Male and Female think differently, we all agree on that much.

JK Rawlins characters tend to think and act in more of femine style. I'm not saying Harry is gay, but I am saying that because the author is female, and therefore thinks as one, her characters tend to do the same.

Orson Scott Card's character's struck people I have talked to as being very male-minded. Approaching, and handling a situation as a guy would most likely do.

Whether or not you agree with my examples is not the issue I wish to present. It is this,

I'm afraid, however, that I have to very much disagree with your examples. OSC and JK Rowling are two of the best I've ever seen at modelling the oposite gender. Harry never seemed like a girl to me, although getting inside his inner thoughts might make you think so. The truth is what he says and what he thinks are not often the same, so he is as close mouthed about his emotions as a real man tends to be. Any man out there who can't say they wouldn't have the same doubts and emotions Harry has? (Really, I'm curious. I'd like to think that these emotions are real to the male gender.)

As for OSC's characters, he usually writes his point of view characters as men, although whether or not his females are the POV characters or not they are very strong women. I actually like that very much. But they don't seem too much like men to me. They just seem like women who are strong, often leaders, and with superior abilities. Sometimes the emotional level is a little off, but it's about as close as I've seen.

Here's some examples I have noticed, though. Mercedes Lackey can't seem to portray a real man to me. (Don't get me wrong, I like most of her stuff.) But they are definitely either stereotypical or women in men's bodies. On the male side of things, Terry Brooks is awful about this. I can't stand his female characters. I'm glad he only puts a token one in every book because I don't think I could stand any others.

That said, I'm going to raise another issue. When I sent one of my short stories to a (male) friend to read and critique, he said I wrote like a girl and said, "I'm not sure if I like that." Now, I know this friend wasn't being sexist; what he was saying was that I needed to come out and be more aggressive with my writing (I think).

I'm wondering how to take this, since I am a girl, and so was my main character. The themes in the story, while not gender-related directly, were closely tied to the fact that she was female. I expected the story to have a strong feminine flavor.

On the other hand, do you want to get published?

If the answer to the above question is yes, then you will have to accomodate audiences to a certain extent, but you wil *never* make everyone happy. Never ever. I don't know about the short story in question, I'd have to read it to really understand if your friends comments were out of line or not. I can assure you that he's being honest, which is what a good critiquer should do even if it's hard to hear. But I bet he could have found a better way to say it even so. And just because he thinks so, doesn't mean you can't sell your work.

With my first name and the character--every person who has read it that did not know me thought I was male. Even people who only saw my last name on it and it is a two part hyphen last name think I am male.

It can be done.

[QUOTE]Whether or not you agree with my examples is not the issue I wish to present. It is this,

How should an author go about writing main characters of the opposite gender?[/QUOUTE]

What does everyone think about that?

I did answer your question. I said that I thought you need to stop trying so hard and realize that men and women are more alike than different.

Also, I think it is relevant whehter or not I agree with your examples. Because if you think those are examples of badly written male/female characters, then I'm not sure we're even on the same page about what is good and bad. In that case, none of my advice will be meaningful. Especially since, if I were to come up with an example of anyone who has done this *well*, I would have you read OSC.

But that's just me.

On the subject of male vs. female, I have to admit that I don't think I could write a convincing female character unless she was supposed to be a sort of man trapped in a woman's body. If I were a woman, I'd unquestionably be a virago and probably a (celibate) lesbian as well. But then again, even as a man I hardly qualify as "normal" by human standards. I spend a good half my time thinking about how to disable or kill any humans in near proximity (even ones I like), so all my characters have at least some noticable homicidal tendencies (which means I write about soldiers, warriors, and assassins a lot).

