Women of Authors' Hangout... And men...

[AG31]

Do you (women) write about or enjoy reading stories from the male POV?

Men, do you know about women who do either of these things?

I'm certainly such a female, and I've recently been approached by someone who's curious about this. I had thought it was fairly common, but I don't see a lot of evidence of it in the AH community. But maybe there's just no occasion for it to come up. I have to confess that I (like a lot of us) don't actually read a lot of Lit stories.

EDIT: RESULTS after approx. 24 hours

People clearly read the question in different ways. Too much of a hodgepodge to report on all combinations. Here is the info in response to the question asked. It was focused just on whether women wrote/read from the male POV because of a conversation I had gotten into with another member. If I had narrowed it down to the actual topic of conversation, I would have specified BDSM and probably gotten almost no replies.

Total people responding to the thread - 17 (7 women, 9 men, 1 undeclared)

Count of women writing from male POV - 6
Women authors - 4
People with reasons to report women writing - 2

Count of women reading male POV - 3
Women - 2
People with reasons to report women reading - 4

I'll update these stats if any late arrivals show up.

 

[AchtungNight]

I enjoy writing from a female perspective and I’m a man. Is that similar?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Same here. I enjoy the change and the challenge of writing from a woman's POV. I am not trying to be overly realistic, though. I am just trying to write interesting, quirky characters. Regular people don't interest me that much

To answer your question, I can also enjoy reading from a woman's perspective if it is within my own themes and kinks.

 

[KeithD]

It's said that most GM writers (and readers) are women, and I see no evidence to disprove that.

 

[MyBareTorso]

I'm a male, and I enjoy writing from both the male and female perspectives...same with my reading habits here on Literotica. In that respect, I like it both ways...

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm male, write both points of view.

My editor is a woman, writes both points of view.

I've written close third, from an alien angel's point of view.

I've written close third, from a spider in a top hat's point of view, those stories also contained a moth, a mantis, and a lady beetle.

I don't see there's an issue, from my point of view .

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I've written both M and F 1st person, and close 3rd from both as well as one 2nd person with a MMC.

I think it depends on the perspective that best tells the story.
My Valentines story was close 3rd following the MMC. I probably could have written it from the FMC pov, but it would have been a weaker story.

 

[AG31]

I enjoy writing from a female perspective and I’m a man. Is that similar?

Sure. It's similar.

 

[AG31]

It's said that most GM writers (and readers) are women, and I see no evidence to disprove that.

I was going to post that as a stand-alone post at some point. You see no evidence to disprove that. But do you think it's true? Are your readers mostly female?

 

[KeithD]

I was going to post that as a stand-alone post at some point. You see no evidence to disprove that. But do you think it's true? Are your readers mostly female?

I can't gauge it. A good number of the favorable commenters on my stories claim to be female.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

As far as reading, I'd say the same. A good story is a good story, I don't care that much which perspective it's told from.

 

[Voboy]

I routinely read and write cross-perspective stories. It'd take a lot to convince me there's a definitive gender bias one way or the other here.

 

[KachinaDoll]

I quite enjoy writing from a male POV, though I do run it past my husband who sometimes suggests changes.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I don't have a preference. I've had male and female main characters, and have written in both perspectives in the same story, as much as 3rd person omni allows.

 

[countdowntolov3]

When reading something short and smutty I have a really strong preference for a woman's point of view. But if it's something longer and more involved, even if it also has sex scenes, then I am happy with either gender.

The first stories I wrote were really a reaction to my annoyance that I couldn't find much with my kinks told from a woman's perspective.

 

[mrs_mackenzie]

Do you (women) write about or enjoy reading stories from the male POV?

I both write and enjoy stories from the male point of view.

When reading, it's basically just role reversal. Sometimes I like being a woman and being the object of male gaze and sometimes I would like to try doing the gazing.

Creatively, it's more challenging to try and put myself in a man's shoes and also to portray women from the male perspective. Sometimes I like the challenge, and sometimes I just can't be bothered with it. Depends on the story.

 

[vagrantx]

Do you (women) write about or enjoy reading stories from the male POV?

Usually not. As I'm gay, penises and their owners do very little for me, but, if the story is not focused on the penis-wielders physical pleasure then it can work. Had this discussion just yesterday with another author, and she made me realize that if the focus is on mental power dynamics then the sex of the dom/me doesn't matter as much.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It's said that most GM writers (and readers) are women, and I see no evidence to disprove that.

Always hard to get reliable numbers on this kind of thing, but that's consistent with what I've heard from romance and fanfic quarters. Quite a few prominent writers in M/M romance are known to be women writing under male names.

