Is it wrong for a man to write a story from the female perspective

redzinger said:

I don't understand other women.
I don't understand a lot of people.
I don't understand myself half of the time.

Bearing all this in mind, I feel less and less qualified to write]

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Well if you're writing about gay rugby players women are sort of irrelevant aren't they, except as bit players. And who really understands themselves? You voyage thru life discovering yourself and there's always something new. As for other people, discovering them is fascinating. Writing about them is the challenge.

I try to understand others, but I never really expect to.

Sometimes I don’t even understand my own characters. That’s when I know I’ve found a good one: when they turn out to be as complex as real people.

I was just today talking to my SO about the story I'm currently writing, and I find that I need a female perspective on just how a large penis "feels" as opposed to a smaller one during intercourse. It's things like this that I fear can really come off as stupid in my writing. I mention this just as an example of the hazards of trying to "be" the other gender. But, these things are just something to be aware of and realize I don't really know... and try to find out. I personally feel it is easier to crossover in regard to the mental/emotional areas of the story...but I may just be deluding myself on that too

PS: Just a comment on the conversation about female appreciation of gay male erotica; Again, my SO has always enjoyed and been aroused by gay porn...I wouldn't attempt to say exactly why though...maybe I should ask, because now I'm curious.

I'll just throw this in: Before my first attempt at writing a new story from a woman's perspective, I took an existing story and retold it from the woman's POV, leaving every detail intact except for their names. (This was at a different website.) Then I created a new author identity with a female name and attributed the rewrite to her. The same story got many more reads, and I think it was voted higher, than the original version. So, I can tell you that a lot of people like hetero stories better when they're told from the woman's perspective.

JayLikestoRead said:

I'll just throw this in: Before my first attempt at writing a new story from a woman's perspective, I took an existing story and retold it from the woman's POV, leaving every detail intact except for their names. (This was at a different website.) Then I created a new author identity with a female name and attributed the rewrite to her. The same story got many more reads, and I think it was voted higher, than the original version. So, I can tell you that a lot of people like hetero stories better when they're told from the woman's perspective.

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This is an interesting point.

This website must be a goldmine for interesting reader data, if only there were someone to mine it. It would be interesting to see stats on things like POV and how it affects views and scores.

I did a tag search: 242 stories use "male pov" as a tag, and 379 stories use "female pov" as a tag.

Yolo!

jehoram said:

Now that's a story you should write! I'd love to see a woman write a story about a male character, with all the cliches and stereotypes and caricatures that male writers bring into their stories about women.
("He had 17" biceps and his left ball was 7/8" lower than his right one.") It'd be a riot. Has anybody done this?

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Maybe I'll write one like that! But I think a male author could do better at it (hint, hint).

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I don't think so.

But I'm oggbashan as well.

<- This isn't me. I'm a fictional identity.

(So is oggbashan!)