The fact of the matter is that some women are viragos and sociopathic killers and so forth. So I don't have to shy away from writing women...any more than I have to shy away from writing human males. I just have to make the POV character true to life...meaning myself, the only example I have of someone whose thoughts and feelings I can examine firsthand. On the other hand, you simply do not have to populate your stories entirely with POV characters. Make one or two characters POV characters, then have the other characters act like you've observed other people to act. You don't know the thoughts and feelings of people that you see everyday, you only know what they do...but the same is true of any non-POV characters in your stories...you don't have to know why they do the things they do, just so long as they do the sorts of things that real people do.

I've made a point of being something of an expert on human behavior, even though I have no idea why humans do the things I observe them doing. Most of the time, they just act like fools (which I might have to kill at any moment to protect myself--or just for fun ). When I write a POV character, that character is based on me (to some extent). When I write all my other characters, those characters are based on humans as I've observed them from the outside.

My point is that writing a person of another gender is not fundamentally different from writing a person of a different socio-economic class or a different culture. It requires putting ourself in the shoes of that person. But it is still you in that person's shoes, not someone else.

I would refer you to You and Your Characters on the SFWA.org site. He gives some good advice about writing realistic characters, but I warn you to only apply it to POV characters. In particular he warns about a character he calls a "damn fool".

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Why is it that when some bloodthirsty creature clearly threatens the planetary exploration team, some damn fool always wanders off and gets himself killed? Would you leave the safety of the spaceship? Of course not! However, the damn fools do every time; otherwise there'd be no story.

---

All that being said, I do tend to avoid writing POV women because they are always viragos and tend to be a)virgins b)frigid or c)lesbians (so far I've stuck with virgins of the pureminded sort--it seems the least dangerous, besides which I find the idea rather attractive). But I also avoid writing men that don't think of violence as a possible solution to any problem (as well as men that think only of violence as a solution). I avoid writing about homosexual men for the same reason--I can't even imagine a women being sexually attracted to men for biologically unsound reasons, there simply are no biologically sound reasons for male homosexuality (the same is not exactly true of female homosexuality, but I don't think I'll get into that here).

In short, my POV characters think the way I think, and that's that. If it happens to be a she, then she thinks like me.

I think that some authors do well at writing for a different POV. Yes, Piers Anthony shouldn't write from a female POV. - there is a male author, whose name has completely escaped my memory, who writes under a womans name, and does a great job - best sellers and all- I think he was popular in the 70's and 80's.

I need to reread "Friday" to remember if I felt that Heinlein was reasonable in the POV part, though since I knew it was Heinlein writing it, I didn't pay as much attention to that.

The main thing though, is that since the range of human behavior is very broad, and why we act as we do can change due to cultural impact. - male characters can seem efeminate for any number of reasons, and female characters could have masculine traits for whatever reason... like no women around.

Of course neither really explains Harry, or for that matter Ron.

What everything boils down to really is how well the story is written. Certainly a good idea is to write from the POV of whatever gender you are, and have the opposite gender be seen only from the POV of the fe/male characters. - but a good story, regardless of POV is a better target.

I don't think that it's necessary to make your characters like you in order to make them realistic. I think it is necessary to become your characters as you write them. This might be harder if your character is vastly different from you, but if you have a good imagination, it's not impossible.

For instance, I'll cite a stupid line in a stupid movie, but one that I immediately thought of in this context. The movie is "That Darn Cat," and the scene is of a dumb cop that is chasing a cat all over town to see if it happens to go to the scene of a murder. The dumb cop doesn't want the cat to suspect anything (such as the fact he's being trailed), so he chants to himself: "I'm thinking like a cat. I'm thinking, slinking, like a cat."

I told you it was dumb. But when I write my characters, I think and sometimes slink like they would. I don't model them off of me, and I don't make them make the decisions I would make in their shoes. I imagine I am them. In other words, I was born in the same place they were born in; I am afraid of the same things they are afraid of; I love the same people they love; I want what they want; I hate what they hate; I am as smart as they are; you get the idea. Then I look around myself and say, "Okay, I'm Pobnar. What do I do when I'm stuck in a stadium tied to an oath of lifetime nonviolence not three months old, and there's one of the only people on earth who is capable of killing me not fifty yards away. Do I run and keep myself pure? Do I kill him and get what I ultimately want (which is noble)? Do I try to persuade him not to kill me? How? Which is worse: to break the oath or die?"

