I’ve been surprised that so much of the discussion has revolved around how men and women approach problem solving. I tend to think that most of the believeability shortfalls for opposite gender characters in writing comes down to their internal musings. And for me, I consider that a much more simple issue to approach:

To make headway against the near certain accusation that I’m a chauvanist, all I’ll say is that I’m perceiving the culture rather than any immutable characteristic or prejudice.

Two axioms:
1) Manhood is felt by a character as imposing a burden
2) Womanhood is felt by a character as imposing a fear

Take Vin, for example. The fear of being abandoned worked better in a female character. And although that character backdrop still didn’t work for me personally, I enjoyed reading from Vin’s perspective. It’s easy for me to believe that, had Vin been written as a man, this motivation would’ve been less believable from our cultural perspective.

On the other hand, think of the prophesied hero archetype in Fantasy. It’s a huge burden. Nearly all of these characters, and the best ones in my opinion, are male. It’s just more believable for a man to think as if the world is on his shoulders.

Now that’s not to say that every male/female character needs to react to the burden/fear in the same way. But take, for example, a character being accused that they’re not pulling their own weight. A male character will internalize that as being an insult to his burden bearing potential. Wheras, a female character will be fearful that they are perceived as weak (perhaps even because of their womanhood). Think of Vin’s insecurity about being taken in to Kelsier’s gang of theives, sort of insecure about her ability to fit into a group.

The whole women and fat thing is a horror by itself – I’m not sure I’d call it a “big” socially challenging thing, more a trivial thing that has taken over. A big socially challenging thing is, say, women entering the workforce en masse in the 70′s, which women seem to have handled pretty well. But I know what you mean here.

Guys can have some body issues as well – I recall a brilliant but very scrawny male friend saying that Hell was 8th grade gym class. And there are guys out there are doing pretty terrible things to their bodies by taking hormones to gain muscle. Too bad we can’t go back to when we saw our attractiveness in other people’s faces. But that’s a whole ‘nother set of issues.

And yup on the bell curves. I suspect the majority of the people listening to these podcasts do not consider themselves the norm in many ways. But the communication styles go deep, and women seeking relationships goes really deep.

Age is a huge factor, too – I think men and women grow more alike as we get older, maybe from being around each other more. Or we get smarter (Evil Editor said something like: for the first thirty years of our lives, we’re idiots. For the next ten, we at least know we’re idiots). Certainly things that were hugely important to us when we were younger aren’t so important any more. A male acquaintance of mine actually thumped the table to declare that “No one’s a man until he’s forty!”

I strongly agree that a gentle man (or woman) is not weak. So, guys, how do you write a male character who is, say, quiet, intellectual, educated, even refined – and still keep him male? What are the mistakes you see in characters like that?

http://mbarker.livejournal.com/136173.html

http://mormonhusbands.blogspot.com/2009/04/midnight-sun-edward-undone.html

I have enjoyed reading all the comments. I actually haven’t listened to this episode yet I will probably be doing that tonight.

But I love your podcast.

I’m glad Leila pointed out that even within the contemporary US/European continuum of culture, gender norms differ. If you’re an American writer who wants to portray non-contemporary, non-American cultural sensibilities (and I sometimes am, although many of my favorite writers are not), writing gender becomes at once harder and easier – harder because writing a different culture is much more difficult than writing a character of the opposite gender, easier because in SF/F there’s the potential to make up your own rules.

But when I do write contemporary fiction, it’s helpful to figure out strategies to think my way out of my preconceptions about what people in our culture are like (i.e. that they all think like me, a college-educated twenty-three-year-old white girl), and from that perspective I enjoyed this podcast very much.

Regarding the swords, I’m not sure how widespread it is, but in my experience people tend to pick up on the potentially dangerous objects first. Swords are more overtly dangerous, than, say, a statue of Buddha. The marionettes might be considered more dangerous, but that’s only if a person has a puppet phobia or if they’re moving on their own. As far as the kids immediately chosing to play with the swords…well, recognition of danger doesn’t always mean it gets avoided. Ask Evel Knievel about danger recognition versus danger avoidance.

