Do you view Male vs. Female Characters differently?

Unfortunately, these days, it feels like some people are trying to blur the line between men and women, often for political reasons. It's why we see so many TV shows and movies that try to build women up, but only by tearing men down. They don't make women strong on their own, they have to make them directly compete and because, physically at least, they are less likely to compete head to head against an equally strong man, they have to tear the men down. It just becomes men with breasts on screen. It's just asinine.

 

I'm reminded of a certain quote from the movie Ted 2 that I won't reference further for fear of giving offense, but those who know it may have a smile.

 

There is always a counter argument .

All I know is when I am writing if I decide that the female has the power then that is the way it is. Or vice versa. Readers don’t stop every other sentence and hypothesize if what they are reading is plausible or not. Only writers do that. That is not the way people read! If what you are portraying is false or unpalatable to the reader, they have the option to stop reading. You cannot please everyone, but you can please some.

 

I know this sounds like a shock to you, but men and women are different. And before you say anything, I am female. I welded, I'm a black belt in martial arts. I collect comic books and I play video games.

You can take that for what you will.

But the way women and men think and reason things out and problem solve, is generally quite different. Yes, there are outliers, but typically the way men and women's brains are formed is different. And you know what else? It's great that they are! It's great that men and women are so different from each other! I get very annoyed when people ignore that.

Sometimes problems do need that "Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" and just get it done. Sometimes it requires more the feminine, "Okay, why are we solving this problem again?"

 

The question for me is, would the character work if they were the opposite sex.

In some cases, it doesn't make a difference. If you swapped Luke and Leia, the story would work just as well. But Michael Corleone wouldn't, because matriarchal and patriarchal families are run with a different dynamic.

 

The only real reason my MC is a female is because she's a clone, and it's more creepy that her mother gave birth to her own genetic self than it would be if it were a man having his clone carried by a surrogate.

 

Only in badly written Romance, when both are either aliens, assholes, or both.
(by aliens, I mean they don't feel like real people, and not actual aliens.)
Other than that it doesn't really matter.

 

On a sidenote: Men can be feminine and women can be masculine. So just because the main character is a brooding manly detective doesnt mean you cant gender swap him. And tbh I would like to see that done well

 

My MC is very broody. I never saw that as a masculine trait.

 

Well, it's most commonly depicted with male detectives. Although it's possible that it's because detectives as a whole are seen as a masculine role.

 

That needs to be a prompt for the writing contest - "alien assholes".

 

I view every character differently.

 

Yup. Gender matters. I used to say don't worry about it because I heard so much about writer's getting psyched out about writing the opposite sex but with all gender studies stuff going on in the world I got to say there is a difference in gender. Men aren't the same as women. I don't know enough about Harry Potter or Katniss to say what would change but take Star Wars – I think it would've been a terrible movie had Luke been a female. I don't think many would have watched it and it would not have become a classic because you'd have to change Princess Leia – or keep her and then explain why a woman would risk her life, with limited skills, no belongings, to go on a rescue mission. Sorry – the reason I believed Joan Wilder went into the jungle in Romancing the Stone was because I believed most women would do it for their sister but a good looking stranger – nope – that's a guy thing.

Even the new Star Wars edition with Rey no matter what you thought of that was smart enough to bring a family connection into her decisions.

Also, some books just fall apart with a gender change – Gone with the Wind – Scarlet wouldn't have been at home if she was male, she'd be in the war. The Shining – would a man really have stayed with a woman going nuts? Even if he did you still take the emphasis off the physical intimidation that Jack had over Wendy and it starts to feel skeptical. Misery was believable because he was trapped in bed. Weaken the man to elevate the physical strength of an average woman.

I pick gender based on how I want the plot to go. I picked two male characters for my story – it's a rocky relationship between a burnt-out director, age 43, and the star he hires a 14-year-old boy. Imagine what would happen if I swap just one gender. Some of the situations would not even be plausible. It's controversial enough when the director is hanging out with a fourteen-year-old boy could it even happen with a fourteen-year-old girl?

Do I care when reading if a character is male or female – no, so long as it is a good matchup for the scenario – I used to read Sleepover Friends a series about four girls who had weekly slumber parties. This wouldn't have worked with boys.

 

Half of my friends.

 

I'll grant you that women don't usually run off to rescue someone just because that someone is pretty, but I protest against the suggestion that that was Luke's main motivation. Make him female and you might have to lean a bit harder on the "you are destined for things way beyond this dried-up backwater planet" angle, but that angle was very much there already.

Well, yes, just about any story set in a time and place with ironclad gender roles would have to be different.