Pobnar decided to kill the man. Another of my characters would not have. He would have sat there and let himself be killed before throwing a single punch. Another character would have tried, but she would probably have failed. For others, the choice wouldn't have even been an issue.

The complete story of Pobnar's reasons are his and mine alone to know. I've threaded most of them through the story, hopefully to the point that when he makes this decision, it's almost inevitable. It's the only thing he would do.

Now, I, Brinestone, would never, ever kill a man to save myself, especially if there was another way out (which, in this case, there was). I know this about myself. Pobnar is definitely distinct from me in almost every way imaginable, except that he loves his family and wants them to think he's doing a good job with his life. He is attracted to women, not men; he is tall, not short; bold and rebellious, not shy and cautious; a leader, not a follower; agressive, not passive; and a lot more. He's my villain. But, like I said in another thread, I'm "falling in love" with him. He is a cool evil character, and I'm having fun finding out why he does what he does.

"To be psychologically suited for membership in what I have called the highest class of novelists, the writer must be not only capable of understanding people different from himself but fascinated by such people. He must have sufficient self-esteem that he is not threatened by difference, and sufficient warmth and sympathy, and a sufficient concern with fairness, that he wants to value ppeople different from himself, and finally he must havve, I think sufficient faithe in the goodness of life that he can not only tolerate but celebrate a world of difference, conflicts, oppositions."

In the previous paragraph he refers to what I think of as a signifigantly similar approach to characterization that Survivor takes as "...the spokesman of a private, idiosycratic vision."

Maybe the whole first quote wasn't quite neccesary but either way I believe it is relavent to two distinct and perfectly legitamite (sp?) means of writing. Aswell as writing a person of the opposite sex, a feat I personally am not quite brave enough to handle in the POV quite yet.

PE

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I think too often, being True in writing has more to do with being honest about the situation and the character and the motivations than being perfectly true to ourselves.

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I think you’re right on target with that one, Brinestone. How do you write in the POV of any character? You try to get in their head and have them do the things it makes sense for them to do.

Just asking.

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I don't think that it's necessary to make your characters like you in order to make them realistic. I think it is necessary to become your characters as you write them. This might be harder if your character is vastly different from you, but if you have a good imagination, it's not impossible.

---

There's one way in which this is right and another way in which this is wrong. The way it is right is that you can write about a character with external features and life experiences different from your own. But it is wrong in that you cannot write plausibly about a character that is fundamentally different from yourself.

I cannot understand the mental processes of the typical clinging woman character, not because I can't imagine being a woman (it isn't that much harder than imagining myself as a human male, after all), but because the internal logic of that mentality doesn't make sense to me.

In short, I can't become my POV characters, they have to become me. I can write about the sorts of behaviors that I have observed in others, even though I cannot understand the internal logic of such actions, because I've observed the external action and the external logic, just as you can write a description of a rock rolling down a hill without needing to understand how the rock feels about it. You understand enough about the forces acting on the rock and have seen it happen enough that you can describe it. If you tried to write a description of how the rock percieved falling down a hill, it would have to be a description of how you would feel if you were turned into a rock and rolled down a hill.

There is a level where you need to become your characters, and one where they need to become you.

However, lets face it, no one wants to see the guy who wrote "Silence of the Lambs" or "Hannibal" to actually become Hanibal. - but he does a darned good job in writing the characters. And I know he has been asked how he comes up with his characters, but I haven't seen anywhere that he's talking about how he comes up with the characters of situations.

I guess I agree with you that there are some things I cannot write because I don't understand them. I can't write mean characters. You know, the type of people who are mean just because it gives them pleasure? I totally don't understand it. So I make up excuses for people who have to be mean like that, reasons that, in their heads at least, give them cause to act like that. I think probably there are people who don't need reasons to be nasty--they just like it. I don't get it . . .

