Everyone is entitled to their opinions, of course. One person’s junk is another’s treasure, and so forth. But I wondered, TKA and Lisa, if the negative impact my story had on the both of you would at all have been different, had it been a female author? I only throw this question out there because this story was quite different from any other that I’ve written, in that I wrote this story for my wife, who devised the plot. She, in turn, devised the plot after suffering through an interview wherein she posed to be a “bitch on wheels” that she is not, and as she returned to the dark parking garage, she contemplated the irony of being targeted by a serial predator who preyed upon the sort of career woman that she was misrepresenting.

Any thoughts?

Sheesh.

It’s a great story coz it’s funny. Stop over analyzing and enjoy it !

a sympathetic female character does not save a story from being misogynistic any more than violence against women makes a story misogynistic.

peace.

As an aside to all, more involved discussions tend to work better in the forums. You have to create a login to post, but there’s less spam and you can reply to a specific message, quoting it as you do — fancy modern stuff like that. http://forum.escapeartists.net

If it had happened to an unsympathetic male character, would that make it misandristic? If it had happened to an unsympathetic character of unspecified gender, would that make it misanthropic ?

As to the good mom/bad mom idea, again i don’t really see why gender is important to the story. The only thing the story says to me (if anything) is “Mean people suck.”

ps. I’ve been finding the last batch of stories, quite enjoyable, with few exceptions. Ben and Al, you guys are doing a bang up job.

this maps on to a hilariously blatant bad mom/good mom theme. good mom proves her willingness to not economically subjugate the male and crush his ego (because she is a good mom!), so she gets to live. bitch-lady, on the other hand, gets her comeuppance.

presto, a+b = classic.

dose that make sense?

i get what you are saying about misogyny and horror in general “let them bleed” bothered me for more personal reasons. but this story is, like i said, a classic. it rehashes these psychological themes without taking them any further. it’s so blatant to me that i just find it surprising that no-one else noticed.

TKA: What constitutes a “kill the bitch” story, apart from a strong, admittedly rather unsympathetic, female antagonist? Bearing in mind, of course, that your average horror story is going to tend toward violence regardless of what kind of characters people it. “Interview” has what I would call a highly sympathetic female protagonist as well — so I have to say no, I didn’t find it misogynistic overall.

Not to say that misogyny is closely guarded against here. It isn’t. See disclaimer.

it’s not that these stories get podcast that bothers me, it is that no-one, most egregiously our well-spoken presenter, seems to have anything to say on this point.

i dunno, i am new to this genre. maybe yall got that in 101.