1. I wasn't generalizing. I was talking about the characters in my head and how their gender assignments relate to the way I've been conditioned as a reader and as a writer.
2. I wasn't talking at all about real men or real women "I don't think, by the way, that this has anything to do with the gender performances of men and women in the world outside my head." And I don't.
Both men and women, in real life, can inhabit a breathtaking variety of gender performances. Most of which are, yes, influenced and conditioned by our socialization, which conditions men to be aggressive and women passive, etc. etc. But I know aggressive women. I know conflict-avoidant men.
3. Fishbowl social arenas, like high school, or a cubicle maze, can elicit virulently destructive behaviors like betrayal and backstabbing and lying and all the rest of it. The destructive behaviors may be inflected by gender (i.e., girls may be cruel in different ways than boys), but that doesn't mean gender causes them. Teenage boys are just as capable of spite and cruelty as teenage girls and vice versa.
4. Your generalization about women does not match up with my experience of being an adult woman and of having adult women as friends.
5. If you think I didn't answer my own question, you're misreading. It's easier for me to write male characters, particularly as narrators, because of the gendered way I've been conditioned to think about narrative. Also, as we've been puzzling out in the comments, because it's easier/more comfortable for me to write characters who are unlike me, and therefore I write better and more truthful characters once I've distanced them from myself a little--which I apparently do subconsciously via gender assignment. This is obviously something I need to work on, and I'm well aware of it.
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momijizukamori
Re: Real Life?
Date: 2006-07-06 07:58 pm (UTC)1. I wasn't generalizing. I was talking about the characters in my head and how their gender assignments relate to the way I've been conditioned as a reader and as a writer.
2. I wasn't talking at all about real men or real women "I don't think, by the way, that this has anything to do with the gender performances of men and women in the world outside my head." And I don't.
Both men and women, in real life, can inhabit a breathtaking variety of gender performances. Most of which are, yes, influenced and conditioned by our socialization, which conditions men to be aggressive and women passive, etc. etc. But I know aggressive women. I know conflict-avoidant men.
3. Fishbowl social arenas, like high school, or a cubicle maze, can elicit virulently destructive behaviors like betrayal and backstabbing and lying and all the rest of it. The destructive behaviors may be inflected by gender (i.e., girls may be cruel in different ways than boys), but that doesn't mean gender causes them. Teenage boys are just as capable of spite and cruelty as teenage girls and vice versa.
4. Your generalization about women does not match up with my experience of being an adult woman and of having adult women as friends.
5. If you think I didn't answer my own question, you're misreading. It's easier for me to write male characters, particularly as narrators, because of the gendered way I've been conditioned to think about narrative. Also, as we've been puzzling out in the comments, because it's easier/more comfortable for me to write characters who are unlike me, and therefore I write better and more truthful characters once I've distanced them from myself a little--which I apparently do subconsciously via gender assignment. This is obviously something I need to work on, and I'm well aware of it.