Except The Dream • a brief monograph on the topic of the strong female character:

a brief monograph on the topic of the strong female character:

Right okay so here’s the deal: strong female character? Is an awesome, awesome term when it means “strongly written female character.” Please assume, for the duration of this post, that that is what *I* mean when I’m using it; I don’t know what everyone else means, and maybe I missed some kind of memo or something, but as I am getting the impression that I would have torn that memo up if I had received it, it’s probably for the best.

Here are some things a strong female character NEEDS to have:

Consistent characterization

A personality/life purpose that is not hinged solely on furthering the plots of the men around her

THAT’S IT

Here are some things a strong female character CAN have, but does not NEED to have:

A vagina

A sex drive

A take-no-shit attitude

A gun fixation

The tendency to tell dudes to go fuck themselves

Here are some things a strong female CAN’T have:

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Here are some things we need to stop doing, as a population of human beings:

Defining people, for the positive or negative, solely based on their genders

Determining what women “can” or “cannot” be in order to be considered “strong”

Shaming each other for our behaviors, opinions and actions instead of contributing to change

THAT’S ALL, THE END