Just sort of an open-ended musing...
My wife recently made a comment along the lines of she could always tell right away even without knowing the author's name, etc the gender of the author, and how it was particularly obvious when it was a man writing from the POV of a woman. Her words were something like "men writing as women always resort to having the female character as either a sexual being or a sexless one - it's either a variation of a mother or a variation of an object of lust and there's not much in between. It never feels all the way believable."
Naturally that pissed me off because whenever I write female characters I try to give them as much depth as I would male ones. However, looking back at my recent work (in which I have with some degree of intention tried to get out of my comfort zone of a young-ish, white male protagonist) and also that of other male writers, I kind of see her point. In my view it's not so much that I think male writers don't usually try to give female characters depth. Rather its that they over-think the possible ramifications of 'getting it wrong' and end up overcompensating.
My hypothesis on this is what happens is they then start to worry about portraying women inaccurately and either shut off their sexuality entirely through portraying them as elderly, infirm, children or just plain disinterested - or they resort to classic 'femme fatale' types who, in spite of any strength they may have as characters, do not accurately portray the 'average woman'.
In short, a lot of overcompensating and ham-handedness.
I'm not sure if this is an issue for women writing as men - possibly not so much as there tends to be less concern as to how men are portrayed in the media - but what I am really interested in is to hear from other writers on how they go about convincingly portraying a character of a different gender? Or any character outside of one's demographic in general, for that matter? Not talking about female elves or murderers or creepy little girls, etc, but attempts at capturing true-to-life regular, adult folks.
What examples are out there of this being successfully done? I can think of a few I think are decent, but would like other opinions.
The main character in my WIP is a woman, and it is the first serious attempt I have made to write a full-fleshed novel told from that POV. It is definitely more challenging. Writing it has really brought to my attention how little I know about what the academic crowd might call 'women's issues'. For the most part, its not so bad since on a higher level I don't really feel there is such a huge gulf between women and men (perhaps others may disagree with that statement) and to believe otherwise is to fall into the exact trap one is trying to avoid. The superficial details are tough as expected. I find myself constantly googling various terms for women's clothing, watching make up being applied, observing the women I work with, that sort of thing. Which is sort of fun, I guess.
The larger question for me is whether it is really possible for a man to portray a 'normal woman' as well as a female writer can, all other things being equal, or if there is always going to be some kind of barrier to acquiring a full understanding across gender lines?
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