Writing a woman as a man?

[Sci-2]

I've seen this complaint now and again, and I'm curious what it means. (I'm a dude)

It sorta seems, to me anyway, that this would mean conforming to stereotypes about women?

ETA: spelling.

[Cot]

I think Nicholson said it best.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

Depends on context, I would think.

[Sci-2]

I think Nicholson said it best.

Wait, what? The actor?

[Contrarius]

Wait, what? The actor?

His character in "As Good As It Gets".

He plays a writer. An interviewer asks him "How do you write women so well?" and he responds "I think of a man, and then I take away reason and accountability".

edited to add -- I looked it up to make sure I got it right, and it's actually a receptionist who asks him that. Also, I forgot just how good the writing was in that movie. Here's a list of great quotes from it:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119822/quotes

[Zoë Sumra]

I've seen this complaint now and again, and I'm curious what it means. (I'm a dude)

It sorta seems, to me anyway, that this would mean conforming to stereotypes about women?

Quite often, slipping into the stereotype that the female character lacks agency and intelligence, is valued on the meta level (i.e. by writer and readers as opposed to characters in the story) according to her attractiveness, or similar.

[ZombieWife]

Ugh. Nothing like a man who cannot write women. I see it more in film and in television than in books (thankfully).

The stereotypes I've seen a lot of lately:

Hero is under pressure yet fiance/wife/girlfriend is highly non-supportive and bitchy. See Transformers 3 for that. Girl is pissed that Whitwicky is off trying to save the world instead of going to a cocktail party with her.

Girls being "eww stinky" or "ew yucky" about really basic daily life stuff.

Women breaking/crumbling under pressure during a crisis. Most women I know can "cowboy up" better than most men I know.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

This is part of what I meant by context. Sciborg, do you mean "the process of writing female characters as a male author" or "the act of writing female characters to be male characters with the numbers filed off"?

[Datepalm]

I assumed the OP was the latter - writing women as 'men with breasts', in either (or both) personality or social context. Surely we're past never-the-twain-shall-meet gender binaries in which men attempting to write decent female characters (and vice versa) is a foregone lost cause?

Hero is under pressure yet fiance/wife/girlfriend is highly non-supportive and bitchy. See Transformers 3 for that. Girl is pissed that Whitwicky is off trying to save the world instead of going to a cocktail party with her.

Lol, I hate that one. Theres a great bit in, I think, Sarah Conner Chronicles, where a guy is all telling his wife about Sarah Conner (who is his ex) and the whole robot apocalypse issue, and she's getting a bit hysterical, and he's all like "Nothing happened, I swear, I love only you," and she just goes "I know! You think i'm worried about adultery? I'm freaking out about the fucking robot apocalypse!" And the sad thing is, it only works because its absoloutely an expected norm that the wimminz will only ever care about bitchy silliness.

[Sci-2]

"the act of writing female characters to be male characters with the numbers filed off"?

this one, but all the discussion here is interesting and really both topics are things I'd like to hear more about.

[The Imp's Advocate]

Well, even the oft-beatified David Simon (creator of The Wire) acknowledged in an interview that he wrote Kima Greggs as a "man with tits" (which may or may not be the origin of that phrase). You're not alone.

[Prince Alexander]

Well, even the oft-beatified David Simon (creator of The Wire) acknowledged in an interview that he wrote Kima Greggs as a "man with tits" (which may or may not be the origin of that phrase). You're not alone.

Well there is nothing wrong in writing a titman as long as that's what you intended.

Re: OP

Badly written women bore the crap out of me. Badly written men bore the crap out of me. I don't care who's writing them, really. The characters need to be believable, that's all. They need to belong in the story, its time and place. But all of this is extremely subjective. There are billions of different women in the world, and some can relate to a character, some can't, same as men. I like most of GRRM's characters, men and women, for example. Others may say that GRRM writes women like a chauvinist. There are endless threads on the topic, and sort of proves that the opinion is rarely singular.

[Sci-2]

Oh I wasn't looking to talk about women in SFF overall, read a few of those threads, just curious about that particular complaint. I heard it in passing and didn't get a chance to ask what it means.

[Datepalm]

Personally, I rarely find myself annoyed at women who are written as 'men with boobs' in terms of personality. Some characters can be gender neutral, as are a lot of personality traits. Where it falls down is when the author can't seem to do social context, or the boob!man is a wildly exceptional (or simply the only) woman. I think it's particularly grating in Fantasy, where the author is responsible for worldbuilding - A tough as nails, swearing, fucking, military woman who is in no way different to the men around her, in a society consistently shown to have very little in the way of gender roles, or restrictive gender roles, is just fine (The Shadows of the Apt world, for example) that same character in a highly patriarchal society, otoh, is a strech - She can't behave just the same as a man, because she'll have been through experiences a man getting to her role would not have been through - ostracization, ridicule, possibly sexual harassment, etc. And if she hasn't been, that its shoddy worldbuilding or obvious authorial fiat, which is bad writing, which no one wants to read.

