D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

feminism

Celebrate the Women

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The final volume of Lisen of Solsta

Okay, so since it’s Women’s History Month. And since I’m a card-carrying feminist—okay, I used to have a card, but I lost it. And since I write YA fantasy with female heroes, I got some explaining to do. How did I build the world in my Lisen of Solsta series? A world that my women’s-rights soul can tolerate? Well, let me tell you.

I began with a promise to myself. I decided to create a world where men and women were absolutely equal. Where labor wasn’t divided up based on gender-specific roles. Some might see this as easy. Just make the women tough and badass.

Uh, no. That wasn’t going to work for me. You can’t simply morph women into men with breasts. Because generally that turns into a situation where these kick-butt women wear skimpy outfits with lots of cleavage. Believe me, I’ve checked these books out. This is what proponents of patriarchy do. They have female heroes trussed up in outfits that inspire a hard-on. And that, my friends, is the easy and misogynistic way out. Let’s try again.

Garla, where Lisen of Solsta unfolds, had to represent my vision of equality. No stereotypical male or female tasks. No teenage heroines climbing trees and running down stairs to the shock of their elders. No soft ladies waiting for their gentle men to save them. But in order to make this world exist in any believable manner, I had to figure out why. And how.

I began with the most basic of questions. Has it always been this way? Or did the world evolve into this? My decision was based on a personal theory that when one “-ism” dissolves (in this case, sexism), the rest (e.g., racism) will fall like dominoes in its wake. I don’t believe societies, on earth at least, can find a way to accept all people as equal at one locus of division without coming to realize rather quickly that other divides are abstract constructs that are equally as meaningless. Therefore, no misogyny → no hatred of people of a different color or religion → the next reason to hate. And on and on and on they’d fall. This would make for a relatively perfect world, leaving little room for conflict. And what is a story? A series of conflicts. So, women and men are equal and always have been in Garla, and all other “-isms” persist.

After I made that decision, the questions became more detailed, more complicated. Physically, the women had to be taller and carry more muscle mass with compensatory changes in the men, making them of equal stature and strength. You see, in my opinion, women are at the mercy of men for several reasons, one of them being physical. Evening up the playing field would give women a chance. So I did.

To that I added a more balanced emotional sensitivity between the two sexes. But what would teach men to carry a bit more of the emotional load? (I figured, because I’m a woman, that we female types would have no trouble with barebones logic and reason, but maybe that’s just my misandry showing.)

Anyway…

The answer was simple. The nurturing of children. Put a man in the position of nurturing a child, invite him to the cradle, and he’ll pick up the load. In our world, men now participate in the labor of the mothers of their children, but that’s a social thing that’s evolving into the norm. How was I to make it something that simply happened in this world from the “beginning of time”? How could I give my male characters the natural-born instincts of a mom?

In early times here on earth, men were the hunters. They focused their skills on two goals—seek out, find and kill food for dinner and stand between the group and predators. Women, on the other hand, gathered berries and nuts, cooked the meals, sewed hides together for clothes, all while balancing a baby on a hip and keeping a toddler out of trouble. They did the nurturing. They had to be soft.

So how would I translate that to Garla?

Teach men nurturing from the womb. And there I had it. In quick order I reconfigured the method of procreation in this world, gave men and women pouches like marsupials have on earth and allowed men to be the bearers of children before birth. It sounds odd if you haven’t read the books, but it’s a beautiful process, with sometimes the mother pouching the child as it emerges from the womb, and other times, the father.

All of this figuring out took years, each solution engendering yet another question along the way. I’ve only included the most basic back story here because it would take a book I don’t want to write to explain it all.

So happy Women’s History Month, both female and male friends! Let’s continue to fight to make all persons equal. And while we’re waiting for that, ___check out Lisen’s world here.

Coming next week: My current dilemma of creating a world that’s not free of sexism the way Garla was without losing my lunch. And the week after that, I am pleased to present an interview with the inimitable Wendy Steele, author of the Lizzie Martin witch lit series.

