The second Kushiel trilogy has a male lead. Carey isn’t quite as proficient at writing men as she is writing women; the character felt somewhat “off” to me, when compared to my own experiences as a male. Then again, I didn’t suffer through horrible abuse that made me terrified of my own sexuality, so I don’t know what it’s like to be Imriel either.
I don’t understand women, but I’m not all that much better at understanding men, either. Heck, I don’t even have that good of a model of myself. I’m pretty good at understanding fiction, though; I’ve read an awful lot of it.
Carey isn’t quite as proficient at writing men as she is writing women
I would have been surprised if she was. Joscelin Verreuil also strikes me as being a projection of some facets of a man that a woman most notices, and not a man as we exist from the inside.
I have never known a man with a true female side, and I have never known a woman with a true male side, either as authors or in real life.
This perception seems far too easily biased by knowing the gender of the author. Does anyone know of blinded studies on determining the gender of an author based on how they write male vs. female characters? Lacking any hard evidence I am extremely skeptical of the effect being all that large.
A few notable female science fiction/fantasy authors wrote under male or gender-neutral names. There may be data that could be found from reactions to their work, but I wouldn’t know where to start looking.
Look up James Tiptree Jr. (the pseudonym used by sf writer Alice Sheldon) for a great example of a female sf author who “passed” not only as male, but as manly (in the opinion of many men who read her work) until her true identity was revealed.
Authors whose work reveals a deep enough understanding of their characters that you would say of them, “This goes beyond what I thought a man (woman) could understand of women (men)” are terribly exceeding rare. I’m not sure who the male conjugate of Jacqueline Carey might be.
At the risk of replying too late for any of the original interested parties to take notice, I’ve found the female characters in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series to be particularly compelling.
I confess that I’ve never looked at the question in terms of an author displaying exceptional understanding of the opposite sex, but rather their ability to express insight into other people who are distinctly not them, but Martin’s gotten rather high praise for his female (and male) characters from many sources, so perhaps some of them were looking at the issue in this light.
Robert Silverberg: “It has been suggested to me that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing.”
Yes, I do believe that Orthodox Jewish cultural hardwiring is showing.
Okay. I’ve never seen a male author write a female character with the same depth as Phedre no Delaunay, nor have I seen any male person display a feminine personality with the same sort of depth and internal integrity, nor have I seen any male person convincingly give the appearance of having thought out the nature of feminity to that depth. Likewise and in a mirror for women and men. I sometimes wish that certain women would appreciate that being a man is at least as complicated and hard to grasp and a lifetime’s work to integrate, as the corresponding fact of feminity. I am skeptical that either sex can ever really model and predict the other’s deep internal life, short of computer-assisted telepathy. These are different brain designs we’re talking about here.
I sometimes wish that certain men would appreciate that not all men are like them—or at least, that not all men want to be like them—that the fact of masculinity is not necessarily something to integrate.
I have I have! He identifies as male but … wow. He knew what I felt in IM. He played me like a symphony. It was incredible. He must have had me all worked out in his head. And he was so sensitive, so very much like a woman...
It may be true that you’ve never seen this but this comment upset somebody so I hope that in the event that you have the perception that this is not possible, you do realize that you’re likely to be working with a biased sample. Do men who identify as male frequently wish to share emotionally intimate thoughts with other men? Do men who are feminine inside and want a male mate do this with males who are straight? Do trans women do this with just everyone? How many trans women have you attempted to get close to? How many others do we allow to see more than a superficial view of us, period?
From the view you have of me, am I displaying a feminine personality with “the same sort of depth and internal integrity”?
Which raises a question: were there high-quality collaborations in fiction, where a male writer contributes to the writing of male characters, and a female writer works on female ones? How did that work out?
Which raises a question: were there high-quality collaborations in fiction, where a male writer contributes to the writing of male characters, and a female writer works on female ones?
To a significant extent David and Leigh Eddings.
How did that work out?
Nauseating. Completely replacing every female character in his books would lose nothing of value. :)
I went back and read some David Eddings, which I remembered liking in early childhood, and was like, “Wow, look at all the adverbs”. I think you have to try something like that with, I don’t know, Neil Gaiman and Lois McMaster Bujold, before it becomes a good test of the theory.
