Can men write from the woman's perspective?

[Crystal_Dust]

I don’t know this guy either, but, I can’t believe he meant that unless his own work has zero female characters.

Does it?

He does not write them well. They are really just there as props for the male protagonist.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

I don’t know this guy either, but, I can’t believe he meant that unless his own work has zero female characters.

Does it?

What if it does? Does it mean you can't recognize the man's perspective in his writing? And to the point, does it mean that he (R. Morgan) cannot recognize the woman's perspective in Leguin? As he claims he can? As others claim they can?

 

[VerbalAbuse]

He does not write them well. They are really just there as props for the male protagonist.

I imagine he'd agree with you. R. Morgan is not the go-to author for understanding women. As he admits it himself. Then again, that's the topic and that's what he says. Which is, he writes from a man's perspective.

 

[ColtonWrites]

I read recently a short interview with Richard Morgan (sci-fi writer), where he briefly (of course) touched this topic. His answer is "no." One gender cannot write the other -- that's what he said. He talked Leguin's works, noting how distinctly female the perspective.

Me... I'd say that anybody can learn anything. Not really anybody, but you get the point. Yes, you can study a certain corpus and train yourself to replicate the style, perspective, etc. Failing that, most men and most women write in an easily recognizable gendered voice.

I'd be curious to know what gendered voice you think my characters are written in. Genuinely. My POV characters to date are all male-ID'd except one, and most of the side characters as well. But I've never tried to practice writing in a "male" voice.

IMO anyone can write any gender, if they treat the character as a person rather than a stereotype. Men who write women badly do so when the woman isn't the protagonist/POV character, and the same goes for those who write women well. I don't think much changes if you just shift the reader's perspective.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

I'd be curious to know what gendered voice you think my characters are written in. Genuinely. My POV characters to date are all male-ID'd except one, and most of the side characters as well. But I've never tried to practice writing in a "male" voice.

IMO anyone can write any gender, if they treat the character as a person rather than a stereotype. Men who write women badly do so when the woman isn't the protagonist/POV character, and the same goes for those who write women well. I don't think much changes if you just shift the reader's perspective.

As said before, I agree that one can write any gender, and any perspective. but that requires, IMO, study. Yes, you can write as somebody from across the globe, and from a different era -- once you studied and learned the "voice." Many writers did just that. Examples abound. Could I write a victorian novel, especially one in the tone and style of the great female victorian writers? Why, I can definitely learn to do it (but no, I can't do it right now, I haven't prepared for it).

 

[ColtonWrites]

As said before, I agree that one can write any gender, and any perspective. but that requires, IMO, study. Yes, you can write as somebody from across the globe, and from a different era -- once you studied and learned the "voice." Many writers did just that. Examples abound. Could I write a victorian novel, especially one in the tone and style of the great female victorian writers? Why, I can definitely learn to do it (but no, I can't do it right now, I haven't prepared for it).

Oh, Im not saying you don't agree that it can be done!
I'm just honestly curious. You said you think men and women sound different to you unless they practice. I haven't practiced, and I don't consider myself to be fully a man OR a woman, so I really wonder what my tone sounds like.
(For clarity - the men in my stories who identify as trans DO generally think of themselves as just men. IME most trans men feel that way. Its me that doesn’t.)

 

[joy_of_cooking]

I don’t know this guy either, but, I can’t believe he meant that unless his own work has zero female characters.

Does it?

He does have female characters but his POV character has always been male, at least in the books I've read (altered carbon and 13 universe, not storm light archive).

I wrote an NC/R story from the perspective of the female victim and got a bunch of comments from women that it was so realistic it was unpleasant for them to read.

https://www.literotica.com/s/snowed-in-with-a-predator-1

I wonder what these people would say if they knew that I didn't really think about the gender dynamics much as I was writing it. For me it was mostly a story about class and economic precarity and family obligations.