Uhm... yes? Obviously? He'd be even more likely to, since, as you point out, he wouldn't see her as a physical threat that he'd need to escape.

True enough. And I'll grant you that The Shining draws very much on the idea of alcohol-fuelled domestic abuse, and the fear of becoming, specifically, a drunken abusive husband and father - and that it's especially vivid since it's clearly one of King's own personal fears that he'd spent a lot of time thinking about. In fact, a lot of King's stories are very specifically about the experience of being a man.

 

If the setting is realistic or at least in our world, yes. Beacuse men are different from women. However; usually an interesting person is not ordinary, so there is that.

In fantasy the author can do whatever he likes so if he wants to write a whole race being only women behaving despicably then it is his choice. If done well, hurray. If not, yawn.

 

Probably depends on the story. Do I expect an 11 year old boy in a British magical boarding school to be different (including physically tougher) than an 11 thirteen year old girl? Not necessarily, at all.

In fact, if you wrote about a man or a woman in today's contemporary culture, I think you could get away with exchanging the gender as many times as you wanted without changing almost anything else to the text.

Could you as easily get away with that if you were writing a story in the Wild West or during the War of the Roses? Maybe not....

 

How do you feel about writing from the perspective of the opposite gender?

Sometimes when I read, I reflect on how well or poorly an author understands the opposite gender. I mean, how good or bad they are at portraying a believable character of the opposite sex to themselves. I can get blown away by how well a male author understands (or doesn't understand) women. I can get impressed by a female author creating a completely believable and realistic male character... Or that a book is filled with men who are ridiculously stereotypical or experts on girl-talk of the most complex character.

To me, men have always been difficult to understand. I thought I got it briefly, after reading "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus"... But I soon realised that far from all guys fit into the stereotypical Mars persona... To this day, men's actions and intentions are often a complete mystery to me. Maybe I'm set back a bit, because of spending my childhood in a single-sex environment at boarding school. However as an adult I've spent all my working life in a strongly male-dominated field. Or maybe it's a fairly common dilemma. I've not come across this as an explicitly stated challenge when reading books about writing fiction.

What's the trick with this -- how do you handle it? Do you feel that you are able to understand the opposite gender well enough to be able to create a well-rounded character? Is it twice as hard as crafting a character of the same gender as yourself?

 

(Harriet Potter...)

 

I hope to be able to understand women better by reading books by women authors. Don't know if its a working concept but I've got problems with reading and dealing with social situations RL so reading is much less risk of me making an idiot out of myself.

 

I never understood the point of giving a female character a bow simply because they are viewed as physically weaker. Same thing with elves in fantasy. Not an accusation, just a genuine inquiry; have you ever used a bow? I'm not saying that a woman can't use a bow. That's ridiculous. But if an author is giving a female character a bow because she is physically weaker than the men around her then they don't understand archery. Bows are not for the physically faint. They take a good deal of physical prowess to use properly, especially on a regular basis.

This isn't just with female characters, either. Smaller characters are often made to be archers but historically speaking, archers were big, strong people who were given a bow because of their skill with it and because they were big and strong enough to use one. This, of course, all depends on the bow but even those that require the least amount of power to draw are still not suited for the physically weak.

Anyways, that's just a tangent. I'm not sure that I have anything to add to this OP's topic that hasn't already been said.

 

The trope of women having a bow is ancient and it has nothing to do with the belief of women being weaker. It possibly started with the women who worshiped the Greek Goddess Artemis and took oaths of virginity. Virginity in the Greek culture was basically their way of saying, "Strong independent women." They were also the favored weapons of the Amazons who were as much feared as they were a curiosity. In fact, the Amazons were said to be so bad ass, that they would cut off one of their breasts to fire the bow. Like it or not, much of our modern writing is inspired by Greek literary theories.

But if you really do look at it, women do prefer to fight from a distance. Look at how male and female killers work. Women killers do like to kill at a distance, mostly with poison, but some have no issue with a gun either. Something about intimacy and how women view intimacy. Now, this is not the same with every female killer, as there are few women killers to begin with, but it is true for the most part, particularly those who are serial killers.

And for thousands of years, the trope stuck. Nothing to do with Sexism.

 

Yup. Katniss wasn't fighting at Agincourt, just trying to get off a shot that would wound or kill. In the movie version, she was shooting at maybe 20 yards or so? Jennifer Lawrence is (according to some celeb stalker site) 172cm and 60kg, which is on the larger end of the middle of the bell curve for a woman, but the character certainly isn't played that way unlike Lucy Lawless's Xena, for example. The two actresses are quite similar in size, but when she's not using her Frisbee o' Death (another ranged weapon), Xena's shown as wielding swords and even fists effectively.