Let's talk about Harry. He's girly and that's the truth. He thinks about things like a girl would think about them, especially concerning Cho. Although I don't have the book in front of me, he does a lot of things that no male would do. I'll give JK credit that he also does a lot of things that a real male WOULD do, but add a however. Speaking from my POV as a male of approximately the same age as Harry Potter, and having recently been the same age as he, I would say that most of my thoughts about females consist of something like: "What the hell is going on?" Harry only thinks this SOME of the time. If he was realistic, he would always think that.

I'll avoid making a larger post, so that someone can disagree with me and we can argue.

Sean

No way. Harry is male. He really was thinking "what the hell is going on" most of the time in that short, stormy relationship in book 5. I think the thing that threw you is that Harry doesn't act as much as you'd like him to. He ends up thinking a lot, and not doing much until it really counts.

I'm going to make a suggestion about male vs. female characters that might not go over too well: listen to Dr. Laura.

Whatever you think of her morality, she's got this pegged. (Her next book is called "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands," and I'll probably buy it for my wife.) Here are some interesting generalizations I've picked up that seem to be borne out through experience:

- Men act; women think. When my wife wants to discuss a problem she had today, she doesn't want advice, she wants sympathy. When something goes wrong, I react immediately, and my wife usually holds me back.
- Men generally experience one or two emotions at a time; women may experience many. I am angry with my daughter. My wife is disappointed, annoyed, confused, and worried.
- Men generally concentrate on one thing at a time; women concentrate on many. I pick one thing and do it. My wife thinks of everything that's left to do - and usually ends up stressed out.
- Men argue based on logic; women argue based on emotion. (That's not to say there's overlap, of course - but each sex has its own preference.) I think, she feels.

(Now again, these are generalizations, which means of course they aren't always true - so stop pointing that finger.)

I think it is probably easier for a female to write a male character than it is for a male to write a female character. This is because, I think, it is much more acceptable - in American culture, at least - for a woman to try to put herself into the mind of a man than it is for a man to try to put himself into the mind of a woman.

Think about it. Women have traditionally been expected to understand men and what they want in order to be good wives and anticipate their husbands' needs. Where I live, this still seems to be a common expectation. In fact, it came up in a conversation at the laundromat today. However, men are often raised to believe that to try to see things from a female point of view is somehow emasculating. Or so I've been told by some of the men I know. Obviously, this is not universally true, and maybe it is because I live in a fairly small town that is still largely agricultural that I still see this dynamic all the time.

But we're not two different species. If men and women were so incredibly different form one another we would not be able to get along at all. I don't want to make generalizations, but I will speak a little to my own experience.

I'm going to get married in about three months and I'm currently involved in the closest relationship I've ever been in. A lot of times he seems very stereotypically masculine to me. He thinks rather than feels. He also likes to try to fix things when I just want an ear. But sometimes he says or does something that makes me realize that inside there somewhere is a complex emotional human much like me. It is those times that make me feel closest to him.

Anyway, I recently gave male characters a shot in a novel I'm writing. The main main character is female, but there are three important male point of view characters. I did not try anything fancy to make them male. I basically wrote them like me, except that they are attracted to women instead of men (well, except one). I have them thinking and feeling and acting all in good proportion, and if maybe they do not expres their emotions as much as a female character, they still have them. I gave the chapters to my fiance and he said they were good, he did not feel too much like they were written by a woman.

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But we're not two different species.

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Then again, maybe we are. Here's an interesting news story that came out a couple of months ago: http://www.marshill.org/Y%20Chromosome%20Error%20Correction.htm

The key quote:

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But researchers have recently found that several hundred genes on the X escape inactivation. Taking those genes into account along with the new tally of Y genes gives this result: Men and women differ by 1 to 2 percent of their genomes, Dr. Page said, which is the same as the difference between a man and a male chimpanzee or between a woman and a female chimpanzee.

