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"A strong woman..."

JoeBobMack 🚫

Each of us holds deep beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. These deep beliefs are strong patterns of thinking that are so familiar, so much a part of us, that we often do not even recognize we hold them. They are often not readily accessible to our conscious thought processes, but they shape what we notice, remember about events, assign importance to, and recall, particularly under stress or when we are depleted. They can be triggered without our knowledge and, once active, drive emotions and reactions that confuse us because they do not fit with our surface thoughts, either in kind (sad when we should be angry) or in strength (raging anger when mild annoyance would better fit our conscious thoughts).

The psychologist Nathaniel Branden suggested that sentence completions could help an individual discover their deep beliefs. He suggested taking a sentence starter and writing a number of completions, rapidly and without judgment, first thing each morning for a week. Each time, one should put the sheet of completions away without review, and then, at the end of the week, pull them all out and look for patterns.

A sentence starter for modern authors might be "A strong woman…." Based on my reading, I can imagine completions such as "… can physically outperform men," "… doesn't need anyone," "… talks trash with nothing to back it up." I've seen female lead characters that seem based off each of these deep beliefs.

Even though the "… can physically outperform men" would seem to demand a fantasy setting, there are those who seem to believe that the difference in physical capacity between women and men is either the manifestation of a "social construct" or the result of patterns of belief and action imposed on women. I saw a thread in another forum recently where a writer suggested that the difference in physical performance between men and women was due to girls being encouraged not to eat. What? Is she unaware of childhood obesity rates in the western world? Or the fact that girls are often very competitive in sports with boys up to about the age of twelve? Then puberty hits and everything changes. But, lots of people seem to have trouble with this concept. See, for example, the furor over John McEnroe's suggestion that Venus Williams in her prime would have ranked no higher than 200 on the men's tour.

Recently, I've seen two different women suggest that "not making it all about her" is a characteristic of strong women. Sarah Hoyt came to this conclusion, using her mother as an example), in a long blog post where she wandered through a lot of other things, including ridiculing both the "physically as strong as men" and "feistiness is enough" memes. Then Peggy Noonan, an elitist of the first order, reached the same conclusion last weekend in a column about the Harry, Meghan, and the Queen of England.

I suggest that our deep beliefs, as authors and as readers, come out in what we write and how we respond to what we read.

How do you finish "A strong woman…?" What's the characterization of "a strong woman" on SOL do you like best?

What sentence starter would you suggest for men?

awnlee jawking 🚫

@JoeBobMack

A strong woman ... should drink more pineapple juice.

AJ

Replies:   Radagast  Crumbly Writer
Radagast 🚫

@awnlee jawking

The Sexy Pineapple Diet from 1970. Showing your age there. I was a young 'un. I remember the bookshop stocking it but I had no desire to be sexy. Girls had cooties.

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@awnlee jawking

A strong woman ... should drink more pineapple juice.

A strong woman doesn't just time travel, she wrestles with time, bending it to her will rather than letting it dictate her future. Weak women are merely time's bitches!

Aiden Clover 🚫

@JoeBobMack

How do you finish "A strong woman…?"

That's almost too broad of a question because the word "Strong" or "Strength" has such a broad meaning. One the one hand you could be talking about a strong woman who is vocal about what she wants, not afraid to speak her mind, and as you pointed out, can outperform men in certain areas.

For me though, strength is about more than being charismatic and outgoing. It's about being confident in who you are and what you believe in. It's not about being the loudest person in the room, it's about being the one that makes the room stop talking when she speaks. There's an old hymn that we used to sing in church that has a line I think sums up my belief in a strong woman.

"Like a tree standing by the water, I shall not be moved."

Dominions Son 🚫
Updated:

@JoeBobMack

I saw a thread in another forum recently where a writer suggested that the difference in physical performance between men and women was due to girls being encouraged not to eat. What? Is she unaware of childhood obesity rates in the western world? Or the fact that girls are often very competitive in sports with boys up to about the age of twelve? Then puberty hits and everything changes. But, lots of people seem to have trouble with this concept.

Likely someone pushing the idea that transwomen should be allowed to compete as women in women's sports.

What? No, don't be silly, the fact that we are really men doesn't give us any kind of advantage over genetic females.

