#WomeninFiction

It’s been a rough couple weeks for female characters, and I’ve been angry, and I’ve been frustrated, and I’ve been vocal, but on Saturday night I decided to funnel my rage into something a little more positive. I wanted to shine the spotlight on my favorite women in fiction and talk about why they were so amazing. And I wanted everyone to jump in and talk about their favorite ladies in fiction, too. So I put out the call for #womeninfiction, and the people spoke!

At the time of my writing this, there are nearly six thousand tweets associated with the #womeninfiction hashtag, and their call outs range from Katniss to Jane Eyre to Black Widow to Nancy Drew and every woman in between. People talked about how these characters inspired them to be strong, to be brave, to be vulnerable. How they taught them that it was okay to be unlikeable, it was okay to be imperfect. These characters showed them that women are complicated, multi-faceted human-beings.

It’s no lie that ladies have had a rough time of it on the internet. Simple opinions can easily lead to rape and death threats. Standing up for yourself can mean opening yourself up to harassment and doxxing. But this reminded me how great of a place the internet can be. There was such an outpouring of positivity and support, it was genuinely magical. Like Jane, like Julia, like Alanna (and Alana!), like June, like Lilith, we live and we survive and we speak and we’re heard.