---

Wait until the honeymoon is over - in two years or so - and then make him into your wise reader.

I sincerely hope that consensus isn't leaning toward the idea that there's not much difference between how men and women think. We'll end up with dishonest writing if that's the case.

At the very least (assuming there is no fundamental difference in the mind), you've got biological differences that definitely influence how the different sexes act. And no, I'm not pulling the PMS card, though that can be a factor. (There is a marked difference in my wife's mood during those times. We both acknowledge it and adapt.) Maybe married people catch these things better, I don't know. But my wife's attitude toward children and safety is miles different from mine. Me? I wouldn't mind terribly if my son, who loves to play with the oven door, gets a little burn sometime to teach him a lesson. But if it happened, my wife would think she was a bad mother.

Mothers care and hug and cry and kiss boo-boos; fathers teach and smile proudly and get annoyed and tell them to buck up and take it. There's plenty of overlap, yes: but I've never seen a pair that didn't act like that to some extent. If it's not indicative of some fundamental difference, I don't know what is.

Besides that, women grow up with a set of different expectations than men do, on the whole. Whether you believe it's because of societal expectations or because they naturally gravitate toward them (I believe both), little boys and little girls, in general, play with different toys. Little girls play with dolls, little boys play with trucks. Little girls get started with the social aspects of life, little boys get started with the mechanical aspects.

My little girl, when she plays with Legos, plays with the little people. We never emphasized dolls with her; for heck's sake, we started her with Legos. (To be honest, I was a little disappointed. Irrational, to be sure, but there you go.) My son could hardly care less. He likes the blocks.

Evolution? It plays a large part. To say that nurturing traits in women and providing traits in men were positively selected because it increased the chances of the children's survival would be almost declaring an axiom. It influences almost every other aspect of the psyche. But in our politically correct society, we have pressure to ignore these factors. Fight that. Don't let it make you dishonest.

Then we have seemingly superficial things that influence character: physiology, and its extensions into social interaction. Most early teenage girls - when I was growing up, anyway - socialized with the early teenage boys by swatting them away when they caught them leering. Would the male peers' attitude toward females of their own age and the terribly exciting physiological changes taking place affect them? Definitely. Would social pressures on young women to keep themselves prepped and pretty affect them? Oh, yes. These are things that young men don't really have to care about.

For young men, there are pressures to play well at sports, and definite social consequences to not being able to do it well. It has a huge effect on them in some way - and this is something that young women don't have to experience, on the whole.

What's amazing to me about this whole process is that most of us end up similar enough in the end to relate to each other somehow.

Then you have the problem of how men and women perceive each other as having differences, and how they react to that.

I'm currently writing a science fiction short story about a young man with tremendous power who ends up in a hospital ward, and a priest. No matter which way I juggle the genders, it simply cannot work unless I've got two men. It just couldn't be believable. Part of the resolution involves the priest, under the pretense of righteous indignation, using the truth about what the young man has become to upset him so badly that he finally has to face himself for what he is: a monster.

Make the priest a woman? The young man would probably sulk in response. How about a young woman instead of a young man? She'd quite likely break out into tears under the angry onslaught. Having different genders for the main character doesn't work, then. So how about we make them both women? They'd sit in the room and talk it out for days, discussing feeling upon feeling until they got to the bottom of it.

So with anything besides two men, I have something utterly boring, or totally unworkable for a short story.

Fortunately, I believe most of us have enough experience in male-female interaction to figure this stuff out - whether we say we understand it or not. Or at least, we will as we get older and gain experience.

Until around a year ago when it collapsed, I regularly roleplayed at White Wolf's Infinity Chantry site. I had designed a number of characters of varying personalities and played many of them, sometimes at the same time.

One of the characters, Linda, was very rational, active, and aggressive, and not particularly emotional; I openly admitted that I was male and simply acknowledged that I had designed the character to match me enough to make her playable. Another character, Dana, behaved more femininely, but in a stock, stereotypical way; I did not reveal that I played Dana and frequently implied that her player was female.

