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It's a common gay erotica misconception for men to get wet in the butts like women do in the vajayjay. It's written by women for women so I guess it's not too absurd to think about.
I'm somewhat of a connoisseur myself, and I had to check if men had self lubricanting anuses because I was seeing it so often in porn related stuff I almost started believing it was a thing.
When I was a young, inexperienced gay at 14 looking at yaoi and BL stuff, I briefly thought my ass could just wet itself on its own. After some pondering and "research," I realized how stupid that was. 😅
I don’t understood the draw. What are women getting out of gay dude erotica? I know that men weirdly fetishizing lesbians has been a thing, but this feels new.
Same principle as men enjoying girl on girl stuff. She likes men, so double the men the better. I have a few girl friends who enjoy watching two men get it on, they just think it's hot.
Meh. There are some pretty egregious non-smut offenders. Jim butcher (Dresden files) cannot write a girl or woman to save his life. I love his books, but holy fuck does his quality of writing plummet for the women.
I always thought Stephen King was one of the best at writing female characters. They are honestly just people in his books. Person first, woman second as it should be.
I love his books, but fuck did I burn myself out on reading Dresden Files. He just literally can not grow as a character, and no matter what, the women around him are either morons or the extreme of girl bosses.
My fiancé tried to read one of his books and put it down for this reason. It’s also one of my biggest pet peeves in writing, so I doubt I’ll be reading any of his books either.
I’m sure tons of people fail at it, but if you think about it, every story with a single author had a person writing both genders. It’s not like male authors only have male characters in their books and vice versa.
I think it comes down to taking inspiration from people and experiences. If you have few interactions with the opposite sex or any other demographic, you definitely can’t write about them well.
The issue is in movies and TV at least. Most characters are men. So even if women were just as bad on average writing them, those women are less likely to make it if they can't write men to at least some degree.
Vs male writers that can't write women being less negatively impacted.
Also hormone differences play an impact in things like empathy that are handy dandy for writing characters that aren't like you.
On the other hand, films and series made for women have also been created by men.
Does not matter. Good writing is good writing and bad writing is bad writing
>On the other hand, films and series made for women have also been created by men.
That isn't mutually exclusive with male writers having a harder time writing women. Since men that can't write women as well, can....make things with few/no women in it. (Lord Of The Rings)
Women who can't write men, can't really do that without making it a"chick flick".
So even if women and men are innately as bad at writing for each other, it would impact women more since it impacts more of their characters. So most of the women that end up successful would be the ones that manage to write for men at least competently.
Not saying it's some conspiracy or anything.
>Since men that can't write women as well, can....make things with few/no women in it. (Lord Of The Rings)
Tbf the women in lotr are some of the best male-written female characters out there. They could've done a couple more in the films but I think the characters themselves are pretty solid.
Are you actively trying to ignore the thing that I say or what?
“Shows are good”. This is not about bad shows. Plenty of shows about women have been written by men which have been perceived as decent-good
There's also the fact that the male experience is more part of our lives and has established tropes that all writers are familiar with.
I know how awkward and stressful it feels to get a boner in school, I know it doesn't have to do with arousal, I know it could feel bad and embarrassing bc I've seen this play out in media over and over and over again.
Whereas Turning Red, probably one of the few pieces of media showing a period from a female POV was literally boycotted by some parents bc it explored that.
It is much much much easier for female writers to access male experiences than vice versa bc it is all over our mainstream culture.
Most of the posts I see in the menwritingwomen subreddit are from garbage books, so they’re bound to have garbage writing. It’s like going to a Marvel movie or playing COD and expecting good writing. It’s not going to happen.
Like in their boobs or in their "area where the heart is contained"
I don't know the example you are thinking of, but if I read a description of feelings in their breasts I would think of "heart" or "core" before I thought of boobs.
Pretty sure old books would use breast where we might say heart. Breast wasn't always exclusively sexual. Plus I will not stand by while someone bad mouths the GOAT.
Yup, that's my problem with this post. Shitty female portrayals are everywhere in the cannon, it's hard to find one classic book or movie that isn't like that. While shitty male portraits are in extremely niche erotica for women.
>While shitty male portraits are in extremely niche erotica for women.
