I’m a Girl Who Only Writes Male Protagonists, and I Finally Asked Myself Why

Feminism in the streets, internalized sexism in the writing portfolio

BY: TANISHA AGARWAL

My favourite piece of writing advice comes from a dead white guy. Say the name JD Salinger to a room of progressive young English teachers and you will likely be met with rolled eyes and frustration over the indie-kid obsession with this writer of The Catcher in the Rye and other stories of sad, alienated young men. But in Salinger’s novella Seymour: An Introduction, the main character gives his brother a writing tip that always stuck with me: “If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind…and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read…You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself.”

When someone asks me what my favourite book is, a few titles come to mind right away. Last year, a friend asked me to recommend a book to pass time during the lockdown—“preferably by a woman of colour,” she said. My usual suggestions of Salinger and Fitzgerald died in my throat. I racked my brain but nothing came to mind. Since then, I’ve taken it upon myself to make my bookshelf more diverse. I seek out bestselling BIPOC authors and actually open those Goodreads newsletter emails and click on the links promising to introduce me to “17 Fantasy Series With Queer Protagonists,” all in an attempt to be more inclusive in my reading. I even started a journal to keep track of my reading stats—how many female authors I read, how many POC, etc.—like the obsessive nerd that I am. However, while I was making a conscious effort to read more diverse narratives, I was yet to reflect on those I create.

Photo courtesy of Penguin Books

 I’ve been writing stories since I was eight, graduating from adventure tales in the back of school notebooks to high fantasy drafts stored in a desktop folder (titled, naturally, ‘garbage’). I don’t have a preferred genre or point of view in my writing, and I like the challenge of switching between different types of narratives. But when I pulled out the notebooks and trawled through all the Word documents, I realised that my stories did have one thing in common. They were all missing one person—the female protagonist.

At this point, I should clarify that my writing does not exclude female characters altogether. On the contrary, it has many of them, each with their own personalities and conflicts, which I spent hours developing and daydreaming about. They’re just never quite front and centre. This discovery left the feminist in me appalled, not to mention confused. Mostly, though, I was ashamed.

 So of course, I decided to write an article about it.

Clearly, there was a lot to unpack here, starting with why I avoid writing female leads. It’s possible that my focus on male characters is a form of wish fulfilment, wherein I write them doing things I have never been able to do. They can take walks by themselves at night, stay out late, and take public transport—everything I have always been told is off-limits for me by virtue of my gender. The freedom afforded to boys in most cultures, especially in the Indian society that is often the setting for my stories, lends itself better to a fantasy plot. After all, it’s difficult to go on spontaneous adventures when you have a 10 pm curfew. When I want to stay out past that, I have to inform my parents days in advance, tell them exactly where and with whom I’ll be, and be home not a minute past an agreed-upon time unless I want to be barraged with calls and upset texts. Sure, I could write a girl who does all this and navigates all the restrictions placed on her, but what kind of fantasy novel would that be?  It sounds tedious, both to read and to write, and I’m already tired of worrying about these things in real life. In my writing, at least, I can experience midnight bike rides and solo train journeys, even if it’s by living vicariously through my male leads.

I’ll bet this guy doesn’t have to worry about a curfew / Photo by Duncan Adler via Unsplash

Of course, books that highlight the injustice women face are important. But sometimes it feels like a woman’s story always has to be political, and writing one carries a certain pressure I shy away from. If I were to write about a female lead who argued with her parents about her curfew, I wouldn’t half-ass it, considering that it is the reality of many girls, including myself. And once I’ve opened that can of worms, there are too many rules and too much sexism in women’s daily lives for me to ignore. I’m worried that if I add feminist themes to my story, people will call it a story about feminism, which it’s not. It’s a story about ghosts, magic, grief, and a lot more—and it’s too important to me to be eclipsed by the socio-political implications of the main character’s gender. I don’t want to be labelled a feminist writer or a writer for women, because I want to be a writer for everyone. For me, books have always been a form of escapism. It seems unfair that a male author could write carefree tales of detectives and explorers while I’m expected to challenge a centuries-old system of discrimination in my work—a system I struggle against every day of my life. Do women ever get to just kill a dragon without everyone calling it a metaphor for the patriarchy? 

