Avoiding Unfortunate Implications

I need some help, I've gone and put a decent amount of my story to paper and it isn't intentional but I can't shake the idea that I'm putting forth some unfortunate implications.

The main character is a girl trying to survive in the post apocalyptic wasteland, she is by no means an action girl, she's not very brave or confident and would rather spend her time reading than meeting anyone new.

The problem is, she eventually comes to find this group of soldiers roaming around in their tank and she ends up joining with them. They being soldiers and veterans of WW3 and everything, they usually end up doing all the heavy work, including fighting, hunting, setting up tents, making fires, cooking and various other survival related things.

I know there some in universe justification but I can't help but feel like I'm sending out the wrong message somehow, anyone else think so? And if I am, how can I fix that?

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edited 9th Jan '14 4:26:45 PM by LeGarcon

Include some female soldiers in the group. That might help. Also, give the main character some stuff to do to make her useful. She can also pick up some things from the soldiers, learning how to do some of the survivalist stuff. She should probably already have some skills that are useful for surviving, as well.

So... what are the unfortunate implications, here?

It isn't inherently sexist to have a girl not do heavy labour. It's only sexist if she doesn't do it because she's a girl.

Le Garcon: Also, she can't lift the big stuff, but that doesn't mean she can't help. I'm a tiny chick who can't lift much, but I do have force, and have been recruited by my stronger male friends to do heavy lifting, just because I'm willing to help, and we had limited hands. I could never do anything solo, but yeah.

Point is, strong people lift the big things, but not everything requires that.

Thank you all for the help so far.

@Tiamatty: I have plans to include more female soldiers and so on but only as people the group just sort of meets along their travels. She eventually picks up some skills from her new friends like maintaining weapons, light tank repair, how to pitch a tent and so on. The only skills she had beforehand is what she read in books and reading about it in a book isn't much preparation for living after the nuclear holocaust

@ Mr AHR: She wants and tries to help but between her just not being an overly big person and malnourishment from doing a pretty bad job at surviving in the wasteland there's not much she can do for a good while into the story.

The 4 soldiers sort of adopt her as this little sister like figure in the group and do their best to take care of her. She's a good deal younger than they are with her not yet being 20. I don't want her to come off as some completely helpless weight to the group but at the same time when shit hits the fan she's a young girl who lived most of her life in a sterile and safe bunker and they're 4 pretty big Russian army vets who have fought in WW3 and are still surviving years after the bombs fell. I mean that's an acceptable justification for her not being as useful or competent as them right?

Well the girl is still going to have to have survived for long enough to meet up with them.

Why shouldn't she be "pretty much useless" to them? She's young, was up til recently sheltered, and is extremely inexperienced. That's a list of perfectly good reasons that she would be mostly useless in the current circumstances.

Make her willing to do what she can, but don't angst that she can't do much. It's reasonable and justified that she can't do much in the circumstances.

edited 13th Sep '13 9:58:28 AM by Madrugada

Well look at it this way.

She's going to have to have survived for a few years in this wasteland on her own. I assume her parents are out of the picture because she runs off with these people? Well she's going to have to have found food, shelter, etc. She'll probably have her own stores of food she can share for a little while, and if these soldiers are a roaming group the girl will likely know the area better than the soldiers, so that's useful right there. She'll know where her food's been coming from, she might know places where there's cover, she'll know people who have been willing to give her supplies, or she might know that everyone is completely hostile.

Also, yeah, she's probably not going to be able to fight, but there's going to be endless "light" work, work that doesn't involve that much physical strength, like cooking, cleaning, mending, etc., stuff that she probably knows how to do, and even if she doesn't, she'll be able to get trained into it very quickly. Even if she's not very fast at it or not that great at it at first, the extra help is going to free up the soldiers to do other things.

As long as her worth (the amount she can work, the information she has, etc) is more valuable than the amount of resources they use on her, why shouldn't they keep her around?

Well she hasn't been out for years though. She left the bunker with nothing but the clothes on her back, an outdated industrial gas mask, a backpack with some food and books in it and her father's ancient gun that was sitting on the mantlepiece.

Her new friends find her collapsed in a bombed out building having ran out of food and not eaten in awhile, at most she's been surviving for a little over a week.

So she's been in her bunker for years?

...Wow, never mind.

I'm not seeing any UI in her being inexperienced, physically weak when compared with trained, hardened and conditioned military vets (shit, I'm an avid camper and not a weakling, but I'm physically weak compared with a trained, hardened and conditioned military vet).

I've got a similar situation in my current WIP: the female member of the group has spent her whole life in an urban environment - most of it in a major metropolis - and is now in a situation where she has to survive outdoors.

When compared with two of the male characters, she's quite physically weak due to only having done clerical work and has no experience of the skills required to survive.

However, she shows no hesitation in trying to learn the skills and, although their lifestyle is physically demanding and she finds it hard to keep up with the fitter characters, she doesn't complain and, over time, increases in fitness and strength.

After a while, she can hold her own and becomes quite the outdoorsy person.

Only a frothing at the mouth lunatic who sees "sexism" everywhere (including in the words "manual labour") or a complete moron (but I repeat myself) would think that such a character is only weak because "she's a woman".

From the sounds of your character, you could easily gender-flip it and not change a thing - a similarly-sheltered male character displaying the lack of skills and conditioning would still be believable.

I'm hoping to do something like that to her eventually but she'll never really be as competent and useful as her friends. She's a somewhat shy bookworm, not a battle hardened soldier or some survivalist.

I don't see what being shy has to do with competency, or being a bookworm. People can have multiple aspects to them. But more to the point, it really is ok if someone is not as competent as others, I suspect even within the group of battle hardened survivors, there are those that are less competent.

edited 13th Sep '13 6:25:58 PM by MrAHR

A possible solution (in as far as self-reassurance is concerned, since - as others have stated - I don't see an inherent problem with the scenario as is) would be to introduce her competence in other areas outside of basic survival.

For instance, you mentioned she's a bit of a bookworm. Try to create opportunities where knowledge gleaned from this habit would come in handy.