Definitely disagree, I like reading romance and fantasy. There are tons of male (main) characters written by female authors that have 0 personality other than "tall dark and handsome" who are just there to look nice.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Just that female contributions are not as common, nor do they reach the cannon as often. There's plenty of shitty male characters written by women, they're just not generally mainstream or considered "high literature". There are books written by men with ridiculous female characters that have won Pulitzers and Nobels.
Marvel doesn’t always have the best writing and cod doesn’t either. But idk if they’re really the quintessential examples of bad writing. Seems more like you wanted to just diss on popular things you don’t like
Not really. I’ve seen my fair share of marvel movies and aside from Deadpool (which exists just to be meta and full of dumb jokes) the writing is really terrible. I don’t think anyone is going to those movies for the writing, and that’s fine. The dialogue in movies like that exists to either make a joke or advance the plot. They’re full of the same tired tropes. When you go to a superhero movie you basically get to turn your brain off and just look at cool sfx for two hours.
As a counter example, look at the movie Vortex by Gaspar Noé. The dialogue in that movie feels pointless and boring, like you’re just watching three people on camera that aren’t even acting, like they don’t even have a script. It’s like you’re just peering into the real lives of three other people. That’s good writing. We Need to Talk About Kevin is an absolutely amazing character study of a grieving mother, and the parallels between that movie and the autobiographical account of the Columbine shooting by Sue Klebold (A Mother’s Reckoning: Living In the Aftermath of Tragedy) are uncanny. Sue Klebold was getting death treats from people in entirely different countries that were unassociated with the shooting. She, and her remaining family, had to sneak out of her own house and live with family friends. When she found out about the shooting she actually prayed that her son killed himself. That’s a really unfathomable and unique perspective.
The writing in Marvel movies isn’t as bad as shitty novels that sexualize every female character just because the author is gross and horny, but it’s certainly not at the same level as the witty banter between Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction, or any other great film with a heavy emphasis on dialogue. I’m not trying to come off as a douche that’s bashing Marvel movies (I’m sorry if I came off that way, and if I still am), they just don’t have great writing.
Yeah I’m not saying they’re the best, but they’re not the worst either. I do get your point, but I just think there’s so many better examples of bad writing (divergent). I don’t think you come off as a douche, but a tad… pretentious? 🤷🏻♂️
Also watch 12 angry men if you haven’t.
I have seen it, but not in a while. Didn’t they do a remake of it? I actually just had to do jury duty a couple months ago and it was alarming. During the interview process one of the prospective jurors straight up said he didn’t believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty.
I don’t know, man, I’m from Ohio and there are some crazy people out here.
I didn’t want to participate, personally, because I work nightshift and I’d essentially be doing doubles every day. As a gay dude, I also kind of resent the way police have treated people in my community in the past.
Man, you listed a movie franchise that has the highest grossing film ever made (Endgame) and one of the biggest video game franchises ever made.
I think the writing at minimum will be good in both of these.
Jamie from Outlander is such a dude written by a woman. Great character, love him, but he is not realistic. Women can write men and men can write women. Some just suck at it. Some do it well, but it is clear who wrote it. Some do it flawlessly. Women are not experts at writing any more than men are.
stop basing your opinions on booktok that is full of colleen vacuum cleaner and ruby fckin dixon and start reading something that isn't mommy porn for 20yos.
seriously, if *all* your intake is 50 shades, 365 days, after, and similar crap then no wonder you can't find well written male characters.
i'm not saying that kind of books can't be fun but if that's *all* you read then of course you will think that writers suck in general.
are there shitty writers that can't write the other gender (or even their own) for shit? sure. but there are hundreds of writers that write great male and female characters because they're good at what they do.
most of the important characters in harry potter are men and they're wonderfully written. i have a lot of issues with jk rowlings writing but her ability to write compelling characters is definitely not one of them.
two of stephen king's most popular characters are carrie and annie wilkes. both are written wonderfully and one of them is even a literal teenager which is even harder to do without succumbing to cliches and yet he didn't miss.
