Necessary to be able to write the opposite gender?

So, when you write women you make them all behave in how you think they're stereotyped? At least that's the impression you're giving with the way you post about it.

 

Females have different trains of thoughts than males.
Such as a woman is more likely to go help a crying baby in the middle of the road while the male will look around himself first.

It's not a stereotype, it's just an observed difference between male and female mindsets.

Thing to remember for this topic is that humans, despite all attempts, are animals and have animal brains each coded with instincts and behavior patterns to deal with the scary wide world. Just because we have more intelligence than others species doesn't make us exempt to this.

 

What one gender is more likely to do isn't relevant. What matters is what your character is likely to do.

 

Aren't we starting to arrive at consensus already? So far, this is how it looks to me:

1. Yes, women and men have their differences, some are more built-in (like the natural urge of men to protect women) although they are displayed more clearly in some individuals than in others, some of those differences are cultural (the way society treats us as groups, such as representatives of a specific sex, how society treats us as individuals, our upbringing, our experiences and preferences etc), and yet
2. women and men are all individuals, not stereotypes, we come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes, behave in our own unique ways although, if we do deviate from stereotypes, there's usually at least some (more or less notable) reason to explain why we deviate and how. As a consequence, some individual traits can fly completely against the stereotypes (e.g. a man may not only not have the innate need to protect women, he may actually have a strong desire to hurt them), but those are exceptions to various rules of various "severity."

Am I wrong?

And isn't it commonly acknowledged that, unless you go out of your way to write a strong exception, simply substituting Mary's name for Jack or vice versa (and changing the personal pronouns used to address the character) isn't enough to switch a character's sex in a story if you suddenly decide your MC should represent the other sex?
Additionally, aren't we already starting to agree that, unless you do that on purpose as well, simply writing the ultimate gender stereotype doesn't constitute a good portrayal of a member of the opposite sex?

Or am I missing something?

 

It depends a lot on the character, I think. Years ago, I read a suspense novel written by an author I hadn't read before. with a Midwest county sheriff as the protagonist. I couldn't exactly put my finger on it, but there was something just a little bit 'off' about his behavior. The character was presented as a rough-and-tumble guy's guy, but he was beaten up a couple of times during the story and each time he spent a couple of paragraphs feeling sorry for himself and admitting that he deserved the attack. Very strange. Finally, I looked at the author's picture on the back cover, and 'he' turned out to be a woman (she wrote under a pen name with initials as her first name). Just an example, I think, of the difficulty women often have writing male characters and men have writing female characters. Also, in a lot of suspense and mystery fiction written by women, the female characters tend to be much more interesting people than the men, and the male characters tend to be stereotypes.

 

I don't think we can use a few examples of badly written characters (or just plain bad writing) as evidence that authors have trouble writing the opposite gender. Look at Agatha Christie - she wrote the most interesting characters and of both genders.

Write the character, not the gender.

 

So my first post is not gonna be about writing but about my area of expertise : biology

All studies pretending there was a structural difference between men's and women's brains or general behaviours were proven wrong at least 10 years ago. It is now proved that there are more differences between 2 randomly chosen individuals than between men and women. Women are NOT more sensitive, they are NOT instinctively better with child-caring, men are NOT structurally driven to the protection of females, they are NOT better in mathematics and logics, they have NOT different sexual urges or different strategies to find their ways when lost in an unknown town... Some of us might come from Mars, the others from Venus, but that doesn't depens on our gender.
The explication may be that our brains are so developped that they overcome the influences of hormones. You'll have to trust me and my PhD on that since all the links I could show you are in French ^^
Edit : I do have a link to Catherine Vidal's works. She's a neurobiologist in the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and one of the world's experts on the matter : http://www.europeanpwn.net/index.php?article_id=1615
Careful : I'm talking about general behaviours. Differences may occur in certain circumstances, due to the temporal influence of hormones, but these are temporary behaviours, not related to personalities.
However, in practice, we do sometimes observe significative average behavioural differences between men and women. They are though to be due to cultural influences. It's a highly fascinating subject I do encourage you to investigate but that has not much to do with writing believable characters.

