“Why do you always use ‘he’?”
Is what I was asked in my poetry group. My fellow poet noticed I tended to write about boys a lot, whether it’s about a grandfather, father or brother, I gravitated toward the male pronoun.
I’m the baby of the family and the only girl.
My own mother was the only girl in her set of siblings, except she had six brothers to battle.
I’ve never had a close relationship to an aunt or grandmother. Familial female relationships only became important to me when my brother’s began to marry. And then my nieces.
Nowadays, my family has evened out in gender.
But that doesn’t change those growing years that I spent surrounded by boys.
I write he because:
My three older brothers have always been a place of protection and safety even in the midst of their teasing.
I had a close relationship to my papa.
I’ve always been a “daddy’s girl.”
She, in my poetry, usually (but not always) has a negative connotation. It’s not because of my mother is a negative influence, but rather other woman didn’t impact my childhood the way the men in my life did.
I never actually noticed until I was asked why I did it. The fellow poet actually writes more using “she,” because her household was female-centered.
Is this important? Does it matter in poetry?
I don’t think it does. Every writer will use “he” or “she” for their own purposes. If we dig into the writer’s mind and find out why they used one over the other, does it change the poem?
I’d argue no, because the context should already be within the poem.
Have you noticed anything similar in your own work? A part form poetry I also tend to write about males in fiction and nonfiction, specifically – a grandfather.
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Clarification: The narrator in my poetry isn’t the ‘he’ I refer to, the narrator is rarely identified. In fiction my narrator / protagonist is female for the most part. When I talk about writing about grandfathers a lot, I mean a girls relationship with her grandfather.
This is an interesting thought. I’ve wondered about it before, and larger ramifications for society. Thanks for writing!
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Oh PS my male:female protagonist ratio is about 65:35.
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Oh I should probably clarify in my post that in poetry the narrator isn’t usually clarified, but in fiction it’s pretty much always a she protagonist.
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What kind of ramifications?
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I don’t know. …Generic ramifications. Social stuff. Big things, from little people, that add up.
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I guess π I dont know, I guess it’s all in how you view life.
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If you write about males I see no problem, however when one has a choice and always gravitates toward “him, he, his” then it may be patriarchal thinking. I would (do) have a problem with that . . . the Holy Bible is an example. I feel very left out reading it.
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If I were to flip it, would it be matriarchal thinking? (If we set aside what we may think of our society’s past, because I understand what you mean, just simply posing a question)
As for the bible, there are woman, one’s that are important and essential. I’d guess you might mainly mean God (and maybe the reference to angels) and how they have the he pronoun. This personally had never bothered me because God, nor angels, have gender. The masculine ‘he’ is there because God is seen as a father figure. Why not mother figure? He is that, too, just with the ‘she.’ I know that bringing out gender roles is a touchy subject, but masculine and feminine do have different connotations (I’m not talking about people themselves, but the words)
If you feel left out, I’d encourage you to revisit some other most inspiring women the bible has to offer- Rahab, Ruth, Hannah, Esther….I could go on. The first two aren’t even Hebrew, but trusted in God and are actually in the lineage of Christ.
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I’m well aware of females in the Bible however it is written by males to males.
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Ah, I mean I’ve never read anywhere in the bible saying it was to males. π€·πΌββοΈ
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I’m an orphan, everyone’s a “they”. (not really, but could be.)
Interesting topic.
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Hah! I would have added that I also still use the word ‘man’ to refer to humankind, but don’t want too many people after me.
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And I force myself to use “CongressPerson” too.
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π€£π€£π€£
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Interesting thought – I think my writing is fairly balanced, perhaps because I was one of two girls growing up but then had two sons. Someone once remarked that my creative writing does focus on ‘loss’, which is another interesting observation.
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Interesting post. Only recently I discovered that I write more with a male protagonist but not consciously doing it. I had a strong bond with my late father, also a writer, so perhaps that has something to do with it.
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Yeah I never noticed until someone else pointed it out. Lol that’s when I started thinking about the why π€·πΌββοΈ
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I will write about “he” when it comes to myself. However, I maintain a deep fascination with a woman’s Psychology. I have a tendency to observe the actions of men and women, and I have discovered so many differences. The mind is where I maintain so much of my interest.
I noticed you left a reply about why “God” is said to be a “He”. I have understood, on my own, that men, with their desire to lead, can only be a leader when it comes to love. If you haven’t noticed, but people in today’s time feel a bit betrayed by our political leaders, and there’s nothing so much the opposite of trust, when it comes to betrayal. And, trust aligns itself with love. When men lead, they should lead through love, because love is the emotion that maintains itself as the “highest” emotion. It is also because God, as a father figure, “begins”. Everything about a beginning, that is most often a romance, begins with love. It begins with honesty.