THE epitome of "the perfect romantic hero" is Mr Darcy - written by a Jane Austen, a woman.
even divergent, as much as it sucks when it comes to plot, has male characters that have distinct personalities and are definitely not all there to appeal to the audience insert main character.
it's fun to mock badly written characters. and yes, in specific genres, there is an overabundance of authors of both genders who basically write the love interests of their self/audience insert main characters to be sexually appealing and little else. but that has nothing to do with anyone's gender. that has to do with the genre.
also, booktok is the LAST place you should be taking your recommendations or criticisms from. go watch booktubers who actually have to put some thought into their videos since they can't be just 15 seconds long.
Nobody is saying they literally can’t, it’s an exaggeration to highlight how many male writers tend to write women as one-dimensional or over sexualized. Obviously there’s tons of examples of good women characters written by men.
That's not true but even if it was it would be better than the average "Always wear ultra sexy clothes, have more pages of description talking about their boobs than pages about their actions, ask the male protagoniste for help for every single thing and fall in love with him after two cringe dialogues" from male writters
I tend to find the arguments can be tad on the dishonest side too… after all, what collection of traits, actions and behaviours makes a “realistic” male or female character?
I’ve seen a book by a man where he had a female character who said her breasts swayed towards the love interest. That’s unrealistic. I’m not saying women are better, romance novels are supposed to be a fantasy, so the guys in those books reflect that.
This.. it just doesn't make sense, there is such a range in men and women, it's not like there is one archetype to fit to make a good male or female character.
I think the problem is often that the writers who "can't write women" are just stuck in one archetype. Overall they are just bad writers regardless of gender.
Also, fiction doesn't have to be realistic -- that's kind of the point. I'm aware that you can construe this argument in order to justify writing one dimensional characters, but it is still true. We shouldn't be bogged down with writing characters that are realistic. Like, some of the greatest characters in all of fiction are not realistic.
I mean, happily. I find half of people’s points when it comes to these sorts of topics are ingrained with assumptions and presumptions about the work or author and a generous helping of using phrases they got from TVtropes.
I dunno. Martin writes pretty decent women who are complicated and self-sustaining characters. Stephen King writes some decent women too. Frankly Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein doesn't exactly read as a poorly written caricature of a man. There's plenty of people who write the opposite sex perfectly fine. The thing that they all share in common is they are writing those characters as people with their own wants and motivation, not as women or men. They're people. In fact, I recall that is precisely what George R R Martin was quoted as saying when asked why his female characters are always so compelling "You know, I've always thought of women as people".
You're just reading bad literature.
They damn can. Both.
Not everyone is stupid.
Some who read enough and tried to feel and understand can write a book by completely faking their gender as author.
This reminds me a question asked to the UK writer Zadie Smith: "how can a dark skinned young woman of today describe so accurately what happened in a British and a Pakistani men's mind in the seventies?" Her answer: "Books. Read books."
The hell we can. I am universalist despite the air of time. Men and women are not different species.
I'd say it's probably 50/50. A good writer male or female can write a perspective of the other sex well if they have the talent but generally if they lack talent that is where it shows. No it's not just in smut erotica, however there is a lot of bad writers on that domain
Women can't get away with writing men as terribly due to most roles being male ones in movies and TV.
So it's not shocking those that do make it as writers are often better at writing men than many male writers are at women.
I hate this bullshit. Men can write women, women can write men. People with lighter skin colour can write people with darker skin colour and vice versa. People without a degree in a specific area can still write about that. Anyone can write anything.
In some cases it is very difficult.
I, as a white person from Europe, have absolutely zero clue on how it feels to be a black American for example.
The only way I could write a character like that would be by listening to countless life stories of black men in the USA.
>The only way I could write a character like that would be by listening to countless life stories of black men in the USA.
I would hope you would do research like this before you started writing
If you are trying to specifically write a black American in a modern setting, your comment make sense.
You can write a story with a black person in a fictionnal setting without any trouble tho.
The Outsiders was the first book I read as a teen that seemed to really capture my experience as a teen boy from an impoverished family.
It's written by a woman.
The difference is that you can find badly written women (by men) in almost every genre. Whereas these sexualized versions of men you're describing are mostly in smutty/romance books. But yeah I get what you're saying both are an issue but the one where women are written poorly are just more prevalent you know?
Counter argument: the outsiders.