As an aside, I wonder about the opposite - can anyone think of examples of men placed in feminine gender roles and written poorly or well? I'm reading Catherine Asaro's Primarty Inversion atm, and it struck me the male love interest there is basically treated like a damsel in distress, and largely reactionary, incompetent, younger than the heroine, even a virgin, to the point of actually being, to my (perhaps patriarchally conditioned) mind at least, too unmasculine to serve as a romance lead. Its not like i'm a fan of alpha-male romance heroes, or even genre romance in particular, but The Romantic Hero is supposed to fulfill certain functions, and the romance IS written like a genre-romance in other ways.

[Contrarius]

As an aside, I wonder about the opposite - can anyone think of examples of men placed in feminine gender roles and written poorly or well?

Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear made an attempt at this -- not terribly successful, IMHO -- in A Companion to Wolves. Men and men only bond to wolves (women aren't allowed the chance). For the most part, they are hetero men. Once they bond, they live in essentially all-male societies (they do have some access to women, however). If one of the hetero men bonds to a female wolf, then he is forced to take the human female sexual role with the men bonded to male wolves whenever his wolf comes into heat. Interesting implications of how this plays out in the society, but I wasn't satisfied with it.

[Datepalm]

Pretty sure Anne McCaffery went there in Pern as well. (Besides Dragons>Wolves.)

Not quite what I meant though - this sounds like a kind of effeminization within the story. I meant a male character (written by a woman or not) who people find to be poorly written as regards to being convincingly male. For a crude example, a man who is caring, nurturing, passive, romantic, etc, without a good personal or societal context, might be described as 'a woman with a penis,' - except i've never actually heard that description applied. Men are generally better written? Men get to have a wider degree of behaviours before being accused of being inaccurately men? Feminine men can be regarded as unusual/deviant/etc, but not actually unrealistic - ie, its a quality of the character, laudable or not, while supposedly masculinized women are simply wrong - they're bad writing and unrealistic characters and cannot exist?

[Contrarius]

Pretty sure Anne McCaffery went there in Pern as well. (Besides Dragons>Wolves.)

McCaffrey stuck with parallel sexes -- at least in the "real" Pern books, I haven't read the ones after Renegades of Pern. Girls bonded girl dragons, boys bonded boy dragons.

Not quite what I meant though - this sounds like a kind of effeminization within the story. I meant a male character (written by a woman or not) who people find to be poorly written as regards to being convincingly male.

Ahhh. Will have to think about this one!

For a crude example, a man who is caring, nurturing, passive, romantic, etc, without a good personal or societal context, might be described as 'a woman with a penis,' - except i've never actually heard that description applied.

When this happens, I think the complaint is usually just that the character is too "emo", rather than too feminine. ;)

[MinDonner]

McCaffrey stuck with parallel sexes -- at least in the "real" Pern books, I haven't read the ones after Renegades of Pern. Girls bonded girl dragons, boys bonded boy dragons.

Not strictly true - gay men bonded with the green dragons (sterile females), but I think they were gay beforehand, didn't get artificially feminized by their bonded partner. Still rather dubious in many ways though.

Men get to have a wider degree of behaviours before being accused of being inaccurately men?

I think this is pretty much it, as well as the "token female" thing - if you have just one female character per book then it's easier to see it as a general failing, whereas men get to take all sorts of roles without being necessarily unconvincing as men.

[Sci-2]

didn't get artificially feminized

This is an interesting, though really separate topic - a straight man writing a believable gay man. Same basic idea I guess, avoid stereotypes but take the society into account as Datepalm noted.

[Contrarius]

This is an interesting, though really separate topic - a straight man writing a believable gay man. Same basic idea I guess, avoid stereotypes but take the society into account as Datepalm noted.

On a parallel note -- I have no problem with women writing gay male characters, but for some reason my mind rebels at the thought of men writing lesbian women characters. I must be a bigot, or something.... ;)

Not strictly true - gay men bonded with the green dragons (sterile females), but I think they were gay beforehand, didn't get artificially feminized by their bonded partner. Still rather dubious in many ways though.

I don't remember this. If I ever do another reread, I'll have to keep an eye out for it!