"Girly gore"

heyjude said:

What do you think? Are female writers gorier than male writers? If so, why?

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I honestly don't pay much attention to female v. male writers of what I read. I don't like to read gore and tend to stay away from most murder mysteries in general. If I do run across it and don't want to read it, I skim or skip ahead.

I don't know that it's a matter of women being gorier than men in what they write. I think the hint of it lies with this bit from the article:

Like many in the genre, Waites and his wife Linda draw on real crime for inspiration.

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You don't have to look far to see what we do to one another nowadays. And if you don't want to look to real life, look to the television, at all of the Law and Orders and CSIs and other shows of that sort. We can watch gruesome murders and assaults, including autopsies and all that that entails, in a wide swath of true crime and fiction shows. What, then, is so surprising about the same kind of violence showing up in novels? Isn't a more apt explanation that such content is merely a sign of our times?

There's a part in the article where someone tells the male half of a husband-wife author team that she's glad he writes this stuff with his wife or she wouldn't like him - because of the violence toward women in his books (creepy to her that he could think of such things). That's idiotic. You don't mind reading it, but it makes you feel better to know a woman wrote it? Why? Because women can't do violence to women? Because it's more reassuring if a woman thought of it instead of a man?

Also from the article:

[T]he fears of women have helped create these monsters by making them lucrative bestsellers. But just because we have an appetite for fear, does not mean, I believe, that we should feed it such strong meat.

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(See article for full context.) Nobody's forcing people to buy and read these books. Or watch those TV shows. Or <insert activity of choice>. As demand ebbs and people decide they want something else, the content will change.

Again, I don't read the type of books the writer of the article is talking about anymore because I don't care for that sort of content in my leisure reading (unless it's nonfiction; I have inconsistent standards). But chiding or deriding authors for writing scenes of detailed violence in bestselling novels strikes me as pointing a finger in the wrong direction. What in our society makes this stuff appealing or titillating or otherwise popular? It's not the writers who've created a phenomenon and are feeding it. They've merely tapped into a vein that's already gushing.

heyjude said:

What do you think? Are female writers gorier than male writers? If so, why?

What do you think?

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I am not sure if women writers are gorier than men, but I do think that women are less squeamish - we see and get used to blood earlier and with (in most cases) regularity. It becomes a matter of fact and indifference to many women. As for the torture - not surprising that women can think of awful things to do. Lots of inspired graphic detail can be used when trying to describe period pains. I have read Val McDermid, it impressed me so much that I can't remember anything about the book.

One of the things that I do not like about the CSI type of tv is the way in which the victim is reduced to a lump of meat on a slab. It depersonalizes the victim and to me that is far worse than the torture and/or gore in some books. Using the remains of a murder victim in certain ways shows scant respect for the victim as a human being. I think that is the danger of some books as well, they depersonalize individuals to an extent where some readers may think it is acceptable to emulate what they read.

I don’t think that either of the sexes write "gorier" stuff. But I do think there’s often an identifiable difference in the way that men and women write about violence.

It is especially apparent when it comes to a graphic rape scene. Male writers, IMO, tend to focus on concrete physical detail, often of the victim and their vulnerabilities, such as nudity or physical beauty, which can eroticize the scene. Female writers tend to focus more on the emotional components of the experience, such as the victim's emotional misery, or psychological tactics to deal with a traumatic situation, such as retreating into a mental haven while the act takes place.

Although rape is about violence and power, there does seem to be a crossover of psychosexual characteristics into the way men and women write about it. (Visual vs. emotional engagement, etc.)

It also seems--again, just IMO--that male writers are more willing to deal with things like body horror (guts, internal organs, mutilation, decay, etc.). But this could be a result of the fact that there are more male horror writers than female. And while crime fiction is beginning to show a more diverse author makeup, it is still a genre traditionally dominated by men. Women have tended to be relegated to the "softer" genres like mystery, suspense, etc.

These are just generalizations, and they reflect the specific writers I’ve read. I make no claim to have done a comprehensive, objective survey here.