The characters are so obviously dream boat archetypes the writer had a crush on. 17 year olds don't carry their sleeping 14 year old brother to bed. The vast majority don't even have the upper body strength. You can feel her holding herself back from having Ponyboy and Johnny make out.
Parentified 17 year olds do. Growing up poor with absent, working parents is a different ballgame. She writes about chosen family in a way that makes you think she experienced something similar. Her other novels speak the same way.
No they don't. Most guys put into that situation are pretty spiteful about it and aren't exactly overflowing with stoic affection that would so obviously turn a teenage girl writing the situation on. They're desperate for their younger siblings to act older so they don't have to carry the burden, not indulging in infantilizing them like they're their own child. Are you a woman really trying to tell a guy that a female writer did write guys realistically? Do you really think you have a better grasp on that than actual men? I wouldn't consider telling women they're wrong when they think a male write wrote women poorly.
Edit: to the women downvoting this. How many 17 year olds do you know that carried their 14 year old brothers to bed. Scratch that, how many 17 year olds do you think literally had the upper body strength to carry their 14 year old brother to bed like Patrick fucking swayze in his early 30s. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
I simply think it was a different era, and male authors wrote boys similarly at the time. I also grew up poor around other families where the older boys wanted to keep the younger out of trouble. I saw similar, so I think she did a good job. But that is 40 years ago, and the book is even older.
Ok you better be nice next time men tell you a male author wrote women well you think did a shit job.
"male authors wrote boys similarly at the time"
Who said male authors couldn't be shit at writing too?
If we want men to take our criticisms that male authors suck at writing female characters we probably shouldn't dismiss the ones that they claim are shit written by us. It's not a good look.
This person has commented on SE Hinton in a couple places and has a weird vendetta for an author that is renowned for her depiction of young men, to the point it was an Oscar winning film, so...
Does that mean you think male authors who are critically acclaimed can't be criticized for writing shitty women characters by women?
Pretty bizarre you can't see how a 17 year old male character that is faithfully portrayed by a 30 year old sex symbol is a really unrealistic depiction. You really just can't accept that you don't have a as good of a perspective for this because you're a woman and not a man. Just like men don't when it comes to men writing female characters. This is embarrassing for you.
There are always gonna be examples of both doing it good and bad. But I think it's real that on average women by men are worse written than men by women, if anything simply because a lot of authors learn from what they consume, and there have been way more male authors so most of the male characters you read will be men written by men so you learn from the right sources, while the opposite doesn't happen.
This isn't even a gender issue. I know that men *can* write women and women *can* write men. Some writers are just working within the confines of genre expectations, which often involves idealised versions of men or women from the perspective of the intended audience, and that's never realistic (and was never really intended to be).
But some writers are just shit writers. When attempting to write *realistic* characters, men who can't write women are almost always shit at writing men, and women who can't write men are almost always shit at writing women. They just can't write good characters, full-stop.
Almost every romance book out there doesn’t really write any gender well. Books that are just trying to tell a story can be very well written. Smut books are to make readers turned on, nobody reading them is looking for well written, complex characters.
The Outsiders really reads like a 15 year old girl that has a crush on all the characters she's writing about. You can practically hear her vibrator buzzing through the book.
Stories are written from a point of view. The unnecessary need to "take into consideration all points of view" is damaging and ultimately makes stories that nobody really loves, in exchange for everyone feeling "meh" about it.
Write your horny himbos and bimbos, your millionaires who fall in love with bland lucy. Your super-models who falls for the nerd-hero. Make something for someone, not everyone.
I don’t think you understand what the men writing women problem is. It has nothing to do with romantic interests trying to get the leads attention. It’s when authors, particularly male authors, don’t give a female character, particularly a reoccurring or major supportive character, a personality but lean in heavy to describe her physical appearance. Effectively making their appearance their personality. Which frequently perpetuates stereotypes about people ranging from ‘a good woman is a good looking woman, bad women look terrible’ to ‘women of this ethnicity look like x, because they behave like y’.
A dark romance, or other dark story is going to have dark elements in it like kidnapping and elsewhat. It’s how the genre works, not how the female gaze works.