Anyway, back to the main subject, I do think that imaginative empathy is the key if you want to be a good writer. There's no reason for you to feel closer to an astrophysicist, a fireman or an elf than a woman who lives a similar life to yours, exept gender-biaised preconceptions. We all have preconceptions but I think that, as writers, we should try to overcome them.
The thing is women and men live different things in their lives that might influence their personalities and it's totally understandable not to get immediately what you don't live on a daily basis. But that's something you can work on, as you do when you write on any subject that is not totally related to your own life. Let's say... astrophysicists, firemen or elves

And I refer you to George RR Martin : http://www.upworthy.com/why-it-shouldnt-be-difficult-to-write-believable-female-characters

 

it's necessary to be able to write all characters [of any gender] well enough to be believable to readers of any gender...

 

Just a practical suggestion here. If you struggle to write female characters, come up with a story where all the characters are female. This will force you to create personalities for your characters other than what you currently see as 'femaleness.'

It's a helpful exercise, and it's also fun.

 

Little story : Originally, the script of Alien was written for a male hero. When they casted Sigourney Weaver, they had to re-write it.
How did they do that ?
They replaced all the "he" by "she".
Result : one of the most believable female characters of cinema history.

 

You just pretty much shat on everything that was said in this topic. Why does someone need to specifically practise writing female characters in order to write them well? It doesn't matter what gender a character is, a well written character is just that—well written. A female can be as 'masculine' as you please, but if she's well written it doesn't matter. :c

That's awesome, I never knew that. Ripley and Sarah Connor are among some of my favourite female characters, simply because they were so bad ass.

The notion that some members were getting at, that women had to adhere to a certain role because that's how all women act pissed me off. I'm glad you posted in this topic.

 

Would "structurally" here mean that men's brains would be built somehow differently or some such?

What I was going after with "built-in" was that from the perspective of the survival of the species, it kinda makes (made?) sense for males to protect females (at least among humans) when, considering reproduction, one man can impregnate several women but one woman can only bear one child at a time and over a fairly long period of time, so in that sense, women are far more valuable, and if this observation has influenced societies for millennia, doesn't it make sense such a notion would be fairly deeply rooted? Or do you think it's purely a case of conditioning?

And then there's the issue of size / muscle mass / testosterone levels (since generally men tend to have more of all three), so looking at it from the POV of the survival of the species, it makes sense it's men who've handled a larger portion of the fighting, which could likewise have had a longer-term effect on our behavior since bigger size (and greater proportional muscle mass partly developed with the help of generally greater testosterone levels) generally helps when it comes to fighting.

Of course this starts to veer closer to the world of semantics, but would e.g. those three attributes (size, muscle mass, testosterone) be considered "structural" elements that have generally driven men to protect women? I mean in addition to social issues such as the fairly old notion that it's an honorable thing for a man to do to fight and, if it comes to that, sacrifice himself for his family etc. Or do you mean "structural" only as the way our brains have been built? Do hormones count as structural differences? Yeah, layman speaking here...

Out of interest (since I've only seen the first movie a couple of times, can't remember all the lines / scenes), do you know for a fact they didn't make any other changes? At least in Aliens, some of Ripley's lines / behavior would look a bit odd if she was a dude (like the romantic moments with Hicks, for one...).

I don't think anyone needs to do anything if they don't want to, but since writing appears to be a skill and skills generally develop through practice, if you want to be able to write certain kinds of characters well, most of us need to practice. If, say, I wanted to write credible soldiers, it would make sense for me to practice writing soldiers (by writing soldiers, of course, and by doing tons of various kinds of research, be it by reading, interviewing, or enlisting). The same applies for writing the opposite sex since, just like with soldiers, the author needs to understand things like cultural baggage, social stigmas, and whatnot. It's only when the author knows the character inside and out that s/he can make conscious decisions how the character deviates from the norms / stereotypes. Otherwise a lot boils down to chance and the author's own preconceptions regarding the character they are writing and who wants to rely on that?

