Weaver
Sage
If I can put my two cents' worth in, I'd like to know why men have such a difficult time writing female characters. From the perspective of a female, male characters aren't difficult at all. Could I ask for an example of what you [theoretical "you", not any one person - only if applicable] might struggle with, and why?
My own "problem" with writing female characters:
I write them like people. (Notice that I do not say "like humans." I write fantasy and sci-fi; not all of my viewpoint characters are the same species as my readers.) I have been told over and over again that this is not an acceptable practice, that I must write female characters according to the "standard" view of how women act and think, as if all women acted and thought the same way. Here is part of what one person on a peer-critique site said about one of my short stories:
"Just a note in regard to your note, I'm getting the impression the narrative is male. I can't pinpoint exactly why though I think if you could make it more emotional (in the bedroom females are more emotionally lead, where is males are more physically turned on, maybe you can apply this kind of concept to some of the details you've given - for example 'Time to time, I even found people.' How, emotionally, does this make the narrative feel? Instead of 'I even' maybe 'I was pleased/excited/relieved'. Maybe mention something about what it's like being female in the profession (which would work well if it is a predominantly male career), so you can nail any assumptions we may have. If you introduce the fact that the narrative is female early on, we will build our image of the character up from this."
(If you want to read the entire critique - and my thoughts on the whole mess after the fact - here's the link to my bloggish tirade about it: North of Andover: An old critique dissected (part 1) )
The assumption that a woman MUST be hyper-emotional offended me. It still offends me. So does the assumption that a man is always less emotional. Here am I, a grown man (and a straight one at that, in case someone claims that that matters), and I just admitted on another thread that I cried the first time I read a particular scene in a novel I love. Yes, men can have feelings. Deal with it. The POV character in my story is a private investigator (oversimplification, but close enough for current arguments), and she lives in a time and place where people don't expect women to be passive and timid and non-confrontational compared to men. People are people.
The thing is, someone else helped me out by rewriting that story a bit. When I posted the new version, the same critiquers who told me how unrealistic and wrong my female MC was before - after all, the hadn't expected me to be able to write a female character, what with me being male and all - they loved the changes, wanted to know which of my female friends had helped me out... And I had to laugh. The person who did the rewrites? My twin brother.