Subject says it all. When you read a book, do you view characters differently depending on their gender? For example, if Harry Potter was a female instead or if Katniss was a male...would it even matter? When you write your own stories, how do you determine which gender your main character is?
Nope. I don't care. A good character is a good character and a bad character is a bad character. What often makes a potentially good character bad is when the author is trying to make a point. Poorly. My characters are whatever they seem to me to be. I'm not filling out quotas. I don't have an agenda. I don't try to force diversity. If every character in a book seems to be male, fine. If they all seem to be female, fine. I don't do checklists and I generally refuse to read people who do. Just write a good story. Leave your politics elsewhere.
Yes and no. I expect that female characters act like women and male characters act like men. But other than that, no. What I care about is a good story.
It depends on the setting. What does society expect of young witches and young wizards? The Capitol asks for two tributes, one male and one female. Two males and two females will not do. So gender may not matter to us, but does it matter to the people in our stories? Quite often yes. When we're talking about fights, you will need to think about your character's physical attributes, including size, weight, body type, fitness, etc. Many of these correlate with, but are not strictly tied to, biological sex. The average man can throw a heftier punch than the average woman in the contemporary world. It's all statistics and F = ma. Men and women will fight differently though, and will be trained to fight differently hand-to-hand. Women might need to fight smarter, whereas a big guy can just punch his way through many problems. We're writing fiction here. Limitations are good. If the odds are stacked against your character then that makes for a good story. This is just one axis on which we can heighten conflict.
Sometimes i think it could be important depending on the story, i.e. in a society where men and women are treated differently. But for me, a good male character=a good female character, and vice versa. Fight-wise, as the user above me said. We all have seen a badass female fighter in a story somewhere. It's more than just about being big and strong, right? A lot of female characters out there use their smaller-than-the-average-male-goons body to be more agile, thus giving them an upper hand
I do write female and male characters differently. Ditto for Women and men. My female protagonists (and antagonists) tend to have fewer flaws and many fewer minor flaws. They tend to be more rational and more disciplined. This is a fault in my writing and stems from me mythologising women. I have tried to overcome it but am not doing well. At least I'm aware of it and am working towards getting better.
As ab author, yes. Men and women are different, they have different problems. A man will never experience the issues tied to pregnancy, for example. As a reader, no. I dont think about why tye author gave their protagonist what gender and what would happen if you would flip it. However, i feel like sone authors make their protagonists female for the sake of having a female MC and then they realize theyd rather have a male one so they give the girl male traits. Beating up thugs twice her size? Check. Macho attitude? Check. I could go on with this... That just screams bad writing to me.
I think it matters. There are enough common cultural associations across the English-speaking cultures as to "male" and "female" tropes that to not acknowledge them, even by omission, can be jarring for the reader. I know I've come across a few stories (here, professionally published, wherever) where I've gotten quite a ways into the story only to find out that the gender assumption I'd built up of the character was wrong, and not by design. If the writer is trying to throw the reader for a loop, that's one thing, but when the disorientation is accidental, that's poor writing. Doesn't mean that female characters have to be weak or male characters can't be, but look at Hunger Games. Katniss is weak, hence dependent on a bow rather than a broadsword or a maul or something. Peeta is also pretty weak and dependent on camouflage, but if either one of them was a rough, tough type, the whole side story with Gale would have been seriously affected. Imagine Thor trying being torn between two comparative lightweights. It could still be a good story, but it wouldn't be the same at all. Ellen Ripley and Vasquez are there to subvert tropes. Sarah Connor is a transformational character, but so is Peter Parker. Gender-swap them and everything changes though. I'm losing my train of thought, I think this is my stop.
Generally, I treat characters the same irrespective of gender, race, etc. But in my settings, there are biases, and those impinge on characters. For example, in a future in which a series of terrorist acts by radical Christians, including the nuking of Las Vegas, Christians are feared and reviled by much of the population, so of course one of my key characters is a devout Catholic. In a short story I wrote a lead character who is a woman and a Buddhist, who was forced to destroy a faceless and heavily armed enemy who tried to kill her, and after she survives the pursuit, she mourns the lives she had to take. That story would have been (in my mind) less interesting if the main character were a man or of a different faith.