 

[StillStunned]

I read recently a short interview with Richard Morgan (sci-fi writer), where he briefly (of course) touched this topic. His answer is "no." One gender cannot write the other -- that's what he said. He talked Leguin's works, noting how distinctly female the perspective.

I've read a couple of Richard Morgan's books (The Dark Defiles and its sequels), and his few female characters (there's one female POV character, IIRC) didn't strike me as being implausible. Not that I'm a woman, but they didn't come across as any more masculine than many female characters in books written by women.

I've also never had any issue with how Ursula K LeGuin wrote Ged or any of her other male characters.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

Oh, Im not saying you don't agree that it can't be done!
I'm just honestly curious. You said you think men and women sound different to you unless they practice. I haven't practiced, and I don't consider myself to be fully a man OR a woman, so I really wonder what my tone sounds like.
(For clarity - the men in my stories who identify as trans DO generally think of themselves as just men. IME most trans men feel that way. Its me that doesn’t.)

this veers in a different direction
do the "men in [your] stories who identify as trans" have a penis? it's a bit unclear. suppose I could look at your stories. incidentally , most of my stories are in the TS/TV/CD category. To be clear: my stories are just that, stories. Hopefully entertaining fantasies, nothing more.

but I'll say this -- and it's something I have said in the forum before. Emmanuelle is written in a very raspy voice. You can almost feel the thick musk coming out from the speaker's breath. Signed with a woman's name, it transpired that the story was written by the pretended author's husband.

and Leguin? she often writes men -- but it's plain she doesn't know what she's doing. Her "men" speak in an unmistakable high pitch voice.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

I've read a couple of Richard Morgan's books (The Dark Defiles and its sequels), and his few female characters (there's one female POV character, IIRC) didn't strike me as being implausible. Not that I'm a woman, but they didn't come across as any more masculine than many female characters in books written by women.

I've also never had any issue with how Ursula K LeGuin wrote Ged or any of her other male characters.

I think these two are different matters: female characters being plausible/implausible, and the perspective being that of a man. You can have a story written from a man's perspective with perfectly plausible women, or conversely, a story written from a woman's perspective with perfectly plausible men.

 

[Statius]

Tess

 

[Britva415]

I think these two are different matters: female characters being plausible/implausible, and the perspective being that of a man. You can have a story written from a man's perspective with perfectly plausible women, or conversely, a story written from a woman's perspective with perfectly plausible men.

Sure, they're two different matters, but I don't think the difference impinges upon the question of plausibility.

 

[StillStunned]

I think these two are different matters: female characters being plausible/implausible, and the perspective being that of a man. You can have a story written from a man's perspective with perfectly plausible women, or conversely, a story written from a woman's perspective with perfectly plausible men.

I was talking about POV characters. None of them struck me as implausible.

Not like Melanie Rawn's male POV characters, for instance (although I haven't read anything of hers since about 1990). Her male characters were either comically evil or insufferably perfect. Mercedes Lackey also stood out as writing men who felt more like a woman's idealised version of men (but again, it's been a few decades since I read anything by her).

Also: those books were essentially romance, or even romantasy before it was codified, so the male characters were probably written with a specific audience in mind, and I wasn't it.

 

[ColtonWrites]

this veers in a different direction
do the "men in [your] stories who identify as trans" have a penis? it's a bit unclear. suppose I could look at your stories. incidentally , most of my stories are in the TS/TV/CD category. To be clear: my stories are just that, stories. Hopefully entertaining fantasies, nothing more.

They do not. Its sort of a theme in a lot of my work - pre/no-op trans men who date gay men and are accepted as gay men by their partners.

 

[CalBishForNow]

Can men write from the womans perspective?

The short answer is yes. The long answer, I'm inclined to organize in a numbered list.

