Women Aren't Just People & George R. R. Martin's An Ass

This picture made the rounds on the ol' webs a good while ago, but I've now officially seen it enough times to snap.

I dislike George R. R. Martin's writing intensely. For those not in the know, he's the Game of Thrones guy. His bone-deep amorality means that he's taking seven volumes (or whatever it's set to be, at least he's stopping, which is better than Robert Jordan could do) not to tell a story, but to report fake news.

Stories follow arcs, have a purpose. What Martin does is tell what happened. In a fantasy world, granted, but he's just reporting the news. Maybe I'll be generous and call his novels A History.

Authors are praised for writing anything well outside their self-referential frame. Are you a white man who wrote black characters that resonated well with black readers? Praise. Are you a German who wrote Italians well? Praise. Are you a hippie who wrote engineers well? Praise.

Men and women are different. And anyone who reads stories knows that writers often struggle writing characters of the opposite sex.

There's actually a good bit of truth in what Martin says, but the leveling instinct behind it is what gets my goat. Women are different from men. Women are joyfully different from men. It is repulsive to think that there are only humans with penises and humans with vaginas. It is barely adequate to believe that there is only male and female.

Instead, gloriously, there is man and woman. Man, and all that he is. Woman, and all that she is.

I suggest that Martin writes females well because he debases them. He is, at least, fair-minded. His writing debases humans, not just females. He does to all humans what Melvin Udall did only to women. So his males and females read equally well, which is to say, terribly.

Post by Joffre The Giant.