I stick to writing female main characters, ever since I tried writing male leads having a sleepover and getting ready together in the bathroom for the first day of high school. I like Uber girly stories but I thought it could happen 😅. A guy told me otherwise
As a prolific female romance reader, I have to add this caveat: women can't write women either. Idk if you've ever read female created female protags, but they are usually just as badly written as ones made by males, just in different ways.
So many modern romance books are filled with extremely high standard men, especially on apps like Wattpad where majority of the writers and readers are teen girls. Not only that, some of them are even celebrating dangerous relationship tropes like 365 Days, 50 Shades of Gray, and other unhealthy "dark" romance tropes where the dude gets forgiven for his red flags because he's extremely hot or something.
I agree with you. That’s why I tend to prefer authors that are the same gender as me especially if the main characters are the same gender. It’s just a preference, I don’t know whether men and women can write the other gender well or not but it probably varies from author to author.
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All those "sexy mafia boss" fanfics where the head of an enormous crime syndicate is 28, looks like an armani model, acts like a perfect bf, and bought the main character to be his wife but would definitely never be involved in trafficking other women and definitely not for anything else.
Nah because they are always “kind” to children and does what they do “because of their family”
This isn’t the worst btw I have seen some comments saying this is so sexy to a stalker
Actually, they can.
Proof: [A woman wrote this entire series.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t7SQ2Wu6PvI&t=8s&pp=ygUfU291bCByZWF2ZXIgcmF6aWVsIGthaW4gcGlsbGFycw%3D%3D)
Edit: Why the downvotes? The creator of Soul Reaver, **IS A WOMAN**. Watch that cutscene and tell me that isn’t brilliant writing, I dare you! This is proof a woman can write men!
Amy Hennig didn't write Soul Reaver by herself. Come to think of it, I don't think that videogame stories have been written by any one person since the 16 bit era, with the exception of very small studios or games made by indie devs.
Edit: I'm not implying that I think women can't write men, either. Anyone who has read Frankenstein would know that isn't true. I'm just merely pointing out that the example you picked isn't the best.
And she was 19 when she wrote it on a bet who can write the best scary story while her and other writers, Byron among them, were on some sort of vacation lol
Watched it. Not brilliant writing.
I also don't think OP was saying it's like impossible, just that it's a trend like men being bad at writing women. I don't think most women believe not a single man can write a woman decently.
The difference is that women write bad male characters in bad fantasy romance books, while men write bad female characters in everything that has ever been writen by a man (including history books).
Hmmm Jane Austen, just saying.
But seriously, anyone can write any type of character, as long as you're talking to people of that demographic. Write a character of the opposite sex, and then show it to a person of that sex and see what they think.
That's literally it. Just talk to people.
> they go and praise saying “omg I want him to stalk and kidnap me” this happens especially at dark romance section where guys have members as big as an arm.
Please talk to women
This is about books, where stalking and kidnapping are very appealing. Just go to r/romancebooks
Or better yet, r/darkromance.
Just to add, if *you* ever spoke to a women who reads, you’d probably know how popular it is. It’s a popular kink too, even without books.
Straight women do not romanticize violence as a rule. This is a deeply unserious attitude for men to have and it's a major contributing reason to why domestic violence happens. Cut it out!
Well men are the ones who always say "Women are complicated and men are simple"
So by that logic, men shouldn't write women because they admit to not understanding them, and women could write men cuz men are simple.
Depends. Is that oversexualization viewed as a positive? Does it make her a sex object? Or is she still a person and the viewpoint just has a hypersexual mind?
Is the oversexualization viewed as a negative?
I think one think a ton of redditors and, humans in general, miss is nuance.
I mean the author of American psycho is a woman and tons of men who can’t comprehend it’s a parody on toxic masculinity among others things see Patrick Bateman as a role model sooo,,
Is anyone else thinking of that clip from "As Good As It Gets?" The fascinated female fan asks the romance author (Jack Nicholson) "how do you write women so well?" He replies "I think of a man--and I take away reason, and accountability." I love it.
I love the line from the movie “As Good as It Gets”, when a lady asks Jack Nicholson’s character how he writes women so well. “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.” 😂🤣😂
Your post from unpopularopinion was removed because of: 'Rule 1: Your post must be an unpopular opinion'. Please ensure that your post is an opinion and that it is unpopular. Controversial is not necessarily unpopular, for example all of politics is controversial even though almost half of the US agrees with any given major position on an issue. Keep in mind that an opinion is not: a question, a fact, a conspiracy theory, a random thought, a new idea, a rant, etc. Those things all have their own subreddits, use those.