1. Yes, you can definitely do so here. Standards on Literotica in most categories are low. People like strokers and don't generally think too hard about the characters' plausibility or inner lives. I mean this as self-deprecation more than as criticism of any other writers or readers here. Five of my first ten stories have the red "HOT" label, four of the five are primarily from a woman's perspective, and I didn't start writing here with any other experience writing fiction in the past 10+ years; I was just writing the kind of stories I like to read.
2. Yes, you can do so in general. All genders have been writing all other genders for centuries. Go nuts. You have nothing to lose but your average rating (and who cares about that anyway?) and might gain a lot.
3. Can men do it well? Yes. Many classics written by men have female perspectives in them.
4. Is it easy to do well, as easy as the reverse? Maybe not. Because we live in a sexist society (hope this doesn't get diverted to the Politics board), cisgendered heterosexual men are less used to getting inside the heads of other people than other people are used to getting inside the heads of men like that.
5. Can you do it well? I don't know. It depends in part on how much experience you've had getting in the heads of people with different life experiences.

 

[dingdongditchding]

is it like Nicholson said in that movie, just take away logic and reason.

 

[PennyThompson]

is it like Nicholson said in that movie, just take away logic and reason.

Jack's character in As Good As It Gets was the most emotional, reactive, illogical person in the whole movie, but some people may have missed the ironic subtext

 

[CalBishForNow]

Jack's character in As Good As It Gets was the most emotional, reactive, illogical person in the whole movie, but some people may have missed the ironic subtext

And aside from the hypocrisy and irony there, he's an asshole. You don't have to see any of the rest of the movie to notice that; just watch the 2-minute clip someone posted upthread and see how the secretary's dreams are being crushed.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

Many classics written by men have female perspectives in them.

who are those classics?

 

[ColtonWrites]

who are those classics?

Theres The Scarlet Letter for one.

More modern options are things like Matilda and many of Terry Pratchett's novels (his women are VERY well done).

There's also a strong argument to be made that Lousia May Alcott would have identified as a trans man if she lived today.

 

[CalBishForNow]

who are those classics?

I confess I wrote that glib remark without specific examples in mind. @ColtonWrites has already provided a few. I also Googled a bit and found this list. It seems to be user-generated so it has a big presentist bias, but even so I see some inarguable classics on it.

Also, while https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/ is mostly counterexamples of what we're talking about, it also has a "doing it right" tag.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

I confess I wrote that glib remark without specific examples in mind. @ColtonWrites has already provided a few. I also Googled a bit and found this list. It seems to be user-generated so it has a big presentist bias, but even so I see some inarguable classics on it.

Also, while https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/ is mostly counterexamples of what we're talking about, it also has a "doing it right" tag.

There's a huge gap between writing memorable characters ("great protagonists"), and writing in an authentic voice.

The OP asks Can men write from the woman's perspective?
Indeed, that does not require "great protagonists."

 

[ColtonWrites]

There's a huge gap between writing memorable characters ("great protagonists"), and writing in an authentic voice.

The OP asks Can men write from the woman's perspective?
Indeed, that does not require "great protagonists."

I'd argue that Pratchett's women are believable/authentic AND great protagonists.

But I also love Sir Terry and all his characters so I am admitted not unbiased.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

who are those classics?

Antony and Cleopatra
Macbeth
King Lear
Romeo and Juliet

 

[CalBishForNow]

There's a huge gap between writing memorable characters ("great protagonists"), and writing in an authentic voice.

The OP asks Can men write from the woman's perspective?
Indeed, that does not require "great protagonists."

Maybe I should let this go, but I don't understand what you're disagreeing with me about, or what your point is more generally.

OP asks "can men write from the woman's perspective." I say yes, for several reasons, one of which being that there are many celebrated classics like that. (In hindsight, I see that OP wrote "woman" and I wrote "female" and maybe I shouldn't have conflated the terms, but that doesn't seem relevant now.)

You're saying... what? No, because no classics like that exist because the woman's perspective was inadequately authentic? No, because just having them present in the story isn't enough and they must specifically be a "great protagonist" or have an "authentic voice," to use two terms you introduced, or both? Yes but it's really hard? (In which case, see the following two items on my list).