I learned a lot from reading this. I've never tried to imagine like a guy. This is probably a good writing exercise. For myself, writing from a male POV is not all that challenging. I have many siblings that vary quite a bit in age, so I have the perfect way to observe a guy (or a girl) in different times of life.
I don't fundamentally disagree with your overall premise, but I have to quibble about this. If you're a woman, you're encouraged to show a _subset_ of your feelings, and you're supposed to control another subset. Positive, warm, friendly, giving feelings are encouraged. And it's OK to show sad feelings if you're sad in a warm, sentimental, vulnerable, open-to-comfort sort of way. You're not supposed to show negative, cold, angry, withdrawing, or sometimes even confident or strong feelings. You're allowed to cry over a Hallmark commercial, but if you just walk around in a bad mood, older men may command you to, "Smile!" because you're being insufficiently decorative. And you're always, always supposed to control anger, unless it's cute shake-your-tiny-fists anger. Real anger or strong opinions can get you called "shrill". And a woman is not only encouraged to show the "right" feelings, she's encouraged to manufacture them. A woman is supposed to be delighted for the opportunity to contribute cookies to the bake sale; she's not supposed to say, "Are you kidding? If a donation is mandatory, here's a twenty." She's supposed to be eager to talk about her feelings about the natural disaster and how bad she feels for those children on television; she's not supposed to write a check and change the subject. Some of this is a little overstated, but I wanted to make it clear that a woman isn't encouraged to openly, freely, show all her honest feelings as they come to her. It's much more controlled and structured than that. ChickenFreak
It makes sense, more or less. We may just be disagreeing on very specific aspects of word definitions. For example, to me "analytical" includes seeking out the facts and looking at the big picture. If that word is eliminated from the male package, it ties together better for me. Although the two packages offer no middle ground for someone who digs up all the facts, analyzes them, and seeks out the big picture, without necessarily painting in the details with intuition or emotion. Male, female, and Vulcan? ChickenFreak
Egotistical? Not me. Unless it comes to painting. Males in general, in addition to many of us being egotistical, we/they try to protect stuff, like females. Defensiveness could be a realistic trait to add, especially if you don't want your characters to follow the standard "meat-head" template. I hope this helps.
For me, I definitely connect better with my female characters, but I still know how to express male characters and generally how they feel. My dads somewhat interested in my writing, so sometimes I may ask questions to get more into the mind of a guy for my male characters. But I mean, characters are characters, as long as you have the basic and general info you need, its shouldn't be that challenging. And if you do run into problems, the internet is filled with all sorts of information on male characters.
The older I get the more I believe that men and women have very similar personalities. There's the old dating cliche "There's a lid for every pot" meaning that every male personality has a female counterpart. When I was younger I didn't believe this, but I did notice in high school that the "jocks" were just male versions of the "cheerleaders" and they liked the same things. There were males and females who did drugs, and had all sorts of interests and activities in common. I certainly found the cheerleaders attractive, but I had nothing to talk to them about we had no attitudes or interests in common. Later, when I became an adult I ended up working in social work and I kind of think like a socialist, and so I had nothing in common with women working in business, in fact I was a literal opposite. Of course, the same goes for males working in that field, beyond politeness I have nothing for them. So, my point there is that there isn't a huge gulf between male and female personalities. A male hero isn't going to be too much different than a female and the same goes for a sinister person. However, unless superpowers are at play males and females may have to take action differently. I do think there's cultural attitudes that males and females adopt which influence how their personalities play out in real life. For instance, I was raised to be stoic when trouble hits and that can be interpreted as it can look like I don't care, which is completely untrue. Also, I'm a large guy and I've been lifting weights since I was 18 and am as strong as an ox. So, if someone threatened me I might start laughing, because, go ahead and see what happens. When I look and that, the attitude comes from two places, a cultural belief that it's ok to fight, and the biological roll of the dice that gave me my body. So, I might be like many females in my core personality, but the details are influenced by cultural attitudes and my male body. Also, you should just ask men you know, including here, and get some insight.