Regarding Veronica’s 11 year old soldier training fanfiction, the banter/jibes being so realistic has a couple of reasons: 1 – youthful men always banter. I’m not sure how far it goes, but I started noticing it in Kindergarten (my first major social exposure) and it hasn’t stopped yet at 21 years old (admittedly in university), so some form of that is expected more or less regardless of age, until the character hits middle age or otherwise settles down. 2 – military training banter has a certain flavor, which is expected in any military training scenario. This is why the banter worked in Ender’s Game, and why it works in your fanfiction. Avoiding the sexuality references is a good call, though, and as previously noted, there are subtleties (and some not so subtle things) effecting the differences in banter between age groups. 3 – in a lot of ways, military types don’t fit the civilian model of maturity levels. Future Weapons is a show in which an ex-Navy SEAL (or some other special forces group, but I’m pretty sure it was the SEALs – the US has too many to keep track of) demos a bunch of “cutting edge” weapons (using quote marks because “cutting edge” in this case means “what we’re willing to publicize at this time” rather than “this is the best stuff we have”). It’s mainly a propaganda show (and I have to admit, some of that stuff is extremely impressive), but the show’s host, who has to be 35-40, based on appearance and the fact that he’s run the full course of a special forces career, expresses almost childish glee when demonstrating some of this equipment.

Someone further up-thread noted that while some generalizations can often be true, there is a lot about the man/woman debate that really does boil down to individual personality. And at the level of the individual, things aren’t always going to be black and white. There is a lot of room for cross-over.

My wife and I have often discussed how each of us is somewhat inverted in certain ways. Her being “masculine” and me being “feminine” in terms of how we act or react to certain things.

For instance, shopping. My wife is a bee-line shopper. She knows what she wants, and she goes right out and gets it, and is not a browser at all. At least not when she physically goes to a store. Me? I can browse forever, and just dally my way through a store, picking up and looking at all kinds of things, etc. Drives my wife crazy.

My wife is also not passive-aggressive in any way that I can discern — passive-aggression being a mostly learned behavior in a society that still doesn’t teach women to be open with displeasure in the same way it teaches men to be open with their displeasure. This “masculine” trait on her part — her loud and up front manner in expressing her dislikes or any sort of displeasure — actually makes our life together a lot easier than it might otherwise be, because I never have to guess what’s eating at her. When she’s not happy, she says so, and she says why, and there’s not a lot of guessing going on, nor underhanded retribution.

By the same token, I don’t feel like I have to “run” everything. Heck, when the family drives somewhere, it’s almost always my wife who drives. If we’re in a social situation, she is often the one who is outspoken or who will be a leader in conversation, whereas I tend to hang back and don’t necessarily feel compelled to jump out there and be the one who comes up with a plan or who otherwise tries to direct the exchange of information. This has occasionally proven amusing in that certain kinds of men and women both assume this to be un-manly of me, and I’ve been treated as an un-man as a result.

When I was much younger, it used to make me mad. Now, though, I just shrug and kind of don’t care, because how other people assume I should behave — based on my gender — doesn’t matter to me like it did when I was a kid.

Yes, in lots of ways, I am a typical guy, just as my wife is a typical gal. But in lots of ways, we’re not typical at all — either of us.

I think for the sake of characterization it can be fun to take a stereotypically “male” or “female” character, and give them one, very loudly inverted trait. For example, take a very macho male character who is gruff and rough and hairy-knuckled, but maybe have him be a fastidious cleaner at home, always dusting and sweeping and using clorox wipes on all the surfaces. Or have a very girly-girl character like to go play city league softball and slide into home plate and skin her knees. Or go deer hunting and clean out the entrails, etc. Something that positively defies the stereotype, and makes the character more interesting.

By the same token, you can take a “feminized” male character — someone other men and even women might call a wimp or a p***y — and give him one subtle but outstanding masculine aspect. Like, say, he’s getting greasy and dirty working under the hood on the engines of his cars. Meanwhile, you could have a “butch” female character who is masculinized to the point of seeming like a bull d**e, then have her be into romance novels or wearing lingerie or getting manicures and pedicures, etc. Something that stereotypically defies the anti-stereotype.