Replies:   Mushroom
Mushroom 🚫

@Dominions Son

Likely someone pushing the idea that transwomen should be allowed to compete as women in women's sports.

What? No, don't be silly, the fact that we are really men doesn't give us any kind of advantage over genetic females.

Oh yes, ignore that testosterone nonsense.

Even though Testosterone is listed as a prohibited steroid in all levels of athletics. And we recently have had many school records for women shattered by "transgender teens".

Sorry, it disgusts me. Women have fought hard in this country for equality in sporting programs. And now we male that is only mid-level at best can literally say they are "transgender", and then excel as a "woman". Destroying their chance at competitions and scholarships.

Replies:   Radagast
Radagast 🚫

@Mushroom

Thats the intention, cancellation of real women. Its a top down push that began simultaneously across the western nations in 2015.
IIRC trans are allowed to compete in womens football in Australia, resulting in broken bones for the real girls. Ernest may have more info as its his stomping grounds.

Replies:   bk69
bk69 🚫

@Radagast

I thought it was rugby that allowed the guy on the women's team. After he failed to get on the men's national team.

Replies:   Dominions Son  Radagast
Dominions Son 🚫

@bk69

I thought it was rugby that allowed the guy on the women's team. After he failed to get on the men's national team.

IIRC: it's been happening in international track events as well.

Radagast 🚫

@bk69

Could be. I read it second hand without any details, Just a pic of an obviously intact male lording it over the much smaller women.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@JoeBobMack

Pre-empting the Grinning Dick, women can't be 'strong' because 'strong' contains 'rong' and women are never 'rong' (or so they keep telling me) ;-)

AJ

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son 🚫

@awnlee jawking

Pre-empting the Grinning Dick

I was enjoying a thread without him bombing it, but now you've gone and invoked his name.

Replies:   Radagast
Radagast 🚫

@Dominions Son

Beetlejuice...

Quasirandom 🚫

@JoeBobMack

A strong woman …

... is your best possible partner.

Replies:   JoeBobMack
JoeBobMack 🚫

@Quasirandom

Always? As a business partner or marriage?

Or, maybe more interesting, what strengths might make a woman a poor partner in certain situations?

Replies:   Quasirandom
Quasirandom 🚫

@JoeBobMack

As a business partner or marriage?

Yes.

Dominions Son 🚫

@JoeBobMack

A strong woman …

...can bench press me.

Replies:   Crumbly Writer
Crumbly Writer 🚫

@Dominions Son

A strong woman …

...can bench press me.

A strong woman smells strong too!

Uther Pendragon 🚫

@JoeBobMack

My heroines tend to be strong willed. When Marilyn Grant's father suggests to Andy Trainor's father that Andy had seduced Marilyn, Mr. Trainor wonders how Mr. Grant had missed that Marilyn was the dominant one in the couple.

Replies:   Crumbly Writer
Crumbly Writer 🚫

@Uther Pendragon

My heroines tend to be strong willed. When Marilyn Grant's father suggests to Andy Trainor's father that Andy had seduced Marilyn, Mr. Trainor wonders how Mr. Grant had missed that Marilyn was the dominant one in the couple.

Alas, I prefer strong women in my stories, but I have a more difficult time putting myself into the head's of women on a consistent basis. So, out of my 18 current books, only two has a woman protagonist, and unfortunately, they're my two lowest scoring stories (aside from my one gay porn story under another pseudonym).

Thus, I tend to feature strong female secondary characters, over the strong protagonists.

Update: Actually, that's no longer true, as each of the following books has a female protagonist:
A House in Disarray
Zombie Leza and
The Holes Binding Us Together
so, out of my last 9 stories, 1/3 have had women protagonist (though my series tend to distort that figure significantly), where my first twelve stories had all male protagonists, which just shows that there's hope for us old male patriarchs after all (though I've never successfully reached much of a female audience, which utterly discounts that content entirely!)

Replies:   bk69  JoeBobMack
bk69 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

I've never successfully reached much of a female audience

Really, unless you've gone to book signings for your work, you really aren't going to be able to KNOW the sex of your readers. At best, you'll know what they claimed.

JoeBobMack 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

What makes the protagonists in these stories "strong women"?

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