It has never been easier to read works by women for women, or to find music by women, or female scientists, academics, and philosophers. You can spend your whole life consuming nothing but works by women and not scratch the surface these days. Now, what if you want to explore a different genre that still does not have a lot of women in it? Or if you want to read something historical, from a time when women may not have even been allowed to write? If you still want to honor a commitment to focus women in your media consumption, how can you do so?
Luckily, we have a tradition of feminist interpretation of literature and history that can help us 'recover' or 're-imagine' women in works written by men. Whether we are talking about religious texts like the Bible, historical texts like any from ancient Rome, or even modern works such as anime, we can choose to focus on the women mentioned in these texts and to give time and attention to them.
The technique I want to focus on is called 'close reading.' The idea is to look at a small piece of text, and think deeply about the implications of it. Close readings are important where you have very little material to work with.
I also want to talk about imagining. Sometimes the text itself, or the dominant interpretation, may not give you much to work with. Luckily, we always have our imagination with us, and we can ask the question - what if? Combined with the technique of close reading, you can come up with alternative histories for female characters. If a woman is described as a nag, shrew, or whore, ask yourself - is she really these things? What made her be the way she is today? What has she been through? Is there a way to re-imagine the work that gives her more complexity and agency?
Fandom can be quite powerful in this way. Focusing on female characters and challenging the simplistic ways in which writers depict them can be a way to reclaim feminine agency. Fans are famous for latching on to the smallest details of characters and coming up with imaginative universes around that. Fans usually focus on male characters, especially male characters they find attractive, but there is nothing stopping us from focusing that on female characters regardless of their attractiveness.