I had a great conversation with a fellow writer last night and one of the things that we discussed was the difference between a character in distress and a damsel in distress, and how, as a feminist and I am sick and tired of women always being damsels in distress. I have no qualms with a female character being in distress, or any character for that matter, distress is the cornerstone of drama. My issue comes when the female characters turn into damsels.

The specific scene that we were discussing was of five characters, four men and one woman, who were surrounded with the enemy closing in. Characters in distress, awesome! One of the men gets singled out and beaten. He ineffectually tries to defend himself, and one of the other male characters tries to help him, but they both wind up injured. To subdue a third man, who is rather large, the enemy tazes him, and again one of the men ineffectually tries to go to his aid. A lot of distress, a lot of drama, perfect! But you notice, so far the woman has done nothing, until it is decided that the men will be killed on the spot and the main bad guy is going to take the woman home with him, you all know why. Finally, our woman does something . . . she screams out for the men to help her. She knows, can see, that all four of them are thoroughly subdued and injured and have no way of helping her, yet she cries out to them. Instant damsel.

Throughout all of the previous action, which includes all four of the men being struck and injured, not a single one of them calls out for help. They try to fight to back, and I’m sure would have gladly accepted help, but none of them expect someone to help them, much less call out for help. Whereas the second the woman is grabbed – not struck, not injured, grabbed – her first instinct is to call out to four wounded men to come save her. WHAT?!?!?!? No! She just went from the fifth member of an outlaw gang, where she is purportedly a contributing member, to a damsel in distress.

Yes, characters need to be in distress, but I am fed up with male characters in distress “taking it like a man” while the female characters transform into damsels. It is only after the woman has been successfully dragged away – it does say that she is “fighting back” – that we discover she had a switchblade on her the whole time! WHAT?!?!?!?! Long story short she isn’t able to do anything profound with the blade and winds up being saved by a man. Classic damsel in distress. I’m tired of seeing it, and I told my friend just that as it was her book that we were discussing.

Now I’m not expecting every woman to be Xena the Warrior Princess and take out every threat that comes around like a badass. Although that is fun to see. All I want to see is women who try to help themselves instead of immediately turning to men to save them. The four men mentioned above, had to be saved by somebody else. It happens, there’s nothing wrong with that. But fight back and fight dirty if necessary, and from my experience* ladies, it is always necessary to fight dirty when up against a man. Even if he is your size or smaller, the odds that his upper body is physically stronger than yours is practically guaranteed. It’s just the way we are built. But if some guy is intending to make me his sex slave I can guarantee you the only way that he’s going to be able to drag/carry me away is if I’m unconscious or completely bound. If he’s got a gun on me, I’m going to fight back even more viciously. It’s really hard to hit a moving target, especially one that just kicked your knee out and is attempting to gouge out your eye.

As authors and storytellers we need to show that women can do more than cry out for help. Women can help, or at least try, to help themselves. Will they get hurt? Most definitely. Will they still need to be saved sometimes anyway? Yes. Will some of them still wind up captured or dead? Yes. But it is about time that this notion of the damsel in distress went away. Literature and entertainment is completely saturated with this character. Let’s create a new one, shall we?

*My experience consists of several self-defense classes and hundreds of hours of stunt training in a variety of weapons. I have never encountered a man who couldn’t at least match my upper body strength. To come out on top, you have to fight dirty, but if you’re in a situation requiring you to fight, he deserves it!