While we're on the subject of gender roles, bear in mind that a lot of these generalizations are Western in thought. I read an interesting article about the role of women in India. The author (I'm paraphrasing) said that women in India are kept under tight control because of how powerful, and hence dangerous, they were whereas women in the West were considered the "weaker" sex.

Then there's the matriachical tribal societies in China. The words 'husband' and 'father' don't even exist in some of them. Women run the households. Like the Naxi people. "Traditionally, Naxi women have managed trade and commerce, while men have been musicians, gardeners, and child-rearers, and today Naxi society is largely run along those lines. "

(Do a google search on Mosuo and Naxi if you're interested in reading more about them.)

Is that eurocentric?

I saw this:

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Christine: You might want to get a more impartial observer. I'm not saying your fiance is a liar, but I remember myself in that position, being perfectly willing to swim through shark-infested waters or run through a mine field to make a good impression on my lady. Did I say things I wouldn't say now? Certainly. I probably also believed them

---

And I thought well, he doesn't know my fiance. He doesn't know that we've been friends for seven years, much of which time I was engaged to someone else so he had no reason to try to impress me. Also, he never tries to impress anyone. He's told me I was fat and needed to lose weight when it was true (I since lost the weight). He tells me when my stories suck in no uncertain terms. But he is also just one opinion, which is why I get others.

But I went ahead past that one and fell upon...

quote:

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Make the priest a woman? The young man would probably sulk in response. How about a young woman instead of a young man? She'd quite likely break out into tears under the angry onslaught. Having different genders for the main character doesn't work, then. So how about we make them both women? They'd sit in the room and talk it out for days, discussing feeling upon feeling until they got to the bottom of it.

---

I think you're right. These characters should not be women, but not because they would ever react that way. None of my female characters would ever react in the obscene ways you've mentioned, you've been watching too many old fashioned horror movies where the girls'r ole is to scream. They're pathetic. Or am I wrong? Maybe, as a woman, I'm no good at writing my own gender? I tell you one thing, though, if you look at women this way you shouldn't write them.

Sulk? Break into tears! Is that how you think we act? I didn't even think this was serious at first. I was waiting for the punchline.

Like I said, though, I drafted a response and let it go. Just let it go, I told myself. Then I saw this:

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Stereotypes exist for a reason. Many times, they embody the general consensus on a group. This might go against the grain, but I think they can even be a good starting point for developing a character.

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Yes, they do exist for a reason. They exist because some people perpetutate them and cling to them like a security blanket. They exist because people need them to make sense and order their world into perfect geometric patterns. It is good to know what stereotypes are out there when writing because blatantly going against them is going to turn a character from a side character into a main character, but in terms of gender stereotypes, we've been attempting to throw them out the window since at least the 1960's, and for good reason! I am a female programmer. I am good at math and science. That goes against the stereotype. But you know what, I am hardly alone. I played with legos when I was a kid. Many women I know did. In fact, gender stereotypes as we kn ow them are so outdated as to be USELESS!

Yes, there are differences between men and women. I know that! But always these are GENERALIZATIONS. There literally are women inside men's bodies and vice versa and there are women who act as pathetically as mentioned above. But they're not the norm. Women are trying to come out of the era of men who thought they needed to be taken care of. Why don't you let us be who we are instead of who the stereotypes say we are?

Say I wanted to throw in a person in a story that was a bumb. I can outright declare them a bumb, or I can throw in some of the common traits (stereotypical identifiers) and get it across that its a bumb without having to say so.

As for gender stereotyping it still can be used and it will work. Although you may not fall into the typical concept of a woman that does not mean there are not millions of women out there that do. Some women do break down and cry even for reasons that seem ridiculous. I know because I've been in meetings where I was the one who managed to cause it. And I still don't understand why they were crying, it was work related things that were not that important.

