One of the perennial questions is can men write believable and credible women characters? (It is rarely asked if woman can do the same for male characters, the answer is generally assumed to be yes, but that’s a little afield from where I want to go in today’s essay.) I have an author friend, NYT bestseller and all, who feels that she has never encountered a well written female character emerging from a male writer’s prose. I know other women readers who are quite the opposite, adoring some male writers for their depiction of females.
(If you want to start an unending argument at an SF convention, in a mixed audience, praise Heinlein’s female characters. You will ignite women passionate on both side of that questions.)
The question is a delicate and sticky one, because if you take it too far in one direction you end up and stereotype land, ‘all women are thus’ and ‘all men are that’ which is pure poppycock. However if you take it too far in the other direction you come to the bland almost Star Trek the Next Generation sameness between men and women and in my experience that is not true. (One of the best insights into the teenage male mind was written by Joss Wheadon for Buffy The Vampire Slayer “I’m seventeen. Looking at linoleum makes me want to have sex.”)
So clearly the truth is somewhere between those two extremes. A useful tool in visualizing this problem is called a Venn diagram.
One circle would be the set of traits for women and the other for men. Where the two circles overlap is the traits that are found in both genders. So how much do the circles overlap?
I think that there is a large amount of overlap, and clearly I think my best seller author friend would ascribe to a lower amount of overlap. I once knew someone who described herself as a gay man in a woman’s body.
I parse this to mean that she is a headstrong person, not one to take the back seat and let other tell her what is what or what she should do or feel. She thinks of these traits as ‘male traits’ but she like men sexually, so there is the ‘gay’ part of her self analysis, and she biologically female.
I think instead of a convoluted and twisted set of definitions that make people define themselves in more and more check boxes, we need to recognize that many traits we place on one gender are actually shared to different degree by both genders.
When it come to writing female characters I try to be guided by women I have known as a gut check if this seems credible to me and I worry not at all if others will accept or not. There will always be those who agree and those who do not. If that result is good enough for Heinlein it is good enough me.
PS – I think the Venn diagram could overlap a good bit more. We have much more in common.
The ghost in the “House of Bad Blood”. I think I’d be that angry, that full a rage or even more so. You got that right.
I reposted the essential question on Facebook, referring to you, and got some really interesting responses – including one from a barely 20 -something whose second (unprompted or even hinted at by me!) post asked exactly the reverse question (the one you say you almost never hear) – do women write creditable, believable male characters. If you search my history enough, you can catch the post and the full discussion, if you are interested. It lasted a goodly amount, for a Facebook thing.
I agree that observation is the key to good writing, all aspects of that writing, including understanding men & women. It would be interesting to look at literature from more segregated cultures and see how the different sexes are treated.
How do you feel about the Venn diagram? Do you think there is little or much overlap between men and women?
Thanks for you comment on my female ghosts, as I have written two recently I wonder if you meant both or just one of the character.
You strayed a bit but your question is, “Can men write believable female characters?” My answer is “Yes” with one condition – if they have had significant contact with them. What do I mean by this?
When you examine most cultures, there is a history of significant segregation between the sexes. The current Arabic/extreme Islamic culture heavily segregates the sexes. I don’t think someone from this culture could write believable women due to a lack of depth of knowledge about women (Little or no contact after childhood – what do you really know about them?) The same can certainly be said about the Victorian era and the women written about by those men are not very believable. Asimov did not think he wrote women well and wrote only one primarily – Dr. Susan Calvin from the robot stories. He admitted his main contact with women was the “maiden scientist” and he wrote what he knew.
We no longer live in a world of extreme segregation by sex. Our schools are co-ed. Most professions are co-ed. Intermingling of the sexes is accepted in Western culture. There is no reason a man can’t write a female character well and I think many do so. Having said that, I believe there are a great many card board cut-outs of women in most literary forms and television and films are full of them also. Why is this? This is the better question. Is it because we are comfortable with those stereotypes and we accept them? (Don’t get me started on “reality” TV and the women out there living he stereotypes. A century of Feminism for this?)
I want to add one more thought regarding if women write men well – the answer is not always. It all depends on the writer’s powers of observation. I feel as if the Shakespearean women I’ve read were very well written – though not always well acted. I believe this is because he was a great observer of human behavior. I feel the same way about the writing of Jane Austin – that her characters ring true because she observed people and their behavior very well.
That’s really the answer, isn’t it? Those (gender regardless) who write characters well have observed humans well and taken the pains, done the work to articulate those observations into the written word and then to use those descriptions and characteristics in a story. (An argument could be made here that women have a place in society that encourages this observation more – but I don’t think that means men don’t and can’t do it.)
By the way, your ghost woman is very, very believable. You do well with rage.