Telling people what to think

One of the screenplays I wrote – a story a producer hired me to write – recently faced evaluation by various governmental committees to determine its worth for funding. One of the committees makes you sit in front of eight people in a big meeting room to defend your piece. The other committee – graced with a smaller budget – sends a single person to meet you and talk with you about the screenplay.

That person turned out to be an author I admire, so I felt more nervous with him than I did when I had to face the eight-person committee. He was an anglo who spoke much better French than most francophones I know, and when he commended me for the quality of my written English – which he said was unusual for someone born and raised en fran�ais – I felt the proud weight of a tiara suddenly appear on top of my head, as if the hottest boy in school had just pronounced me prom queen.

And then he said that one of the reviewers who had read the screenplay – a woman – did not like it very much. Most of her objections had to do with the fact that the parents of the main character I created didn’t know how to raise a child and had done a poor job at making him a good person with strong moral values. That was the whole point of the story, of course, and this man understood it well, so I was very grateful when he told me that he had chosen to disregard the comments of that reviewer.

He then proceeded to tell me that he had enjoyed the screenplay and was surprised to see, after he had read it, that a woman was its author. Why? I gathered, from what he explained, that it was because the script was unsentimental, didn’t try to excuse its characters for their decisions and didn’t punish them at the end. Oh, and of course, because of its subject matter, all centered around men and technology.

I was not insulted by that remark, quite the opposite. Not writing « like a girl » or like what we think of girl style and themes was a compliment to me. Should it have been? Should I have felt the need to defend the writers of my gender more? I would have done so, in another situation, but I trusted the intelligence of that man and understood what he meant. (I guess it also helped that he had given me a big compliment a few minutes before.)

So what’s this all about? What’s my point on this breezy Saturday morning where I should be outside exercising and losing weight instead of worrying about writing like a girl?

After the Bookslut people recommended A.L. Kennedy so highly, I decided to give her a try. The only book of hers I could find was Indelible Acts. Ouch. I’m stunned. Her writing is throwing me on the floor and makes me feel so humble about my own abilities that it hurts a bit and I have to take her short stories one at a time. But it’s the kind of hurt that feels good. The one you know you’ll want to inflict on yourself again.

I looked her up on the Web this morning and found her Web site, full of her sharpness and attitude and striking humour and words so true they make your eyes go wide. I also saw that she was asked by The Guardian, along with two other women, to write about women’s writing for a Web article.

I recently raised similar issues on my blog about the writing of women, and how women readers read men’s novel but men don’t read women authors. It prompted Rachel to say that her worst nightmare was to be revealed and branded as a female author. I didn’t fully share her feeling but I understood it quite well. I took a quick survey at the books I had purchased and realized that I mostly read novels by women. Why was that? Was it because I somehow recognized myself in women’s writing? Did I need that? Do I read to find out more about myself or do I read to explore other worlds?

I love the way A.L. Kennedy puts it in the Guardian article (which I strongly encourage you to read, especially if you don’t care for women’s writing, whatever that is).

Which brings me to the heart of what I find so offensive about the Women’s Writing juggernaut – it’s about telling people what to think. Possibly you approve of that, but I have to say it gives me a fucking pain. Some of you may now be offended, because I used the word fucking. Some of you may think that was inappropriate for a woman writer. Some of you may have been offended because I didn’t use it earlier and therefore showed myself to be a passive, wishy-washy girl, unworthy of my Suffragette forebears. The thing is – it’s my choice to use whatever words I want, to say whatever I want. You need not like it, pay for it, or read it, but I do have the right to say it. If we lose from our literature the essential freedom of communication between individuals, if we lose the ability of one human being to tell the truth to another, the private truth of our senses, our emotions, our dreams, if we lose the freedom to enter into the consciousness of others – male others, female others, dead others, happy others, sad others, unimaginable others, others like ourselves – then we have given away its soul.

Ask yourself – do you, as a reader, want limits set on the subject matter and tone of your thoughts? Do you want those limits set on the fiction you read? Do you want those limits set on the women who write for you? Or are you helpless to select books according to your taste and mood, so that you need strict censorship and firm advice? Could you bear it if there were books out there that you didn’t like and don’t wish to read, could you let them exist anyway? Has your life been unremittingly happy? Do you want your books to be? Have you ever been ill, betrayed, annoyed, alone? Do you want books to counteract that, or to give you company in that, or both? Personally, I’d like you to have both and more than that – books that go beyond any anticipation. I’d like any author of any sex to be able to write to the limits of their ability in the hope of somehow saying something to you that wouldn’t be a waste of your time. Beyond that? I’d like to make absolutely no comment about the matters that might pass between your chosen authors and you, because anything else would be a grotesque intrusion that diminishes us both. Please – no more about Women’s Writing.