 

So all soldiers would act the same? I can immediately think of two soldiers I know personally who are about as opposite as they can possibly be, in physique, attitude, skills, stability - you name it. Which one should I use as my "typical soldier"?

Any time one uses "group characteristics" to write an individual character, they are going to end up using stereotypes or writing cardboard cutouts. Let your characters act and react in a way that is consistent with them, not some generalized group they may belong to.

 

I didn't read his post like that... And I bet you didn't either 'cause you've read T's previous posts that show quite clearly he isn't one for writing stereotypes.

Anyway, if you know soldiers, you know they share sentiments, codes, experiences, thoughts and attitudes that they've gathered, learned, that have been drilled in them during basic, during their deployments, etc. Within that group, there're the individuals, but these individuals likely have certain war-related things in common, things they don't have in common with, say, me who hasn't gone to war.

Women also have things in common, experiences we don't share with men. The horror of the first period. The leers you get from men and how they make you feel. The dark alleys when you're tipsy and something goes bump behind you ("a rapist!"). And so on.

It's not about grouping or stereotyping people or about writing cardboard cutouts. I think it's more about shared experiences and how they shape us. Sometimes they shape us very differently.

 

I'm not sure, that's not my first area of expertise, but I could ask someone or look in a book I've got somewhere.
The example you're giving is well documented in many animal species. For humans, I would say there's a large part of conditioning. But there's a thing called cerebral plasticity, that allows us to modify our brains depending on our learnings all our lives long. It is totally possible that this would have promoted this kind of behaviour. But this is a reversible think and is not "passed" through DNA.

Muscle mass is totally a structural difference between men and women, even if women are also generally weaker than they should be because they're not encouraged to work on it (but yeah, they would always be significantly weaker than men, on average).
I would suppose that our past environment made physical force a necessity, therefore driven men to have a more "active" role than women in many societies. But there's a "the egg or the chicken?" situation here. I guess a sociologist could tell us more about it.
Hormones count as structural difference but, as I said, they seem to influence human's temporary reactions, not personalities.

I heard this in a documentary. One of the scriptwriters said so, if I remember well. But maybe they added a scene or two?

I'm super-tired and that's not good for my English... I guess I'm gonna read this post again and cry tomorrow morning ^^)

 

What about soldiers who haven't gone to war? Or who were near the front but not actually involved in battle? Those who joined because of patriotism (with all its various connotations) and those who joined because it was the only way to get an education? Talk to a bunch of Vietnam vets and see how cohesive their thoughts and attitudes are.

All of those things are still dependent on the individual. Many women didn't see it as the "horror" of the first period. Many women take those leers as compliments (however misguided others may find it). I imagine men, while probably not thinking rapist, would be thinking "attacker".

Your last sentence is it in a nutshell. But take out the "sometimes". Shared experiences shape each individual differently, based on all the other experiences they've had.

 

I also mentioned basic, boot camp. Everyone goes through at least that. That's why I gave several examples.

Yes. They were examples. You can come up with some of your own, like you just did. Some women may share experiences of the first period being great. The point was not to make statements that hold true with every woman or to dispute the significance of "the individual."

I agree. The existence of other experiences don't negate the impact of shared experiences. I'm not saying belonging to a group makes everyone the same, but I do think studying the group and the individuals within can help a writer write a credible character. Of course with such a large group as women things get more complicated, there're many cultural backgrounds that shape us (not 100 %), many different experiences, all types of period and breast sizes and pregnancies.

ETA: I used "sometimes" 'cause I also said very differently, and they don't always shape us very differently. Some people find each other agreeing a lot about a lot of things.

