Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
[...] So in short, it's pointless experimenting with swapping gender of a character unless you are the author and experimenting. It doesn't actually prove anything, except writing a novel isn't simple. [...]
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Well I can't disagree with you there. I got about three chapters into book when one of the main characters mysteriously morphed from a young man into a young woman - and it fitted so much better. Does this mean there are differences between male and female, or it is just my prejudices showing? (I suspect that even that question has no easy answer ... probably Abraham Simpson says it best, "a little from column A and a little from column B".
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I recently put down a book I was reading by a fairly well known author - a middle-aged man - who was trying to write first person perspective for a teenage girl with some emotional difficulties. And it sounded exactly like that. (To be clear: it sounded to me like a middle-man trying to sound like a teenage girl.) I think first person perspective puts a whole new emphasis on how carefully the narrator's character needs to be written - and this is too often overlooked.
I think the idea of gender-swapping also begs the question: should male and female characters be indistinguishable? (Because that's what the idea seems to imply - or have I got that wrong somehow?)
If we want to write something based in contemporary mores then the two genders need some of the common assumptions or they won't be believable. I'd also add that authors take advantage of common stereotypes in order to paint characters in as few words as possible - let the reader fill in the blanks.
Maybe in some (distant?) future we will have no assumed gender-specific traits*, and whether a person is male or female will await announcement - and if it doesn't matter, why announce? (I'm reminded here of the dwarves in the Discworld.) Mind you, this has me wondering where that will leave non-cisgender individuals: does cisgender or otherwise matter in a the society doesn't make any distinction?
And a further point: just as we have-lost/are-losing the culture of many primitive societies even now, will it matter that we might lose this once core distinction? Or to phrase that another way: are there any advantages to gender distinctions that we might lose in such a society?
I fear these questions may be better addressed to the P&R subforum, but at the moment I'm looking at them mostly from the perspective of a writer and what they might mean to characters that I write.
* Not even gender-specific physical traits because these are subject to change by surgery or other therapy, so what you look like need have nothing to do with your sex at conception nor your assumed gender. Even the ability to bear children could eventually not be dependent on the existence of a uterus carried inside a person.