If women don't tackle subjects like rape or domestic violence, then who does? Men? Then this is problematic itself, as violence against women will be perpetually be viewed via the male gaze.

I think the article has more to do with DM politics. It isn't 'proper' for women to demonstrate violent impulses, and show blood-lust. So women who write about violence and gore are evidence that society - and in particular young women - are degenerative.

I used to read everything Val McDermid wrote. Then I remember reading one book which involved a prositute being tortured and killed with a dildo that had razor blades inserted into it. That was when I thought, 'she's definitely crossed the line between social commentary, and escalating violence for the sake of escalating violence.'

I think the ability of some people to write, or read, especially gory material is partially dependent on the activity of their amygdala.

There have been numerous studies into the pronounced effect of the amygdala in certain anxiety disorders, and corresponding malfunction in psychopaths/sociopaths/anti-social personality disorders. They tested the effects of gruesome photos on people, and those from the former group reacted more strongly than the normal individuals. The latter group barely reacted at all.

That might seem like a weird analogy to this subject, but I'm getting to that. In order to imagine certain scenes, it requires a person to suppress the intrinsic angst and revulsion one would normally feel. It may be advantageous to have a dysfunction in the amygdala to tap into the cold aspects of super-gore, while it could also be enlightening for an anxious writer to bring out the emotional depth of those gore-filled stories. I wouldn't go as far as saying that men are going to have one set perspective, while women another. The wide variation of viewpoints cannot be attributed simply to gender.

For some writers, I fear the subject matter infects them with a type of contact depression. I do fear women are more susceptible to this effect. One of my favorite books for researching my current novel was written by a middle-aged lady who ended up being driven crazy by the subject. She committed suicide soon after the book was done, and her family attributed it to studying the Nanking Massacre in such depth.

This is a superbly timed thread as I have recently posted some work in Horror SYW which engages with many of the issues under discussion -- yes, you actually made me read a DM article. You swines!

Now, I understand linking a SYW piece to the main forum is usually considered a bad show, but I feel it is so pertinent here I hope you won't mind. If it is a bad show, then please delete with extreme pressure on the deletey button.

Before I link it, I should like to follow the lead of the lovely Jude by adding a big red warning sign should the adult content sticky not prove sensible enough.

WARNING: The work is for adults only.

Three Grins for My Cool Hannah K (Short Story - 2800 Words - Adult Content)

Hope this was an okay thing to do, like I said -- it's not a spam advert to help me with my writing chops (though that would be a bonus), but just something so coincidentally coincidental to this thread I thought it might be of interest and further discussion here.

I'll throw in a wild guess and say it's about women psychology. Women tend to be more perceptive than men in many ways and it's that sense that's tentalized with that level of details. Gore is just a way to demonstrate how twisted the killer's mind really is and how the Heroine will try to get inside that twisted mind and solve the crime. But gore is half the equation. The monster is usually very close to the Heroine throughout the story. A lover or a love interest, even. Because the very act of murder is often associated with deviant sex in a 50 shade-ish sort of way. I'll even get as far as saying it mimmicks seduction from the female pov - the monster kills with utmost discrimination and saves the Heroine for the very end like a prize to be had.

Maybe I'm overanalyzing it and at the end of the day it's just marketing. Gore sells and so the demand increases with the gory level. Thing is, I'm NOT going to change how the murders happen in my stories because of this.

-cb

It's not my sort of subgenre to read or write.

I've another question. Why are so many of these authors English? The murder rate in England is only 1.7 per 100,000 (1/4 that of the US), mostly (70%) males. Of the female victims, only 12% are killed by a stranger. So only one in a million English women (if my math is correct at 4 a.m.) is killed by a stranger any year, and surely some are shot at a robbery or another non-sexual event. So in any given year, many, many more characters are violently/sexually murdered by strangers in novels written by English women than actual English women are murdered. I find that interesting.

I wonder if any of the writers in the subgenre have experienced real violence close up, either as victim, police, hospital worker, soldier, or even crime beat journalist. It'd be interesting to correlate sex of author, verifiable real life violence experience, or lack thereof, with how many violent scenes per novel or pages per violent scene or references to female genitalia within the violent scenes. I'd prefer some good data before guessing more.

lorna_w said:

It's not my sort of subgenre to read or write.