A Heartfelt Admonition to my Mormon Friends

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For those who aren’t Mormon, a bit of history: On October 23, 2015, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued the final two of their thirteen gospel topic essays, the first being on “Priesthood, Temple and Women” and the second on “Mother in Heaven.” I won’t take the time here to go into the details of these essays, but they did get a lot of Mormons talking about how this affected the place of women in the church.

For nearly two years now, I, an apostate ex-Mormon, have involved myself in the activities of a group called Ordain Women who advocate for priesthood for women in the LDS church. I have written about this before and won’t belabor it here, but my time in the company of these progressive, brilliant women and men has taught me that at least a few members of the church are not the old fuddy-duddies I remember from my youth.

The last couple of weeks have been difficult for these people I have learned to cherish and love. First, the above essays were released, and I watched as some took hope from their content, while others remained skeptical. I desired more than anything to warn them that the seeming small steps forward the leaders of the LDS “corporation” had taken were, as Princess Leia would put it, “a trap!” But I refrained because this is not my spiritual journey, and each of these individuals will have to come to their own conclusions.

And then the world broke. This Thursday, November 5, 2015, the church made a small but very significant change to what they call the Church Handbook, a tome to which only priesthood holders (hence, only men—save a half-dozen-or-so women in top positions of leadership in the church) are privy. They amended the definition of who is considered an apostate and, therefore, immediately excommunicable. They added members of the church in same-sex marriages. Now, I don’t want to get too hung up on the unfairness of this because my point is not this but what this then precipitated with their next declaration.

From the Salt Lake Tribune:

As for children, a separate section of the handbook says that natural or adopted kids of same-sex parents, whether married or just living together, may not receive a naming blessing.
The policy also bars children from being baptized, confirmed, ordained to the church’s all-male priesthood or recommended for missionary service without the permission of the faith’s highest leaders — the governing First Presidency.
To get that permission, the policy states that a request must be made through a mission president or a regional church leader, and only after certain requirements are met. Those requirements are that a child is committed to living church doctrine and “specifically disavows the practice of same-gender cohabitation and marriage,” is 18 “and does not live with a parent who has lived or currently lives in a same-gender cohabitation relationship or marriage.”

The church explained this policy as one to protect the children, and on the surface, one might find herself inclined to accept this. But here’s the dilemma. Not all of these children are progeny of the same-sex marriage alone. Many, all too many, I suspect, were born into mixed-orientation, Mormon-temple-sanctified marriages which were annulled in line with the church’s guidelines and rules when one of the parents came out as gay to allow the straight spouse to remarry. Custody as declared during the divorce was often joint, with one parent or both continuing to take the children with them on Sundays to worship with the rest of the “saints.”

With these new “rules” in place, what happens to these children as they reach the various church-defined childhood milestones? Will they be left out? The church assures their membership that these children will continue to be welcome, but at what cost? The degree of bullying and ostracism is likely to be intense.

Picture this. A boy becomes eligiblefor the first step in the priesthood at age twelve. Girls don’t, but that’s a separate story. So this young man comes forward to his bishop to discuss his impending calling to be a deacon, and the bishop says, “Sorry, Johnny, but your mom is a lesbian living with another lesbian so you will have to sit with the girls while all your friends pass the sacrament.” Ouch. Not to mention the intentional and unintentional meanness that children can visit upon one of their own who is considered “other.”

One last thing. The church is ultimately responsible for the situation these children of mixed-orientation marriage followed by divorce and subsequent same-sex remarriage find themselves in. The church encourages—encourages—young men and women to enter into unions despite any sexual orientation questions on either side. They promise the young couple that all these problems will be solved simply by the sharing of covenants in the temple and faithful adherence to all the church’s requirements day in and day out. And these young people, filled with the magic of a religion that promises so many blessings in the end, comply and submit to the sacrament of holy matrimony as Mormons define it.

So here’s the church, telling these kids that it’s all going to be okay, that Heavenly Father will make it right if they’re just good enough and then sending them off to a lifetime of unhappiness. In the end, many divorce, remain friends because there was probably love if not physical affection, and share custody of their kids. And then comes this ultimate betrayal. They did what the church told them to do, believed the promises which failed to materialize in their marriage, then divorced for the sake of their own sanity and the good of their children. And now this church which claims lineage directly from Jesus Christ has just fucked their children over.