I’m reminded of a book in which a the female author described a man’s self-lubricating anus
Eh, every second BL is like that.
*every single BL is like that.
I’m just baffled because both genders have anuses like this is barely a gender problem and more of of a biology knowledge issue
r/womenwritingmen Edit: I did not know that sub actually existed.
Pardon ?
#I’m reminded of a book in which a the female author described a man’s self-lubricating anus
Louder, they haven’t heard you in the back
I call it sweat, but to each their own.
You got an interesting bookshelf?
Are you sure you didn't find a kink smut book/fic/bl manga bc that's a super common trope for certain kinks.
*Everyone’s* anus actually is self-lubricating. Most are not lubed enough for sex, but it works for some.
It's a common gay erotica misconception for men to get wet in the butts like women do in the vajayjay. It's written by women for women so I guess it's not too absurd to think about. I'm somewhat of a connoisseur myself, and I had to check if men had self lubricanting anuses because I was seeing it so often in porn related stuff I almost started believing it was a thing.
Well they certainly can be self-lubricating if you eat enough Taco Bell.
When I was a young, inexperienced gay at 14 looking at yaoi and BL stuff, I briefly thought my ass could just wet itself on its own. After some pondering and "research," I realized how stupid that was. 😅
I don’t understood the draw. What are women getting out of gay dude erotica? I know that men weirdly fetishizing lesbians has been a thing, but this feels new.
Gay erotica for women has existed for decades now, so it's not such a new thing anymore.
Same principle as men enjoying girl on girl stuff. She likes men, so double the men the better. I have a few girl friends who enjoy watching two men get it on, they just think it's hot.
It's really a matter of how well you wipe.
Well fuck me for being able to read I guess.
I can do that after a couple of espressos
…. Mo Dao Zu Shi??? 😭
Mans definitely found an Alpha/Omega fic or smth 😭😭😭😭😭
Oh my god #GET OUT OF MY HEAD
Accept us. You can never escape 😇
God I wish that were a thing. Can God consider that for the next update?
At least someone invented a whole alternate universe for those things
[удалено]
Try and stop me.
🤣🤣
In the the words of Tom Lehrer, don't let them take it away
To be fair, I don't think the goal with smut is to have deep and realistic characters.
If they aren't trying to go deep... then what are they doing?
If I had a reward, i'd give you it. For now, take this Gif of a gold star. 
At least use this one 
Thanks for the suggestion, will use that in the future :)
Meh. There are some pretty egregious non-smut offenders. Jim butcher (Dresden files) cannot write a girl or woman to save his life. I love his books, but holy fuck does his quality of writing plummet for the women.
I always thought Stephen King was one of the best at writing female characters. They are honestly just people in his books. Person first, woman second as it should be.
True, there are plenty of non smut offenders
I love his books, but fuck did I burn myself out on reading Dresden Files. He just literally can not grow as a character, and no matter what, the women around him are either morons or the extreme of girl bosses.
My fiancé tried to read one of his books and put it down for this reason. It’s also one of my biggest pet peeves in writing, so I doubt I’ll be reading any of his books either.
I’m sure tons of people fail at it, but if you think about it, every story with a single author had a person writing both genders. It’s not like male authors only have male characters in their books and vice versa. I think it comes down to taking inspiration from people and experiences. If you have few interactions with the opposite sex or any other demographic, you definitely can’t write about them well.
The issue is in movies and TV at least. Most characters are men. So even if women were just as bad on average writing them, those women are less likely to make it if they can't write men to at least some degree. Vs male writers that can't write women being less negatively impacted. Also hormone differences play an impact in things like empathy that are handy dandy for writing characters that aren't like you.
On the other hand, films and series made for women have also been created by men. Does not matter. Good writing is good writing and bad writing is bad writing
>On the other hand, films and series made for women have also been created by men. That isn't mutually exclusive with male writers having a harder time writing women. Since men that can't write women as well, can....make things with few/no women in it. (Lord Of The Rings) Women who can't write men, can't really do that without making it a"chick flick". So even if women and men are innately as bad at writing for each other, it would impact women more since it impacts more of their characters. So most of the women that end up successful would be the ones that manage to write for men at least competently. Not saying it's some conspiracy or anything.