I've another question. Why are so many of these authors English? The murder rate in England is only 1.7 per 100,000 (1/4 that of the US), mostly (70%) males. Of the female victims, only 12% are killed by a stranger. So only one in a million English women (if my math is correct at 4 a.m.) is killed by a stranger any year, and surely some are shot at a robbery or another non-sexual event. So in any given year, many, many more characters are violently/sexually murdered by strangers in novels written by English women than actual English women are murdered. I find that interesting.

I wonder if any of the writers in the subgenre have experienced real violence close up, either as victim, police, hospital worker, soldier, or even crime beat journalist. It'd be interesting to correlate sex of author, verifiable real life violence experience, or lack thereof, with how many violent scenes per novel or pages per violent scene or references to female genitalia within the violent scenes. I'd prefer some good data before guessing more.

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Add teacher to the list. I started teaching in the East End of London at the end of the 1970s and until then I had never appreciated my upbringing. I was the tutor of a group twenty five girls for five years. In that time I dealt with rape, incest, neglect, abuse (emotional, sexual, psychological, physical) and a whole lead of other stuff. It was during that time that I started to write crime stories. Though that may have been the reaction to tripping over a dead body when I was walking to the pub. Women writing gore/horror stories is not a new thing - Mary Shelley wrote her mistress piece c1817. There was also Mrs Radcliffe and her Mysteries of Udolpho. Probably a few others as well.

I saw the panel at Harrogate that Danuta Keane talks about in the article. It was certainly interesting food for thought, but I don't know if it came to any conclusions. One theory put forwar is that women and men writers are equally violent, but because women are supposed to be 'the fairer sex', people notice when they write particularly violent scenes in books - more so than they notice a man writing a similar scene.

The point above about British writers enjoying violence disproportionate to the murder rate is another interesting one. I keep wondering about the current fascination with Scandinavian crime novels. Look at all those lined up, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Stockholm is awash with bodies. But I understand that Sweden has the lowest murder rate in the world, and there has never yet been a Swedish serial killer. Might that be why novels about Swedish serial killers fascinate so many people?

Shara

gothicangel said:

If women don't tackle subjects like rape or domestic violence, then who does? Men? '

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I agree. One reason I wanted to include a brief rape scene in my book is that it was part of the story, but the second reason--the reason I didn't cut it--is because I'm so sick of seeing sexual words, sexual vocabulary used to describe rape. It isn't sexual, it is painful.

Recently a friend sent me this photo on Facebook because he knew I had been an anti-apartheid activist. One of the many shadows of apartheid is a huge rape crisis in South Africa. Women are so often raped that a nurse invented this object for women to wear inside themselves. If they are raped, the aggressors suffer incredible pain and have to go to the hospital to have the device removed.

I don't enjoy reading female "gore" but I do understand its appeal to some women. Maybe we're making up for decades of abuse?

Warm regards,

Lucie

Sorry if I ... like, halted this thread. It was interesting and I hope I didn't offend. Best to you guys--and girls, Lucie

wonderactivist said:

Sorry if I ... like, halted this thread. It was interesting and I hope I didn't offend. Best to you guys--and girls, Lucie

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Offend? Not me! Consider yourself high-fived and hugged for being an anti-apartheid activist. Sadly, crimes of violence against women in South Africa continues to escalate. As a counsellor, I do more trauma counselling of victims of violent criminal acts than I do marriage and relationships (my speciality) and this is slowly tearing me to pieces.*

I don't have a specific suggestion as to why women write more gory scenes of violence than men do but perhaps many male authors fear being branded a misogynist by the great sisterhood of readers. Or possibly, in many societies, women are taught, from infancy, that to express any form of anger or aggresssion is 'unladylike'. So we learn to suppress those emotions. In writing fiction, however, we can give full vent to them in a socially acceptable form. Hm?



*Probably the main reason why I can't set my stories in SA. It's too real. Too 'in-my-face'.