On female characters in fanfic

This post by bookshop has been on my mind for days.

Our awareness that slash is a progressive act in terms of raising awareness of queer identity *has* to be balanced out by the knowledge of how problematic that is when most of our fictions are still telling boy's stories at the expense of our own.

This is difficult for me to admit, but I think she's right.

Like her, before I discovered fandom I only wrote female characters, and while I can thank fandom for teaching me how to write decent male characters, I think it's time to stop writing all these stories featuring men and focus on the female characters I love. Because there are so many, and I don't write about them nearly enough.

So often I want to write about how much I love Gwen Cooper, and Cho Chang, and Angela Montenegro, and the many other characters that I love, but I always stop myself because a) I think people wouldn't be interested, and b) I'm scared of people piling on me saying how they really don't like those characters, making me feel even worse for holding unpopular opinions. Yes, I'm a coward.

Alternatively, I stop myself from posting much of the f/f fic I've written because it feels too personal. Have I mentioned that I'm a coward?

So I get what she's saying. That's why that post rings so true for me. It's something I've been thinking about for a few months and she's articulated it so well.

And from the comments:

Seriously, after having listened to so many people on this post hand-waving and justifying themselves and jumping from blame-shifting to blame-shifting going it's not OUR fault, it's the writers of X canon/media/society at large... I just feel like honest-to-god screaming SUCK IT UP AND DEAL WITH THE FACT THAT WE NEED TO DO THIS at the entire fandom.

As much as I would like to weasel out of this and justify myself and say I have my reasons for focussing primarily on male characters, that would be the easy way out. I don't want to make excuses for myself, no matter how justified. I want to face the problem I see here and do something about it. I am going to have to suck it up and deal with this.

I want to write Gwen rebuilding Torchwood (preferably along with Martha Jones, Lois Habiba, and Agent Johnson), and I want to write Cho and Hermione hooking up over books, and Ginny as an Auror, solving cases on her own and saving Harry's life, and Emily Prentiss and Angela Montenegro working together on a case and falling in love. These are all on my to-write list (among a whole heap of other ideas), but having written so many male-focussed stories I think I need to consciously preference these, even if nobody else will ever read them apart from me, just because female characters don't get enough love and attention, and someone has to do something about that. I have to do something about that.

That's not to say I'll never write a male-focussed story ever again; I'm just saying I need to consciously start focussing on the female characters. Because they have stories to tell too, and too few other people are telling them.

[ETA: And another post here, which I just found, in case anyone else is interested.

I've reached a point where I feel that women writing about male characters, even nominally straight male characters in a homosexual relationship, is a way we are participating in our own erasure. When there are female characters available, and female fans ignore them in favor of writing about the male characters instead, that makes me uncomfortable.]