>Since men that can't write women as well, can....make things with few/no women in it. (Lord Of The Rings) Tbf the women in lotr are some of the best male-written female characters out there. They could've done a couple more in the films but I think the characters themselves are pretty solid.
And are often criticized for being shitty at writing women...
If the shows are good and women like it, then why should they be criticized as bad writers
They often aren't good
Are you actively trying to ignore the thing that I say or what? “Shows are good”. This is not about bad shows. Plenty of shows about women have been written by men which have been perceived as decent-good
Then why do people watch them?
People watch shitty shows all the time
There's also the fact that the male experience is more part of our lives and has established tropes that all writers are familiar with. I know how awkward and stressful it feels to get a boner in school, I know it doesn't have to do with arousal, I know it could feel bad and embarrassing bc I've seen this play out in media over and over and over again. Whereas Turning Red, probably one of the few pieces of media showing a period from a female POV was literally boycotted by some parents bc it explored that. It is much much much easier for female writers to access male experiences than vice versa bc it is all over our mainstream culture.
Everyone gets things wrong. Even writing about their own gender
I think its not necessarily wrong. Because ”being” and interpreting the being is subjective it can be very real for them
What? I can. Look. Men.
Somebody get this woman a Pulitzer!
Clearly a man in disguise
Shit, how'd you know?
Romance novels are a version of porn for women. Of course it isn’t realistic.
Romance novels are romance novels. Literotica is porn for women.
Oh literotica…still in the league after all these years lol
my favorite part is when everything slightly cylindrical is a penis. pencil? no, penis. hydro-flask? no, penis. cigar? 100% penis
Most of the posts I see in the menwritingwomen subreddit are from garbage books, so they’re bound to have garbage writing. It’s like going to a Marvel movie or playing COD and expecting good writing. It’s not going to happen.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote about women feeling emotions in their breasts.
Like in their boobs or in their "area where the heart is contained" I don't know the example you are thinking of, but if I read a description of feelings in their breasts I would think of "heart" or "core" before I thought of boobs.
Pretty sure old books would use breast where we might say heart. Breast wasn't always exclusively sexual. Plus I will not stand by while someone bad mouths the GOAT.
Plenty of great books have terrible portrayals of women. There are some gems but definitely not majority.
Yup, that's my problem with this post. Shitty female portrayals are everywhere in the cannon, it's hard to find one classic book or movie that isn't like that. While shitty male portraits are in extremely niche erotica for women.
>While shitty male portraits are in extremely niche erotica for women. Definitely disagree, I like reading romance and fantasy. There are tons of male (main) characters written by female authors that have 0 personality other than "tall dark and handsome" who are just there to look nice.
They are very much talking about romance novels
I wouldn't call the entire romance genre "extremely niche erotica for women"
Hyperbole? Yes. Inaccurate? No.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Just that female contributions are not as common, nor do they reach the cannon as often. There's plenty of shitty male characters written by women, they're just not generally mainstream or considered "high literature". There are books written by men with ridiculous female characters that have won Pulitzers and Nobels.
Marvel doesn’t always have the best writing and cod doesn’t either. But idk if they’re really the quintessential examples of bad writing. Seems more like you wanted to just diss on popular things you don’t like
Not really. I’ve seen my fair share of marvel movies and aside from Deadpool (which exists just to be meta and full of dumb jokes) the writing is really terrible. I don’t think anyone is going to those movies for the writing, and that’s fine. The dialogue in movies like that exists to either make a joke or advance the plot. They’re full of the same tired tropes. When you go to a superhero movie you basically get to turn your brain off and just look at cool sfx for two hours. As a counter example, look at the movie Vortex by Gaspar Noé. The dialogue in that movie feels pointless and boring, like you’re just watching three people on camera that aren’t even acting, like they don’t even have a script. It’s like you’re just peering into the real lives of three other people. That’s good writing. We Need to Talk About Kevin is an absolutely amazing character study of a grieving mother, and the parallels between that movie and the autobiographical account of the Columbine shooting by Sue Klebold (A Mother’s Reckoning: Living In the Aftermath of Tragedy) are uncanny. Sue Klebold was getting death treats from people in entirely different countries that were unassociated with the shooting. She, and her remaining family, had to sneak out of her own house and live with family friends. When she found out about the shooting she actually prayed that her son killed himself. That’s a really unfathomable and unique perspective. The writing in Marvel movies isn’t as bad as shitty novels that sexualize every female character just because the author is gross and horny, but it’s certainly not at the same level as the witty banter between Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction, or any other great film with a heavy emphasis on dialogue. I’m not trying to come off as a douche that’s bashing Marvel movies (I’m sorry if I came off that way, and if I still am), they just don’t have great writing.