One researcher did a survey on the Goodreads male/male romance readers' group a few years back. Out of 1581 people who replied, 85% reported as women and 12% as men (with the rest picking a non-binary option). Self-selected surveys usually have some bias, and it may be that Goodreads isn't representative of the whole population, but the gap is so large it's hard to think it's entirely measurement errors.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160512100838/http://popularromanceproject.org/reading-gay-romance/

 

[alohadave]

Always hard to get reliable numbers on this kind of thing, but that's consistent with what I've heard from romance and fanfic quarters. Quite a few prominent writers in M/M romance are known to be women writing under male names.

One researcher did a survey on the Goodreads male/male romance readers' group a few years back. Out of 1581 people who replied, 85% reported as women and 12% as men (with the rest picking a non-binary option). Self-selected surveys usually have some bias, and it may be that Goodreads isn't representative of the whole population, but the gap is so large it's hard to think it's entirely measurement errors.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160512100838/http://popularromanceproject.org/reading-gay-romance/

Some of those may be men reporting as women to boost their sales.

Like women authors in mainstream who either used male names (Andre Norton), or women who deemphasized their gender by using initials (CS Friedman, AC Crispin, etc), men who write romance frequently use a woman's name as their pen name.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Some of those may be men reporting as women to boost their sales.

Like women authors in mainstream who either used male names (Andre Norton), or women who deemphasized their gender by using initials (CS Friedman, AC Crispin, etc), men who write romance frequently use a woman's name as their pen name.

AFAIK most of the people surveyed are romance readers, not writers. In M/M romance the trend looks to be more in the other direction, women writing under male names.

 

[KeithD]

I write under three female names for the marketplace. (I have female-name story accounts here too.)

 

[Lifestyle66]

I'm a male writer and almost always write first person male POV (except for "The Maneater" female POV.)

To the OP's question of women reading stories from the male POV, I'll try to describe my wife's opinions on reading our stories. (Yes, she does read some and gets turned on by some, describing them to me.)

Essentially it depends on her mood, quality of the writing, and female characters in the story. My wife can enjoy a male POV story, if the female is enjoying herself (from his POV description.) Last night, she read my latest male POV story "Do We Need to Talk?" and this is the first of mine which she said she enjoyed. It's probably due to the story wife having more risque fun, while the husband sets the scene. Even the story detailed blowjob scene (husband enjoying her giving him his fantasy) is the wife in control.

And I think that's the defining characteristic in her appreciation of a story: my wife must be able to relate to the female role and enjoy what the female is doing, regardless of the POV. Even the maneater female POV story, she could enjoy that POV because she appreciated the female, kickass role, but she thought that story was far too long.

So, regardless of male or female reader or MC POV, the reader needs to find a character in the story which they can relate and enjoy that character's activities. EDIT: Then I guess the next reader appreciation goal depends on how much of the story describes their favored character.

 

[karina_jayde]

I'm a woman, and tend to prefer just reading and writing from a woman's POV, of any sexual preference.

I have tried so hard to write male POV erotica. The only story I've succeeded at was a femdom story from the man's perspective (not yet published).

I have no trouble writing male POVs for non-erotic work, though.

I don't have an issue describing any of the sex acts from the male perspective, but I find that character development in the non-erotic scenes just falls by the wayside and my male MCs end up feel very flat and listless.

I'm really working on it, though, and am hoping to power through and get a proper sexy fantasy adventure with a male POV finished someday.

 

[AG31]

When reading something short and smutty I have a really strong preference for a woman's point of view. But if it's something longer and more involved, even if it also has sex scenes, then I am happy with either gender.

The first stories I wrote were really a reaction to my annoyance that I couldn't find much with my kinks told from a woman's perspective.

Sorry. I can't tell from this if you "write" from a male POV.

 

[samhasstories]

The erotica I write is an exploration of my own sexual fantasies, so I tend to write that from a male perspective. And I would've predicted that most of the people who read and enjoy it are also male, just based on the content, though I've had some positive comments and favorites from users who at least present online as female. The female characters all (or almost all) end up enjoying themselves in my stories too, just not as... copiously as the main male character.

In non-erotica I write from whatever perspective seems to make sense for the story. I kind of just let my instinct drive on that one and don't really overthink it. Often the character that hits the page when I start writing is a woman, and I just run with it.

Stories I read, I don't have a preference for the gender of the perspective character. If it's erotica and I'm shooting for a certain personal climax, then I like to have a character I can imagine myself into. Lesbian sex is beautiful but it's unlikely to put me over the top, so to speak. If I'm just reading for the joy of reading then it makes no difference to me.