# Women: Men with boobs



## Brian G Turner (May 15, 2014)

Mark Lawrence takes up Joe Abercrombie's complaint that no matter how he writes women, someone will always complain that they're just men, with boobs:

Mark Lawrence: Writing Men (without tits) in Fantasy

Is this just a case of simple nuances male writers tend to fail to pick up?

Or, is it because readers these days are so diverse, that it's impossible for everyone to identify with any character in a story?


----------



## Mouse (May 15, 2014)

Just read it quickly because I'm at work. It's kinda the same as the chicks with dicks argument, isn't it? Men written by women are just women with willies. 

Just try to write all characters with believable personalities. I know women who share more personality traits with men (I'm one of them) and I know men who share more personality traits with women. (And by 'personality traits' I'm meaning those that are traditionally seen as male/female).

Maybe those saying _your characters are just men with boobs_ simply mean the characters are badly written as people, and unfortunately it does tend to be female characters who are badly written. Hope that makes sense! I don't think it does but... meh.


----------



## Jo Zebedee (May 15, 2014)

Make sure you have beta readers of the opposite sex. I have one male pov character who is intent on not being macho - when he goes too far, I get shouted at.  

Otherwise, it's like what Mouse says. The character ia first, not the sex.


----------



## AnyaKimlin (May 15, 2014)

I just begin with a person and round them out using story so even if they are a bit feminine it makes sense in the context.

 I find beta readers of the opposite sex and about the same age as my characters to test them on.  At first Angus was very much a chick with a dick but thanks to some teen boys he kind of manned up a bit.

It probably helps I am not very feminine myself.

I do remember being told one of my gay character's was a bit camp so I asked some other gay men who said he wasn't quite as camp as my straight ones. 

Umm... basically what Springs said.  I had it open for ages before I wrote the post.


----------



## Brian G Turner (May 15, 2014)

springs said:


> Make sure you have beta readers of the opposite sex.



This sounds like astonishingly good advice.


----------



## Ursa major (May 15, 2014)

My main characters aren't mammals, which would rather undermine the suggested form of this criticism, though not, sadly, any underlying validity (should there be any).


----------



## Mirannan (May 15, 2014)

Ursa major said:


> My main characters aren't mammals, which would rather undermine the suggested form of this criticism, though not, sadly, any underlying validity (should there be any).



Well, when dealing with nonhumans (and ones quite different from humans, at that - elves aren't really all that different in most fiction) then gender norms go out of the window.

For example, I remember reading a series of stories in which one of the major races in the setting had something very different about biological gender roles. The males (male as in sperm donors) incubated the young and the females (as in egg-producers) had large erectile ovipositors. With the result that gender roles were almost, but not quite, reversed as compared to humans.

Then you have races that aren't interested in sex at all most of the time, races in which only one sex is sapient, ones with more than two sexes...


----------



## Brian G Turner (May 15, 2014)

I find the discussion especially interesting, because as I blogged earlier, I took my male-dominated WIP and made almost half the characters female.

It was not a straight swap - editing was, and will be, required. 

While I'd considered changing some character's gender for a while, it was only while struggling with a major POV character that I made the decision, because - in the short term - it looked like I was finally able to write that character in a more believable way.

When I put it out for beta reading, I'll be asking especially how authentic these characters come across, and will make corrections accordingly.

Even if I'm happy I've conveyed them to the best of my ability, I suspect there will always be somebody, somewhere, who will criticise. If it's an oversight on my part, I can accept that. 

But I wonder how much of existing criticisms about speculative fiction are due to the reader not being able to see themselves in the characters they are presented with, rather than anything objective?


----------



## Jo Zebedee (May 15, 2014)

Not quite the same but I switched an adult antagonist for a Young adult one and the rewrite was massive. Proof again the character leads, not the story.


----------



## Nerds_feather (May 15, 2014)

As with most things, it's probably best to avoid hard positions (i.e. "men and women cannot be different" or "men and women must always be different") and strive for complexity and nuance.


----------



## jastius (May 16, 2014)

what i've noticed when men write women is that they:
1. put them in ghastly outfits.
2. they never have a realistic feminine motif.
but you can crib that type of thing from a really good writer or well written movie.


----------



## End of Time (May 16, 2014)

I think Mark Lawrence is fast becoming someone I admire.


----------



## Danny McG (Jul 28, 2021)

I'm a man
I've got dad bod man boobs!


----------



## Rodders (Jul 28, 2021)

I've had a nice set of Tiddies for a while now. 

I need to loose some weight.


----------



## alexvss (Jul 28, 2021)

I read some 200 pages of *Red Sister* and kinda liked how Lawrence wrote the girls.

And yeah, the "I'm not like other Gurls" cliché is annoying, and actually disrespects women by saying that "girly" things are bad. I get that not all girls like pink, but liking pink is not a flaw.


----------



## nixie (Jul 28, 2021)

alexvss said:


> I read some 200 pages of *Red Sister* and kinda liked how Lawrence wrote the girls.
> 
> And yeah, the "I'm not like other Gurls" cliché is annoying, and actually disrespects women by saying that "girly" things are bad. I get that not all girls like pink, but liking pink is not a flaw.


I've read the Book of the Ancestors trilogy and also started his Book of the Ice series, no issue with how he portrays the girls.

 However do have  an issue  with how two dimensional the females are in his first two series. Then again the majority of characters in those series are not well fleshed out. He concentrates on his main character.


----------



## paranoid marvin (Jul 29, 2021)

It always impressed me that Sue Townsend could get so much right about the angsts of a teenage boy.

I guess that generally speaking it's easier to write about something you know than something you think you know.

Can men ever truly understand what it is to be a woman? Or vice-versa?


----------



## Mon0Zer0 (Jul 29, 2021)

paranoid marvin said:


> It always impressed me that Sue Townsend could get so much right about the angsts of a teenage boy.



Yes! She did a fantastic job on Adrian, and got it completely right!



> Can men ever truly understand what it is to be a woman? Or vice-versa?



People often talk about GRRM having well written women characters - does anyone disagree with that? 

It's been many years since I've read Carrie, but that seems to be a story that could only ever suit a female protagonist. How is Stephen King's portrayal of a teenage girl?

For fantasy and sci-fi, bar stories that specifically hinge on the sexed body (i.e. that deal with sex politics, motherhood, menstruation, menopause etc) , are there any stories where a male role could be sex flipped and it would completely affect the story?

How much of men's failure to write women is down to certain aspects of womanhood being hidden from men (for whatever reason)?


----------



## Tony Blaidd (Aug 1, 2021)

I think a lot is down to the world setting of the story. For example A Song of Ice and Fire is set in such a strongly patriarchal society that the sex of a protagonist has a huge bearing on their experiences and story arc, whereas in a more equal (futuristic?) society then it becomes a lot easier to flip a character's sex without drastically affecting the storyline. Take the original Alien as an example, The casting of Ripley as a man wouldn't have had a major impact on the writing.


----------