I think I like a book better the less I feel like it matters. It's depressing how much gender matters in the real world. I like stories where it doesn't, at least not much. I think Katniss Everdeen is certainly a girl, but not much would need to change if she was a boy. Harry Potter is, likewise, not especially masculine and certainly not in a way that impacts the plot in any tangible way. In my own stories... I guess it matters to an extent, especially since I usually have a romantic subplot, which means having to think in terms of "what does this man/woman find attractive in a woman/man?" But my female characters tend towards being confident and decisive, and my male characters tend towards being gentle and emotional, so I think they all kind of meet in the middle to a large extent.
I guess it would depend on the story of question. For instance, I can enjoy both Lara Croft and Indiana Jones. As long as their roles are fulfilled realistically, or at least by the confines of the story in question. I typically write male characters or male Androids for my post-apocalyptic stories. On some Side Stories, I have written female characters or a Duo
I think it would be arrogant of me to say it doesn't make a difference, though I can be aware of my preconceptions and biases and work to counteract them if it's making for unconvincing characters.
When I read a book, I judge a character by their sex if the author makes it matter. In, say, an Arthurian setting, where the knights are male and the women hang about in castles waiting to rescued, it matters, and I'll instantly judge a character based upon their sex. If it's a fairly modern book where a person's sex doesn't matter, then I won't judge characters on sex. And if it's even more modern, so that the women are all fearless and extremely capable and the men are all heavily flawed, then I'll be back to judging the characters on their sex. For Harry Potter or Katniss, I don't think it would matter, though I'd buy Katniss being deadly with a bow more easily if she were male, because physical strength matters a lot in archery. I try to avoid stereotypes that certain types of behaviour only belong to one sex, e.g. men often use violence. The one big difference is pregnancy. Darth Vader really had to be male given his reveal at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Sarah Conner had to be female in order to raise the child of somebody she only knew for a couple of days.
Do I judge characters differently based on gender? No, I'm a libertarian. Do I write characters differently based on gender? Abso-fucking-lutely. My MC is a 110 pound female. She has to use her superpowers in combat in a way that spaces out enemies, because if a large male were to close the distance and get his hands on her... not good. Women also process emotions differently to men, so I have to really try and remember that sometimes.
I make some distinction in that I try to not judge women harder than men for the same things. I think I am somewhat successful with this but I don't know for sure and it would be foolish to think that I, alone of all, somehow have transcended the structures of my own culture while everyone else is still there. What I do however do is that I write characters differently based on gender since I am utterly convinced that in practice, there's a difference between men and women in practice. I base this on that with some biologial differences, sexism and gender roles, men and women will have different experiences in life and since I am also convinced that we are shaped and influenced by our experiences in life, men and women are formed by different experiences and thus comes out different from each other. These differences do not need to be huge, but I think they are there.
You expect characters and/or people to act a certain way based on gender? Really? That's a little sad to me. Good stories and people can exist without these expectations.
Depends on what you mean by expect. Statistically more likely to behave certain ways? That's just basic biology. Judging them harshly if they deviate from statistical means? That's being a jerk.
That's a good point and this is a problem that I think happens far too often, especially in the superhero genre. Far too many people think that the way they make women strong is to turn them into men. That doesn't make a strong woman, it makes a man with breasts. Whether people like it or not, men and women are inherently different. Treat them as such. Where those differences don't matter, they can be interchangeable. Where those differences do, they can't.
That's partially it. I don't find it particularly believable for anyone to be able to fight ten people in hand-to-hand at once. I don't care if you're Shaq, if you're jumped by ten people at once and they want you dead, you're dead.
going of topic not necessarily because ten people, particularly untrained people, will get in each others way and if you hurt the first one badly the other nine will probably back off - the worst number to have to handle is three or four, as its too many for one person to counter but not so many that they impede each other.
On topic men and women are different - pretending they are the same is daft. That doesn't mean that they aren't equal or that one is superior to the other, but as cephus says a strong woman is not a man with breasts and a man who prefers more traditionally feminine roles is not a woman with a penis. In terms of my own characters I generally have both male and female characters
Some of that is genre related. It's silly, but acceptable depending on the story you're telling. Shonen anime wouldn't exist without it, after all.
