What I Should Have Said Was

[andpuff]

I had every intention of putting the following up online on Saturday morning but I didn't want to write it in Lj and I could figure out how to select all, then copy and paste off my tablet (I'm sure it's possible, I just couldn't figure it out) so this is going up a few days after the fact.  It's not at all time sensitive, but for referencing sake

Comments

[e_moon60]

I'm the same way with talking (but also that way with writing--.) It all comes out and I find out what I really mean as I'm saying/writing it, and after EVERY panel at EVERY convention there's the post-panel cud-chewing stage.

I don't personally see any difference in the process of creating and writing male or female characters. You're right--we all have innate characteristics, what we're born with. And we have acquired characteristics--what experience (including social expectations) does with what we're born with.

Anyone who has trouble writing a character of the opposite sex has ample opportunity to learn about that opposite sex *if they want to and if they have basic observational skills.* "I don't know how women think" is a cop-out and it would be a cop-out if a woman writer said "But I don't know how men think." (Mostly women don't. Because...it's a survival skill to understand how they think, and will remain so as long as the power differential is as large as it still is.)

I kindasorta think (thinking as I write this, in fact) that if someone is so ignorant of half (either half) of the human race that he or she doesn't believe it's possible to write a strong lead character of the opposite sex...he or she probably isn't writing really good characters in his or her own sex, either. Both are part of the same system: humanity. To fully understand men (or women) you need to understand women (or men) enough (if you are a writer at all and can in fact create characters) to write both. As components in a system, as individuals and as cultural concepts, they affect each other; neither can be studied in isolation without missing important data.

People have (used to centuries ago, particularly) lived in racial enclaves where they grew up never having to consider the existence of other races. Never saw them, never heard of them. No human ever grew up without having to consider the existence of the opposite sex. It's a difference experienced alongside every other difference, physical or cultural. It's inescapable the moment a baby's born--that baby may look like everyone else in the family or tribe or community...but it's already either her or him.

So it's incumbent on anyone who wants to write fiction to become able to write about people--create (or sub-create, depending on your religion, if any) fictional people who are believable as people, function as people in a story...at least going as far as learning enough about the opposite sex to create believable characters from it. (And it's not as hard as people may think...the differences are much less than those who have averted their gaze from women, on the grounds that they're "too different" for their whole life believe.)

[tibicina]

Well, the baby could also be intersex and thus not necessarily her or him, but that's a whole other load of cultural pressures and more frequently covered up by assigning either 'her' or 'him' to the baby for cultural reasons.