Perhaps another explanation lies in the type of protagonist I gravitate towards in my writing. After revisiting all the drafts and half-done snippets scattered across my computer, cell phone notes app, and notebooks, I realised two things. First, that I had a lot more unfinished material than finished for someone who calls herself a writer. Second, that I was essentially writing the same character over and over. I give him a different name and a slightly altered appearance and plop him in the centre of whatever fictional world has been stewing in my brain lately. He is a master of disguise, switching seamlessly from angsty high school student to angsty reluctant prince to angsty local superhero...see the pattern? The main character in my stories is always ridden with anxiety, moodiness, and the emotional stability of a house of cards. He’s not confident or badass, or anything else female book characters are expected to be, which is why he’s not a girl. I realized that I was afraid of creating a female protagonist with insecurities and self-doubt for fear of giving in to stereotypes about women. The girls in my stories are complicated, sure, but they are always self-assured and unafraid to speak their minds.

 “But that’s a good thing!” you say, and you’re right. As the feminist movement reaches new heights and we rightly demand better representation in media, one of the things modern readers want is strong female characters in books. Think of the explosion of young-adult dystopian fiction featuring empowered, no-nonsense heroines in the early 2010s. Or the myriad fantasy novels with female assassins and warriors at their centre that seem to dominate the Goodreads Young-Adult section lately. But in our (understandable) eagerness to read about girls who ride motorcycles and wield swords, we risk taking a one-dimensional view of women—again.

Are you even empowered if you don’t have a weapon and a funky haircut? / Photos via Lionsgate

In recent years, we have seen portrayals of women in media diversify to include characters other than the standard mothers, wives/girlfriends, and seductresses. While there is still work to be done, we can now easily find female characters who are not simply defined by their relationship to the men in the story. But too often, these women’s strength is underlined by their deviation from traditionally feminine traits. They are Not Like Other Girls. They don’t get emotional, wear makeup, care about romance, or need anyone’s help. In other words, our definition of strong women seems limited to girls who are, well, masculine.

That’s a problem. If we only ever present this one image of empowerment, we dismiss femininity as inherently inferior. We tell young girls that they are only worthy of respect if they model themselves on their male counterparts. On the surface, it seems like we’re promoting equality. But feminism isn’t about respecting those women who prove they are ‘just as good’ as men. Rather, it’s about respecting all women—because they’re people.

She wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts, and we both deserve respect / Photos via YouTube

But the question that arises when I consider the reasons behind my unconscious bias is: does it matter? Who cares if I only want to write male protagonists? And on the one hand, the stories I choose to tell, and the voices I use to tell them, are my business. But as someone who cares about representation in the books I read, I can’t help but feel like a hypocrite when I start to write a new story revolving around the same tired brand of male teen angst. If writers who want to read more diverse books and female-focused stories don’t write them, who will?

Not most bestselling authors, apparently. A study of 200 popular fiction novels published between 1300 and 2015 showed that 64.3 percent of these books had male protagonists, compared with 25.6 percent that were led by women. Male authors, who dominated the list with 70.4 percent of the titles, were also far less likely to write female protagonists than female authors were to write male protagonists. When faced with these statistics, and if we want to see a real shift in gender bias and representation in literature, it is not enough to seek what diversity there already exists. We must also create more of it.

I won’t lie. Exposing and analysing my own internalized bias and skittishness surrounding female characters was difficult and often, embarrassing. But accepting the problems with your thinking is the first step to removing them. In the age of op-eds and infographics, it’s easy to learn about injustice and social change. What’s harder is to unlearn the beliefs with which you’ve been raised when they don’t align with your new values. Both are necessary if we are to see true progress towards inclusivity.

Art by Emily Wren via Pinterest

While the words of some dead white guy seem to be irrelevant in a conversation about the representation of women in literature, it’s still the best writing advice I’ve ever gotten. As I read more and more diverse books, I also think of the female protagonists that are still scarce. I want girls who aren’t always sure of themselves, girls whose strength is not nullified by their femininity, South Asian girls, girls who go on adventures all by themselves, queer girls—and I’m just going to sit down shamelessly and write them myself.