You have to remember some people hold hard to their rationalization of how they percieve the actions of others, I'm as guilty as most others too. But don't take it personally. Some people cannot accept the fact that a woman can be independant and logical just like they percieve men to be. But I've known allot of men who couldn't think their way out of a wet paper bag. No logic at all. So you are correct in your thinking that stereotyping is not fair. But it works and it can be usefull in writing. Maybe not for a main character, but for minor ones they can be quite usefull.

I'm also looking forward to reading your story from the 1000 ideas thread. I'm not expecting a stereotypical main charicter either.

Darkstorm, you're right. About everything you say. I'm afraid my previous post was written in anger. Yes, it happens sometimes.

The truth is, I think many women are still caught up in the same stereotypes. I don't blame men for forcing them on us, I actually blame women just as much. I was struck by your comment about accidentally making a woman cry at a meeting. I'm not saying that the woman was this way, but I've known women to cry for the power it gives them, or they perceive to get.

I had a conversation with a friend once about crying. It embarasses me when I do it. I have long hair and I sort of take it down if it's pulled back and hang my head so no one can see. She laughed and me and went on about how other people seeing you cry was the entire point! And even I used tears against my fiance in that manner once. (Don't tell him I said that!) I felt lousy afterward. It was a cheap trick.

This is just a point, but someone would say this justifies their stereotype. Emotial response over logical thought response. But since I am just as guilty about responding in anger sometimes. I guess one of the points I was trying to make is that we all fit into the stereotypes to a degree. Since stereotypes are really a look at the average way a certain group is perceived. So for women on average they are more emotional, and men are more sex driven and self centered. Most black people are stereotyped as low life criminals, although I work with a black man I have the utmost respect for and trust quite allot.

So for me a stereotype is a cheap way to not describe a minor/extra character that fills in a setting. It works, and although is not an accurate representation of all people that could be grouped in there I'll abuse it.

So, I do agree with you that they are wrong, but they are also usefull. Don't disregard it in writing because you disagree with it though.

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Why don't you let us be who we are instead of who the stereotypes say we are?

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I think it's more, Why don't they let us be who we are instead of foisting new stereotypes on us? My eyes are starting to glaze over in movies where a woman beats up a man -- or men. Maybe on occasion, with the right factors.

Just saw on the news the awful fact <deep intake of breath> that young women aren't going into the science and technology fields. Although they're in college in higher numbers than men, and even if they graduate in one of the male-dominated fields, they often go into traditional fields by choice. Saw an interview with one gal, honors in structural engineering or something, but she went into childcare or nursing (I forget which -- they were talking about several women).

My grandkids play with my dollhouse. The three-year-old girl sets up tea parties. The five-year-old boy flies the bicycle around the roof yelling "BikeBoy!"

Even more telling, when they play trucks, the girl doesn't see trucks and earth-moving equipment, she sees a mommy truck, a daddy truck.... At this early age she's into relationships.

Men and women are wired different. As that French actor used to say, "Vive la difference!"

[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited August 08, 2003).]

But knowing what makes a stereotype allows them to be used or broken as needed. Which I think opens up lots of possibilies for making the generall assumptions work for us as writers.

One thing I've noticed is that, when people argue about high-tension subjects like this, they tend to take sides.

See, I'm betting that my ideas and Christine's ideas on this subject are actually pretty close. But I thought people were arguing too much in favor of individualization (turned homogenization), and then she thought I was arguing too much in favor of generalizations, and...you know the rest of the story.

I'm priviledged to be married to a very non-traditional woman. She has a BS in information systems, for example. (So...as a computer programmer, I got the geeky girl. I win!) Of course I realize that nobody really fits into a stereotype exactly...but then, I can't ignore that there are generalizations that really need to be taken into account.

By the way, about not being able to juggle genders in my short story: it has more to do with how men and women perceive each other than with gender stereotypes - except of course for my "two women" example. (I thought I made that clear enough, but perhaps I didn't. If not, I apologize.) In fact, my young, powerful male monster is quite emotional through the entire thing. It's the source of the major conflict in the story. The priest - except for the last part where he acts angry - acts much more compassionate than gender stereotype, or even age and occupation stereotype, would dictate. Go figure. I must be into deep characters. (It's probably why I enjoy Card so much.)

