let the men (or women) in their lives treat them like doormats and walk all over them, and still go back for more. I have no patience with endless rounds of self-pity when I can see the pattern a mile off. Your boyfriend cheated on you? For the tenth time this year? And you don't understand why? Really??? Pur-lease.
I know it's easy to stand on the sidelines and judge. Anyone can give advice from the outside. But there has to come a point where people grow up, stop blaming themselves, or the "slappers" that keep falling into their boyfriends' laps, and take some responsibility for their own happiness. I can kinda understand why the men cheat. Now I don't condone cheating, I think it's a lazy and cowardly thing to do. If a relationship's not working then end it, that's my philosophy. But presented with someone who will let you stamp all over her and still come back for more, the temptation to see just how far you can push it must be massive. It becomes an interesting social experiment, and certainly livens up life if your relationship is boring the hell out of you and you're half-looking for an out anyway.
Now I sound like a misogynist. I'm not. Like I said, I'm jaded. Men are just more interesting than women, or at least, the men in my life are more interesting than the women. And maybe that's the problem. When I think of an interesting character, I always think of a man. Of course, male experience is more conducive to good fiction. Men are traditionally the ones that go out and do things. Men are the ones who - traditionally - have the greater burden of responsibility. They are also expected to maintain a stiff upper lip and not let their emotions get the best of them. Ergo a man who is struggling to find his place in the world, or to contain some emotion that is threatening to overwhelm him, is going to be more interesting by default. If a woman falls in love with someone that she can't be with, it stretches credulity to imagine that she just bottles it up and doesn't go and sob with her girlfriends over a bottle of wine (whine?) and let it all out. The kind of inner conflict that is so much a part of writing entertainingly about men is negated if one's character is female.
My male characters are a mass of contradictions: they combine strength and vulnerability, power and helplessness. There are reasons why certain images are cliched, like the crying vampire or the brooding cowboy. The dichotomy between strength and weakness is, and has always been, a source of fascination. It is no accident that these cliched personas are never female.
There is, perhaps, one more reason why I don't write about women. As a gay woman, writing about men (usually men who are attracted to other men) I can write about queer experience without it becoming personal. My characters can do anything - literally,
anything - and all eyes won't swivel back to me. If I write a BDSM sex scene, for example, (which I never have, BTW) and it's between two women, I know exactly what's coming next. All my friends will start looking at me differently, and think "so
that's what she's in to". I can explore the gamut of human emotions and experience without it ever being perceived as being
my emotions, or
my experience. By writing about my polar opposite, but yet still a minority that I understand and belong to, I can write with both authority and authorial distance. And perhaps that's the best reason of all why my characters are male.
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Kate Aaron is an author of queer and fantasy novels and short stories. Find all her books on Amazon now http://www.amazon.com/Kate-Aaron/e/B0058DL8A0/ 