 

Biological evolution takes place over millions of years, but the timescale for social evolution is decades. As Laure said, attempts to find biological differences between male ans female brains have utterly failed to find any significant differences. There are social biases imposed by culture, but they vary greatly by population, and in modern settings, you can pretty much dismiss them when you write individual characters. This is especially true when writing the characters who drive events, because they rise above the herd averages to meet the demands of the story.

If you write your supporting characters to stereotype, they will appear shallow and without distinction.

 

I've been wondering about that: how much of those "instincts" are simple conditioning and how much of it passes through our DNA. I should probably find some material on behavioral psychology or some such...

That's another thing I've wondered about: how much do e.g. higher than average testosterone levels affect a person's personality? As far as I know, the hormone does affect behavior at least to some degree, but I've no idea how much of it is, well, controllable behavior, how strongly it affects our personal preferences, everyday disposition etc.
From what I've gathered, increased aggression is one possible side-effect of, say, using performance enhancing drugs that boost one's natural testosterone levels, but as I haven't really studied the subject / have no experience with such substances, I don't really know the extent of such an effect and how common it is.

I don't think I even implied, much less claimed that I think all soldiers would act the same (or if I did, I missed that bit and would appreciate it if you pointed out the part of my post(s) where I did so). I could repeat what I wrote in my previous posts but Kat actually explained my point quite nicely.

I never claimed possessing individual characteristics and sharing characteristics with a certain group of people are mutually exclusive. In fact, I think it would be weird to argue they were.

That's a pretty good example to prove my point: most men probably would not think "rapist." However, I'm sure there are some exceptions who would. If the author wrote a male MC who did think "rapist" in such a situation, yet the author treated that as the stereotypical reaction, it would probably raise a few eyebrows among readers, yes? That is, unless the author knew / gave reasons why that particular man or the men of that fictional world most often thought "rapist" in such situations.

I think most of us agree on that. The point I'm trying to make is that it's a good idea for the author to know and understand the stereotypes, why they are stereotypes etc. just as it is a good idea to know / understand what sorts of personal attributes / quirks / experiences etc. can cause a person to steer away from any particular stereotype and why.
This, of course, has nothing to do with my possible preferences when it comes to writing stereotypes, writing characters who go against stereotypes, or whether doing either for its own sake is a good or a bad thing (not that you claimed it did).

 

But again, the idea of "rapist" versus "attacker" is not because of gender but because of societal inputs. And frankly, if it weren't for societal inputs, more men probably would think "rapist". That's why I keep harping on this - there is a big difference between "writing women" and writing female characters and how societal inputs affect them in a given situation, if at all.

 

Feel free to call me dumb if I'm way off the mark, but how is it not because of gender (sex)? I'm asking because isn't the reason why it's women who are more likely to think "rapist" because usually rape victims are women while the perpetrators are usually men? Isn't the reason for that division between the sexes because men, generally, are physically stronger than women and hence it's easier for them to rape women than it would be for them to rape men (or for women to rape women or men)? And, of course, since humans, as a species, have survived, it's a pretty clear sign that the majority of men are straight / bi, so isn't that another aspect related to their sex which makes men the most likely perp and women the most likely victim?

Granted, rape is at least partly if not mostly about power, but I would hazard a guess that most straight male rapists do have a strong preference for female victims (or else more boys and weak men would get raped, but gay rape among straight men is pretty rare, as far as I know and if compared to the number of men raping women, the number of men raping men or women raping men / women is, again, afaik, notably lower).
I just have a hard time believing that, without conditioning, men would be just as inclined to rape other men than they would women.

With all this in mind, to me it makes sense that if the author is writing a story that takes place in our world, the stereotypical man would be more inclined to think "attacker" instead of "rapist" while it would be vice versa with the stereotypical woman.

Or did I just completely misunderstand what you meant by societal inputs?

 

I think a lot.

 

As I was saying to a friend recently, does anyone truly understand women? I don't even think women understand women.

 

A lesbian friend once told me that she understood women pretty well until she realized she was attracted to them. After that she joined the confused half of humanity.

 

I fixed your post for you. Feel free to thank me later.