At the same time, I think if you break stereotype too far, your reader won't be able to buy the ideas in your story. That is, unless you put them in an alien setting, or an un-Western-like civilization. Or you better have a darn good reason for it. (Not for breaking stereotype, but for breaking it too far.) For example, if my priest talks like a scientist and dresses like a woman, I really, really need to explain that.

(Which of course goes back to Lord Darkstorm's idea of using stereotypes as secondary characters: you just don't have time to explain a secondary character that acts way out of stereotype.)

Is there a "male" and "female" psyche? Are men and women, in general, psychologically fundamentally different?

(Please refrain from answering with antecdotes about feminine men and masculine women. And yes, I know everyone is an exception in some way. The question is asking about generalities.)

Yes, there is. But there can also be similarities. Basicly it doesn't matter since a woman can have dominant male charicteristics, and men can have dominant female charicteristics. So overall, just make them believable.

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Is there a "male" and "female" psyche? Are men and women, in general, psychologically fundamentally different?

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This is not a simple question to answer. What do you mean by general, psychologically fundamental differences? There is no such thing. Personality is not lumped into one number and put on a 1-100 scale, psychologists have tried.

Let's take a different approach. All humans, no matter their gender, have similiar psyches. We all need love, companionship, and we have a fundamental urge to reproduce. Some people (the bottom of the barrel) seem to not have much more needs than these. They're content just goinw tih the flow, not trying to create or explore or discover. (This is not a class issue, these people transcend classes too.) Then there are the creators, artists, scientists, writers, engineers, the top notch people who get things done.

Here's my point. Lining up all the woman and all the men in two lines and comparing them will get some differences, but I don't want to be in the same line as certain women, or certain men for that matter. There are more meaningful ways to organize people.

Here's another way of putting it. Let's take a specific personality dimension. Thinking/Feeling. More women are feelers, more men or Thinkers, but the *average* woman (not the masculine one) is more logical than a lot of the men out there. Let me draw a picture. (I hope it formats right.)

Thinking Feeling
--------------------Av. W---------------
------------------Av. M-----------------

Does that show what I mean? My statistics teacher said it perfectly once. "With a large enough group any difference is statistically significant," he said. And you're asking me to talk about all the men and all the women in the entire world.

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Asking a member of the oposite sex if your character has enough of the proper qualities to be believable will give you an idea.

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"For golly's sake, I might just write about people from a very Western-like civilization almost all the time, because that's the kind of civilization I'd be most familiar with. Gasps and astonishment: that might just be the kind of civilization that my readers would find most familiar!"

Well, duh. If you are writing for Americans, sure. I work in theater, and there's a lot of stories that I can't sell to an American audience because they don't fit with what people expect.

When I write (sci-fi or fantasy) I'm not dealing with mileau that are based on European principles. Do I have to keep my audience in mind? Yes. But that should have gone without saying.

Sigh. I would have let the point about other cultures drop but for the question of "fundamental psychological differences". A lot of the diferences that we think are biological are cultural. Kids don't grow up isolated, they get input not just from their parents, but from media, their friends, and their friends' parents.

Besides that, I think Christine answered it very well.

Not all humans have similar psyches. We do not all share the same emotional needs, any more than we all possess the same intellectual or physical talents. If you say otherwise, then you place me--and however many others like me happen to exist--outside your definition of humanity.

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there is a fundamentally "human" psyche, then I fall outside it.

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Really? OK, you got me curious. This should probably go on a different thread, though, the fundamental definition of humanity. It's a really complicated philosophical issue. The traits I mentioned as belonging to all members of humanity are pretty broad, and frankly belong to most animal groups as well. (Need to reproduce...I mentioned love and socialization, but they all go to reproduction really.)