Sandi Toksvig to Chair ‘Can Men Write Women?’ Debate

Many of you may have seen the Twitter handle (@men_write_women) and conversations about male authors badly describing women and the female anatomy. Many of these Tweets will have you howling with laughter but they do beg the question, why do some many male authors get it so wrong when they’re describing a female protagonist?

A new literary festival chaired by writer, actor, producer, and co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party; Sandi Toksvig is going to attempt to debate this issue. The event titled, “Her Breasts Preceded Her into the Room” will honour the “deathless prose” that the organisers say is often offered by male writers.

The panel will be made up of four writers and publishers showcasing some of the worst examples of men writing female characters and ask the question, “can men write women?” The event will be held at Primadonna, a new Female Led Festival in Suffolk, founded by 17 women who promise it won’t be “anti-men”.

Toksvig herself said she is looking forward to “seeing if we can find the finest examples of truly awful writing about women.” She also adds, “Writing any character can be tricky, but some writers create women who aren’t just unlikely, but anatomically impossible.”

Joining chair, Sandi Toksvig, on this panel will be Luke Jennings – the author of the Villanelle novels, Michael Donkor – recent shortlister for the Desmond Eliot Prize, academic Naomi Paxton – who is also known by the comedy alter ego Ada Campe, and Lisa Milton – Executive Publisher at HQ Stories, Harper Collins’.

Kit de Waal, author and co-founder of Primadonna Festival won’t be appearing on the panel, however, she still had something to say about the discussion. De Waal stated, “There is no excuse for men to badly write about women’s lives. Most men grow up surrounded by women, work with women, have women in their family, watch women on tv and film (not always a good barometer but still….), read about women and some even have relationships with women. Why then should they not be able to depict women as real people with the same hopes, fears, ambitions and desires that men have.”

Kit de Waal promises this will be a “lighthearted look at a serious subject,” adding “We hope it will inspire men to think again about how women appear on the page, particularly when they are alluding to sex.”

Catherine Mayer, co-founder of the Women’s Equality Party and Primadonna Festival also added, “We’re not actually saying men can’t write women – we have two men on the panel. But my point here is the men who write that kind of stuff, they are lacking imagination and possibly talent. We’re having some fun about that.”

Mayer also went on to say, “One of the much more serious points about Primadonna generally is that although women buy more books than men and get more books published than men, they earn less than men, and they’re much less likely to be taken seriously.”

The Primadonna Festival will be held in Suffolk from 30^th August to 1^st September. Tickets are still available on the festival’s website but if you miss-out or can’t go they are hoping to podcast much of the content, and we are certainly hoping they podcast this particular panel.