Actually, now that I think on it, Bujold has many male characters and I’ve yet to notice a flaw in their masculinity, side-by-side with Cordelia Naismith, the Greatest Mom in the Multiverse. She’s also written a gay male viewpoint character at length (Ethan of Athos) but I don’t know how accurate that was.
Data point: I am physically (and I am figuring, genotypically) female but have never felt that I have an “internal feminine identity” of any kind. I used to think the whole idea of such an internal identity was a socially-imposed myth. It was not until I encountered trans women / trans men who very, very clearly had an internal identification that strongly differed from their sex phenotype that it became evident to me that some people (and possibly most cisgendered persons, even) really and truly did have an internal gender “sense”.
Data point: I am physically (and I am figuring, genotypically) female but have never felt that I have an “internal feminine identity” of any kind.
For opposite values of sex and gender, the same goes for me. To the extent that I do conform to certain masculine stereotypes I don’t view them as critical to my identity, just another semi-arbitrary socially constructed category that I belong to.
In my case, I had (often vastly) reduced exposure to most of the transmission vectors I would expect social gender identity memes to have. Out of curiousity, if it’s not too personal, was your childhood particularly atypical in exposure to type of social environments/mass media/&c.?
The thing I’ve heard said about it is “if you’re cisgendered, you’re as aware of your own gender as a fish is of water” (where cisgendered == not transgendered). I don’t know how you’d measure whether that was so.
Perhaps not so surprisingly, given that (anecdotally and handwavily, I confess) MtF transsexualism appears to be associated with something like +1 s.d. of intelligence. I’ve heard super-duper-handwavy explanations along the lines of “male-sized brain with female-style connectivity” but don’t know whether there’s any truth to them.
And of course there are obvious reasons why open transsexualism might be strongly associated with openness to unconventional ideas and tolerance for the idea of self-modification, both on the part of the individual concerned and of those he/she socializes with. So someone who hangs out with transhumanists might reasonably expect to know a greater-than-average proportion of transsexual people.
The second Kushiel trilogy has a male lead. Carey isn’t quite as proficient at writing men as she is writing women; the character felt somewhat “off” to me, when compared to my own experiences as a male. Then again, I didn’t suffer through horrible abuse that made me terrified of my own sexuality, so I don’t know what it’s like to be Imriel either.
I don’t understand women, but I’m not all that much better at understanding men, either. Heck, I don’t even have that good of a model of myself. I’m pretty good at understanding fiction, though; I’ve read an awful lot of it.
I would have been surprised if she was. Joscelin Verreuil also strikes me as being a projection of some facets of a man that a woman most notices, and not a man as we exist from the inside.
I have never known a man with a true female side, and I have never known a woman with a true male side, either as authors or in real life.
This perception seems far too easily biased by knowing the gender of the author. Does anyone know of blinded studies on determining the gender of an author based on how they write male vs. female characters? Lacking any hard evidence I am extremely skeptical of the effect being all that large.
A few notable female science fiction/fantasy authors wrote under male or gender-neutral names. There may be data that could be found from reactions to their work, but I wouldn’t know where to start looking.
Look up James Tiptree Jr. (the pseudonym used by sf writer Alice Sheldon) for a great example of a female sf author who “passed” not only as male, but as manly (in the opinion of many men who read her work) until her true identity was revealed.
I read a book by Tiptree and did not identify it as female, but neither did it give me any particular impression of manliness. Good data point though.
Authors whose work reveals a deep enough understanding of their characters that you would say of them, “This goes beyond what I thought a man (woman) could understand of women (men)” are terribly exceeding rare. I’m not sure who the male conjugate of Jacqueline Carey might be.
At the risk of replying too late for any of the original interested parties to take notice, I’ve found the female characters in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series to be particularly compelling.
I confess that I’ve never looked at the question in terms of an author displaying exceptional understanding of the opposite sex, but rather their ability to express insight into other people who are distinctly not them, but Martin’s gotten rather high praise for his female (and male) characters from many sources, so perhaps some of them were looking at the issue in this light.
She’s Come Undone by the male author Wally Lamb has been praised for its utterly convincing portrayal of its female main character.
I’ve never read it.
I hear Memoirs of a Geisha has a good female lead written by a male author.