I’ve hesitated for weeks to say what I’m about to say. I love the friends I’ve made through Ordain Women, and I don’t want to hurt any of them. I don’t understand why they stay, but I try to accept that they stay. But doesn’t there come a time when you just have to get up and walk away? When an organization such as the LDS church can so cavalierly brush little children away, how can you stay? I get the ancestral heritage stuff, and I get the Amish-like-but-unwritten policy of shunning and how in a neighborhood of nothing but Mormons living as an outcast is an uneasy feat. But I admonish you, please…

STOP DRINKING THE FUCKING KOOL-AID.

73 words

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I’m not the first to write on this topic, and I certainly won’t be the last. But I’m going to be short but sweet.

“Strong female hero”

Seriously?

“Hero,” definition #1a in Merriam-Webster:  A mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability (emphasis mine).

Have you ever once read or heard someone say “strong male hero”?  Or, even, “strong hero”?

Point made. Thank you for your time.

Freed from Social Media Self-Published Author Slavery

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I love words. I love how easy it is to manipulate them to mean something they never meant to mean, and I love how they roll off my tongue when I read a good piece of writing aloud. As a novelist, nailing the essence of a character’s feelings at a particular moment in the story pleases me greatly. I write because I can’t not write.

Lately, however, I have found myself writing less and less as I’m tied down to a task that I not only take no pleasure in whatsoever but which seems pointless to the point of pain. Marketing. Promoting. Selling the artistic soul. Yeah, that. And for what?

Here’s how it is for the self-published author. You write the book. If you lack the ability or the gift, you pay someone else to edit and proofread the book, design the cover for the book, set up the interior layout of the book and, ultimately, make sure the book all comes together as a cohesive whole. And that, it turns out, is only the beginning.

Or the end. Because before you ever sat down to write that book, you should have been blogging and signing up for every social media site available. You should have had a platform ready to go before you knew what a platform was. The platform, they say, is key to establishing your brand, and establishing your brand is paramount to success in self-publishing.

Or, so they say.

The reality is somewhat removed from all the articles (hundreds upon hundreds, perhaps thousands) written almost daily regarding how to do all that marketing stuff and how if you just do as “I” say (whoever “I” is), you’ll see your sales increase tenfold—nay—a hundredfold.

Yeah, right. In the end, it’s just so much BS.

Imagine yourself in a room filled with people—and I do mean filled with people. To the point where breathing is but a distant memory and you wonder if you’ll ever know the refreshment of a cool breeze on your skin again because no place on your body is untouched by part of someone else’s body. All of that crushing humanity, and everyone shouting incessantly, “BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK!! BUY MY BOOK!!!”

That’s what my Facebook news feed and my Twitter feed look like. The weight of humanity landing on my social media accounts, yelling directly in my ear that the pictured book in the link to Amazon with the guy and his six- or eight-pack abs on the cover is definitely the book I want to buy. (I use this particular illustration because romance seems to be the bestseller of bestsellers in the indie world—most poorly written, pushed out half a dozen a year by any individual author and beloved by their readers. I have to admit that as a feminist, I find this appalling, and as a writer…well, you get the picture.)

I read a blog today called “Please shut up: Why self-promotion as an author doesn’t work,” and I took Delilah S. Dawson’s cautionary tale as the call of a liberator unlocking and opening the door to the marketing cage. I’m stepping out of the room where all the hawkers screech and returning to writing. I’m totally finished with Instagram, and Twitter will mostly languish. I’ll stay in touch with friends on Facebook, but my “author” presence will diminish a bit.

As Ms. Dawson goes into marvelous detail about why social media doesn’t work, I refer you to her and her blog on the topic to defend my decision and, perhaps, to allow you to hear the call and decide for yourself.

(And note, as I did when I went to link to the blog post, that she’s added a new one today discussing what she knows about being marketed to from a reader’s perspective. Also good stuff.)