Update: editing on Possessing Redemption is coming along swimmingly.  By that I mean my head is swimming from self-induced headaches thanks to a rough draft.

So after a detour last week, I’d like to get back into some personal analysis on types of characters.  A couple weeks ago, I briefly covered some flaws I notice with female characters, and today, I’d like to do the same with male characters.  Full disclosure: my hobby reading largely involves genre schlock which features a lot of dudes as main characters.  Expanding my reading material is something I very much need to do.  So what do I see in the stuff I read?

Well, a lot of male leads usually hit the same patterns.  Often gruff and ready to tumble, these men take the spotlight.  They’re witty or at least amusing, and they’re always in a brawl of some type.  Much like how I mentioned society tends to relegate women to victory trophies, men too are relegated to narrow roles.  They’re the conquerors and villains.  They’re the courageous, man’s-man heroes risking life and limb for the sake of honor.  They are, at once, self-serving and altruistic.  They fight for the common good but also because the common good rewards them – primarily with women and money.

This has its roots in the very bedrock of our species.  The Middle Ages were full of stories like King Arthur: gallant knights traveling the land to quash evil.  The Romans were telling stories of unstoppable legionnaires and generals.  The Greeks shared stories of Achilles and Odysseus.  In Japan, it was the samurai.  In China, the tales of soldiers in the Warring States.  In our cultures, a man’s worth is primarily determined by his strength, his looks, and his martial prowess.  In Europe, this was the duke on the fields of war.  In modern America, it’s the swaggering cowboy.  Men fight and compete and die to defend their manliness.

What’s wrong with that?  Well…nothing.  But also everything.  The fundamental problem this generates is that we expect a certain thing from men in our fiction.  We expect them to be the cowboy.  And, if being a cowboy suits you, excellent!  But what if being the cowboy doesn’t suit you?  Then you’re looked down, and so are characters who do fit the mold of masculinity.  This sort of toxic, internalized concept of what it means to be a real man has ultimately poisoned the well.  It makes it difficult to write a male character who does not hold these views.  The character is viewed as weak, as not manly.

As feminine.  Whuff, it’s almost like these problems are interrelated!

The real killer to this is that it’s a double-whammy.  Not only do men in our fiction have to fit this mold of hyper-machismo, but when they don’t, they’re viewed as effeminate.  We don’t have male characters who indulge in introspection – thinking is for dorks.  Male characters don’t consider their emotions – feelings are for the weak or womanly.  What’s the solution?

A long road.  Normalization of “non-traditional” male characters would be a start.  I thought about this, and it’s why the men in Possessing Redemption often serve supportive or administrative roles while the women are on the front lines dealing with the demons and ghosts.  Malcolm in All’s Faer puts up this mask of being manly and macho, and it only gets him into trouble.  I think it’s important that everyone sees himself represented.  I think the “everyone” part is the operative word.  This doesn’t mean delegitimizing or insulting the macho characters, but it does mean looking down on the characters who don’t fit that mold.  For every star football player, we need a star computer programmer, a star vocalist, a star who is just a normal dude.

We need men to be men of all kinds – not just the man on the cover of the fitness magazine.