I have noticed two very different traits between men and women, and it has to do with guilt. Men feel guilt based off action, whereas women feel guilt based off inaction. You even see this among the Feminist department, when the writings of that movement will berate a man “for what he’s done”, whereas they will implore a woman “to do more” based on her potential and capability. That movement, to my eyes, is nothing more than something that exploits men and women’s guilt.
When it comes to guilt, as well, there is forgiveness that will settle the corrupting feeling. Love forgives. When it comes to leadership, negligence cannot be of it. Therefore, when a woman feels guilt for her negligence or on what she has not accomplished, she will race and run to the front of the line. We’ve had, in recent years, a rise in women for leadership positions. We’ve also had a rise in mass production, that turns over to “choices”, “freedom”, and what kills off the quality of a thing, that is “repetition”. That is all what the mind compels a person to do, especially when negligence is the prime focus of a person. It is because negligence does not want to anymore neglect, and that is very much a 21st century Liberal belief. To not neglect, that is.
When it comes to leadership, men desire to lead, the most, because the “action” has everything to do with honesty. However, there is no honesty among repetition, as I believe this repetition to be a common factor among leadership these days. It is because one can easily repeatedly say something, though will be doing something else. That is, there will be more words than actions. If love is based around action, then leadership must be based around action. Therefore, the honest leader is the best leader.
So… if a man feels guilt based on his actions, then all the more for him to lead. It is all the more for him to feel genuine shame for his mistakes, and then better himself so that he may do a better job.
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One thing to add…
When it comes to negligence, there will always be more of a focus on quantity, rather than quality. Action refers to quality, whereas inaction refers to quantity. There is no denying that, especially when you consider that when one’s prime focus is deep in inaction or negligence, one’s eagerness will be surmounted very high. One will be very earnest to get things accomplished. They will be impatient, and most likely make a mistake.
Am I assuming things? I am not, especially when you consider the recent changes of our society that have aligned themselves with my thoughts.
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I think you bring up some really interesting points. Men and women are both intrinsically different and I think the biggest societal mistake that is currently happening is the idea that they aren’t. One of the reasons I’m not for a lot the ‘feminist’ ideas is because they want to elevate woman to man, when what should be happening is recognizing the equality of the two in their different systems. Women should be encouraged to embrace being a woman. (Not necessarily referring to gender roles or whatever) but recognizing those differences for what they are – like you point about how each sex feels guilt. I dont think your wrong. I think society as a whole would intentionally blind themselves to the idea though.
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To believe that men and women are not different, one would have to question a “creator of characters”, such as a novelist or a playwright, to see if that is true.
A novelist, a poet, a playwright, a screenwriter, etc., and these people would have to be posed the question of, “Are male and female characters, in your stories, at all different?”
100% of the time, the answer is going to be “yes”. Because, if those characters, of either male or female origin, were not different, the stories would lack all manner of depth. Nobody would connect to those stories, or the stories would not connect to the reader/viewer.
I’m a novelist, myself. Every character that I write has to be fleshed out, or otherwise no reader would identify with them, nor match feelings to them. The characters would be forgettable, not memorable.
It is the same reason why we remember people for who they are, in the real world, outside of the written “created” world. That is, every memorable experience is simply something we hadn’t yet experienced, until we met that person. People are there to show us world, we had been blind to.
Therefore, to say that men and women are not different, is to withdraw the very thrill of “getting to know someone”, which is known to be the element of “discovery”. Just like we have a thrill of getting to know characters in a book, is for the same reason we want to get to know another person, in the real world, along with their story.
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π
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Interesting post. Never gave much thought to the “he” or “she” part of it but then I don’t write much in the way of poetry. I usually dream up stories that will make people stop and think and hopefully get a laugh or two from the nonsense I ramble on about. Anything to take our minds off the negative we hear and see on the news today. Not only does my writing hopefully do that for my readers, it gives me a chuckle to as I am concocting it. Thanks for reading my post.
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Interesting question! When I first started writing (I write for children) I only wrote about girls. Then my son was born and every story I made up was about and for him. Someone asked me once why I didn’t feature girls in my books. And strangely enough, after that, I did begin to write more books with female protagonists. I now have a series about a tween, and another about a five-year-old girl! But I do have other stories/books where the protagonist is a ‘he’. Some stories come to me with a definite ‘she’ in them or narrating them and others have a ‘he’ in them.
Nandini Nayar
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When one considers, after having been raised in a patriarchy, that the vehicles of religion and education have served to drive us all to the conclusion that men are superior beings, Your question is not surprising. Ever address a group of males and females as “you guys” ? Sadly, I have – a habit I work hard to break. And how often do we get the chance to have “womankind” mean all of humanity? I just read where genetic females may be better protected from the coronavirus due to the beautiful XX — chromosomes. Maybe God has returned and she’s pissed. I love reading your writing π
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