Male vs Female Characters
Sep. 16th, 2009 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkYesterday I thought (again) on a long, long story (about space pirates) that I´ll probably never write and found out that the "main cast" had five women and two men. Hm. So, to be flexible, why not change one of the women into a man. I went through the cast: the first one wouldn´t work because I wanted her to look fragile (yes, stereotypical, but I think it is easier for a woman), the next one - didn´t work. And I tried, I really did, even went to all the trouble of imagining what the character (male) would look like, how he would act etc., but it didn´t work, because I couldn´t see the male version behaving in the way I wanted it to. (By the way, it´s about a warrior character, ex-gladiator...) Even though I only had a very vague outline of the character´s history, I thought that a man would come out of this differently than a women and in general would deal with the character´s situation differently. But I can´t really explain why (I don´t have that much experience with gladiators or pirates or, more importantly, men), it´s just a feeling.
Then I tried the next character (warrior-mage and assassin) and the transition from female to male was easy, really. No problem at all. (I went back to female, though, for sentimental reasons.)
After a few more tries I started to wonder why there are characters with neutral gender (= you can switch it with no major problems) and ones where that´s not so easy.
First I thought that the reason was the background - surely a gender-neutral fictional society would produce more gender-neutral characters and vice-versa - and that might be one small reason, but not all of it. Then I thought that it was simply my personal perception, that I view some character traits as more female and other as male, and that fit better. I don´t want to call it sexist, though, because that word sounds so negative and it seems to me like it is a relatively neutral difference. For example, vengeful would be female. (I´d need a much more thorough list.) The other relatively accurate theory seems to be that I think that in some situations a man would act differently than a woman with the same character traits, so it depends on the character´s history.
Which is no explanation at all. It seems to be simply a light version of social stereotypes, or not even stereotypes: of my extremely limited and mostly unconscious observations and other information, eg. TV, books, newspapers... So back to society (or whatever you want to call it) again.
I had a lightbulb moment and mentally reviewed a couple of genderswitch stories I read. Mostly with disappointing results because 1) they were mostly the same, and 2) because they concentrated on the switched character´s point of view (and their lover´s), not on the people around them. But there are one or two stories (that I found, I´m sure that there are many more) that were really very interesting. In a "other people who are much cleverer than me thought of this, too" way, but it still doesn´t clear my confusion.
At the end, I went back to my five female, two male characters, but now that I´d tried to change the gender, it seemed to me that I suddenly understood them a tiny little bit better, why they act the way they do and why I want them to act in specific ways. (...considering that I don´t have a specific storyline yet, that´s not so bad.)
Then I tried the next character (warrior-mage and assassin) and the transition from female to male was easy, really. No problem at all. (I went back to female, though, for sentimental reasons.)
After a few more tries I started to wonder why there are characters with neutral gender (= you can switch it with no major problems) and ones where that´s not so easy.
First I thought that the reason was the background - surely a gender-neutral fictional society would produce more gender-neutral characters and vice-versa - and that might be one small reason, but not all of it. Then I thought that it was simply my personal perception, that I view some character traits as more female and other as male, and that fit better. I don´t want to call it sexist, though, because that word sounds so negative and it seems to me like it is a relatively neutral difference. For example, vengeful would be female. (I´d need a much more thorough list.) The other relatively accurate theory seems to be that I think that in some situations a man would act differently than a woman with the same character traits, so it depends on the character´s history.
Which is no explanation at all. It seems to be simply a light version of social stereotypes, or not even stereotypes: of my extremely limited and mostly unconscious observations and other information, eg. TV, books, newspapers... So back to society (or whatever you want to call it) again.
I had a lightbulb moment and mentally reviewed a couple of genderswitch stories I read. Mostly with disappointing results because 1) they were mostly the same, and 2) because they concentrated on the switched character´s point of view (and their lover´s), not on the people around them. But there are one or two stories (that I found, I´m sure that there are many more) that were really very interesting. In a "other people who are much cleverer than me thought of this, too" way, but it still doesn´t clear my confusion.
At the end, I went back to my five female, two male characters, but now that I´d tried to change the gender, it seemed to me that I suddenly understood them a tiny little bit better, why they act the way they do and why I want them to act in specific ways. (...considering that I don´t have a specific storyline yet, that´s not so bad.)
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 07:55 pm (UTC)But it's good you feel better about the story! :)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 08:05 pm (UTC)Yes, feeling better, thinking of cakes... ^^
no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 08:19 pm (UTC)(before you get the mistaken impression that I know any japanese, my friend taught them to me :P)
Cake is yummy, I wish I had cake.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-27 08:33 pm (UTC)Doesn´t everyone always. But you probably live too far away from me to send you any. And I don´t even know if it´s possible to send cake - only if it´s a simple cake without cream and the post is very, very fast. On the other hand, there are cakes that are best eaten after a week. Damn you, now I can´t stop thinking about cake...
If you give me your address, I´ll send you cake :)