James Tiptree Jr, aka Alice Sheldon.
Robert Silverberg: “It has been suggested to me that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing.”
Yes, I do believe that Orthodox Jewish cultural hardwiring is showing.
Could you please taboo these?
Okay. I’ve never seen a male author write a female character with the same depth as Phedre no Delaunay, nor have I seen any male person display a feminine personality with the same sort of depth and internal integrity, nor have I seen any male person convincingly give the appearance of having thought out the nature of feminity to that depth. Likewise and in a mirror for women and men. I sometimes wish that certain women would appreciate that being a man is at least as complicated and hard to grasp and a lifetime’s work to integrate, as the corresponding fact of feminity. I am skeptical that either sex can ever really model and predict the other’s deep internal life, short of computer-assisted telepathy. These are different brain designs we’re talking about here.
I sometimes wish that certain men would appreciate that not all men are like them—or at least, that not all men want to be like them—that the fact of masculinity is not necessarily something to integrate.
Duly appreciated.
Have you ever read something featuring characters of both genders without knowing in advance the gender of the author?
I have I have! He identifies as male but … wow. He knew what I felt in IM. He played me like a symphony. It was incredible. He must have had me all worked out in his head. And he was so sensitive, so very much like a woman...
It may be true that you’ve never seen this but this comment upset somebody so I hope that in the event that you have the perception that this is not possible, you do realize that you’re likely to be working with a biased sample. Do men who identify as male frequently wish to share emotionally intimate thoughts with other men? Do men who are feminine inside and want a male mate do this with males who are straight? Do trans women do this with just everyone? How many trans women have you attempted to get close to? How many others do we allow to see more than a superficial view of us, period?
From the view you have of me, am I displaying a feminine personality with “the same sort of depth and internal integrity”?
Which raises a question: were there high-quality collaborations in fiction, where a male writer contributes to the writing of male characters, and a female writer works on female ones? How did that work out?
To a significant extent David and Leigh Eddings.
Nauseating. Completely replacing every female character in his books would lose nothing of value. :)
I went back and read some David Eddings, which I remembered liking in early childhood, and was like, “Wow, look at all the adverbs”. I think you have to try something like that with, I don’t know, Neil Gaiman and Lois McMaster Bujold, before it becomes a good test of the theory.
Actually, now that I think on it, Bujold has many male characters and I’ve yet to notice a flaw in their masculinity, side-by-side with Cordelia Naismith, the Greatest Mom in the Multiverse. She’s also written a gay male viewpoint character at length (Ethan of Athos) but I don’t know how accurate that was.
Do you know very many transsexuals?
Surprisingly many.
If you don’t mind my asking, how do you perceive them wrt to
Data point: I am physically (and I am figuring, genotypically) female but have never felt that I have an “internal feminine identity” of any kind. I used to think the whole idea of such an internal identity was a socially-imposed myth. It was not until I encountered trans women / trans men who very, very clearly had an internal identification that strongly differed from their sex phenotype that it became evident to me that some people (and possibly most cisgendered persons, even) really and truly did have an internal gender “sense”.
For opposite values of sex and gender, the same goes for me. To the extent that I do conform to certain masculine stereotypes I don’t view them as critical to my identity, just another semi-arbitrary socially constructed category that I belong to.
In my case, I had (often vastly) reduced exposure to most of the transmission vectors I would expect social gender identity memes to have. Out of curiousity, if it’s not too personal, was your childhood particularly atypical in exposure to type of social environments/mass media/&c.?
The thing I’ve heard said about it is “if you’re cisgendered, you’re as aware of your own gender as a fish is of water” (where cisgendered == not transgendered). I don’t know how you’d measure whether that was so.
Perhaps not so surprisingly, given that (anecdotally and handwavily, I confess) MtF transsexualism appears to be associated with something like +1 s.d. of intelligence. I’ve heard super-duper-handwavy explanations along the lines of “male-sized brain with female-style connectivity” but don’t know whether there’s any truth to them.
And of course there are obvious reasons why open transsexualism might be strongly associated with openness to unconventional ideas and tolerance for the idea of self-modification, both on the part of the individual concerned and of those he/she socializes with. So someone who hangs out with transhumanists might reasonably expect to know a greater-than-average proportion of transsexual people.