"Pitting women against each other" plots?

[Thetageist]

How do you write hostility or rivalry between two female characters right? I'm often told that "women shouldn't be pitted against each other" because it provides an unhealthy example for girls to fight and hate each other. My problem, however, is that women do exist who antagonize other women for those same unhealthy reasons, and I want to express how it has felt every time I was on the receiving end of that.

I assume it's a matter of what both characters' motivations are and what the more "justified" female character does. What other factors may come into play? I'm not thinking of any particular project I'm coming up with, just want a reference for anything I end up doing in the future.

[Tenebrare]

It does not matter female or male, really.

In any case whatever you add to your story should have a purpose. Be it competition, fight or just walking in park. The story has beginning and end, and if there is a need to have a drive for a character that is about something negative, then you write about it. You are telling YOUR story and only you know what motivates yuor character and what needs to happen for them to achieve the end goal and character growth. Sometimes what needs to happen is something emotional and negative.

However it shouldn't be the end goal to have something negative, but it should be 'driver' for your character, not destination.

I hope I made any sense.

[EmsDeLaRoZ]

Just conceptualize what their ideals are and design their personalities in a way both characters crash to each other while following their ideals. I feel most of bad character designs in this aspect of rivalry have to do with people forcing both characters to hate each other without real reason.

Take Hank and Jebus for example, Hank is a merciless killing machine that focuses in his mission, while Jebus hates violence and tries to drive humanity towards peace by trying to end the madness. Both characters kill, but have different objectives, and both crash constantly, only partnering when the final outcome is better than the harm done in the way (like in M:PN)

[Inksmudge]

The problem arises because the women are fighting because they are women. They fight over a man, or shes jealous of the other girls looks. These dynamics are shallow, but that doesnt make all female vs female dynamics shallow.

You could even make a story about two girls fighting over a man without it coming off as sexist/overused, it just needs to be more than "they hate eachother because woman hate woman who like man she like". Give them personalities, give them reasons to actually dislike eachother (and frankly, sometimes even if two girls have a shallow rivalry, it can end in friendship or support. Look at the devil wears prada or ugly betty, both about snobby posh model girls putting down another girl, but it parodies the trope instead of falls into it)

Honestly, dont think about it too hard when it comes to putting two women opposed to eachother. As long as they arent solely against eachother for the sake of drama, or because theyre literally just two women, then i doubt youll fall into that trope.

(Lowkey i didnt even think about this trope when writing my female characters. Yes you should try to avoid stereotypes in your work, but when you try too hard you can just fall into an opposite stereotype. Treat your female characters like people and the story will follow)

[BUM-DRILLER]

Please go into detail with the cat fights. Hair-pulling and all

[TheBestBroster]

id just write them as characters fighting/competing against each other. The sex/gender of the character comes after the actual character. For example, after the pilot of Seinfeld they realized they needed a main female character, but struggled to write a woman. But the advice that helped them (and resulted the character of Elaine), was just writing her like they wrote all the other guy characters which resulted in them not overthinking how to write her.

[tydaze]

Give your characters a reason to have a conflict. Some kind of situational disagreement. Usually conflicts happen because two people have different views on the way things *should* be and see each other as an obstacle. It's better as something related to the overall plot of your story, and not something that is happening for no reason.

While it is true that there are some types of conflicts that are unique to women interacting with each other in real life, usually it seems to be a bad idea for storytelling. Because it's very easy for attempts to do that to veer into the stereotypical. We've all seen the bossy vapid Queen Bee a million times.

Mean Girls did it well, but that was satire (satire that seems to go over people's heads, as I have seen a lot of people trying to emulate the Plastics, when the whole point of the film was supposed to be that you should NOT want to be like them. Sorry, unrelated microrant)

Perhaps it would be best to start writing a practical plot-situation based conflict and then enhance that with elements of gender-specific conflict. That would probably help to avoid the stereotypical situations.

Now I am going to get into trends. Please don't take this next part as me saying all women are a certain way, all men a certain way. This is just my understandings of what is more commonly seen in either gender.

I think one of the key differences between male hostility and female hostility is that with females, it is usually indirect. It's more common for a woman to antagonize someone by being passive aggressive, manipulating, or gaslighting. It's masked hostility. Of course it's entirely possible for both men and women to be that way. But due to cultural expectations women often have to hide their intentions to get away with that kind of thing without being called out for it. (And when they do get called out, they respond with denial and that escalates the conflict) Whereas for a man, being more directly confrontational is more socially accepted and often even encouraged.

[Guidodinho]

At 1/13/24 04:50 PM, Thetageist wrote: I'm often told that "women shouldn't be pitted against each other" because it provides an unhealthy example for girls to fight and hate each other.

And do you often reply to those people by telling them they're absolutely 100% organicly free-range retarded?

Because you can litteraly say that about every part of human behavior, that's at the very least unpleasant.

"Can we all just agree that we all WILL NOT write about anything negative or unpleasant anymore ever!? Because people could get ideas!"

Maybe just write them as women with personalities from two of the people who told you that. Let them get in eachother's way somehow, and see how you can make the situation gradually escelate.

[VanVeleca]

Often times I find it to be a very unfair and plain dumb censorship

I can sort of understand it during love triangle plots but at the same time if the love triangle was made of two guys, or just guys even, would you hear someone say "Men shouldn't be pitted against eachother"? No, no you wouldn't, so why is it a problem if the rivalry is between girls instead?

Conflict is fun, conflict is what drives most if not all stories, saying women shouldn't be allowed to have conflict with eachother is stupid

Imagine if in Jojo P7, instead of Jolyne fighting back against Gwess they instead just held hands and became instant besties even though Gwess has tortured Jolyne and tried to kill her with absolutely no remorse, for her own gain, it would make no fucking sense

[Tenebrare]

At 1/17/24 01:05 AM, Guidodinho wrote: And do you often reply to those people by telling them they're absolutely 100% organicly free-range retarded?
Because you can litteraly say that about every part of human behavior, that's at the very least unpleasant.

"Can we all just agree that we all WILL NOT write about anything negative or unpleasant anymore ever!? Because people could get ideas!"

Maybe just write them as women with personalities from two of the people who told you that. Let them get in eachother's way somehow, and see how you can make the situation gradually escelate.

Off topic, but i officially am going to steal that "100% organically free-range moron" line.

[Jojo]

At 1/13/24 04:50 PM, Thetageist wrote: I'm often told that "women shouldn't be pitted against each other" because it provides an unhealthy example for girls to fight and hate each other.

Screw, what you are told. Write what you want. It's your story.