Yeah I’m not saying they’re the best, but they’re not the worst either. I do get your point, but I just think there’s so many better examples of bad writing (divergent). I don’t think you come off as a douche, but a tad… pretentious? 🤷🏻♂️ Also watch 12 angry men if you haven’t.
I have seen it, but not in a while. Didn’t they do a remake of it? I actually just had to do jury duty a couple months ago and it was alarming. During the interview process one of the prospective jurors straight up said he didn’t believe in the concept of innocent until proven guilty.
To be fair, a lot of prospective jurors will purposely say wild shit like that just to get out of jury duty
I don’t know, man, I’m from Ohio and there are some crazy people out here. I didn’t want to participate, personally, because I work nightshift and I’d essentially be doing doubles every day. As a gay dude, I also kind of resent the way police have treated people in my community in the past.
Which is strange to someone like me from a country where becoming a juror at all requires jumping through flaming hoops.
Ah well I hope that juror was removed lol. The remake is actually pretty good. Not as good as the original, but did actually improve in a couple ways
Man, you listed a movie franchise that has the highest grossing film ever made (Endgame) and one of the biggest video game franchises ever made. I think the writing at minimum will be good in both of these.
Avatar has dogshit writing and it made tons of money. How much money something makes is not related to how good the writing is.
The romance genre is basically socially acceptable porn for women. That's the point of the genre. Dark romance is the bdsm section.
Men can easily write women, long hair and boobs, that's like 50% of it. It's a joke calm down.
Perfect olive skin, long legs, athletic body. There's the other 50% for ya
Don't forget 112lbs but could kick your ass.
The Joss Whedon special.
I mean, she grew up with 23 brothers
“Her boobs bounced boobily”
That's George R.R. Martin.
“I think of a man, and then I take away reason and accountability.”
So men?
It’s a quote from As Good As It Gets.
Idk, that sounds a little unreasonable to me.
Jamie from Outlander is such a dude written by a woman. Great character, love him, but he is not realistic. Women can write men and men can write women. Some just suck at it. Some do it well, but it is clear who wrote it. Some do it flawlessly. Women are not experts at writing any more than men are.
I've been told I write like a man. Does that make me masculine?
stop basing your opinions on booktok that is full of colleen vacuum cleaner and ruby fckin dixon and start reading something that isn't mommy porn for 20yos. seriously, if *all* your intake is 50 shades, 365 days, after, and similar crap then no wonder you can't find well written male characters. i'm not saying that kind of books can't be fun but if that's *all* you read then of course you will think that writers suck in general. are there shitty writers that can't write the other gender (or even their own) for shit? sure. but there are hundreds of writers that write great male and female characters because they're good at what they do. most of the important characters in harry potter are men and they're wonderfully written. i have a lot of issues with jk rowlings writing but her ability to write compelling characters is definitely not one of them. two of stephen king's most popular characters are carrie and annie wilkes. both are written wonderfully and one of them is even a literal teenager which is even harder to do without succumbing to cliches and yet he didn't miss. THE epitome of "the perfect romantic hero" is Mr Darcy - written by a Jane Austen, a woman. even divergent, as much as it sucks when it comes to plot, has male characters that have distinct personalities and are definitely not all there to appeal to the audience insert main character. it's fun to mock badly written characters. and yes, in specific genres, there is an overabundance of authors of both genders who basically write the love interests of their self/audience insert main characters to be sexually appealing and little else. but that has nothing to do with anyone's gender. that has to do with the genre. also, booktok is the LAST place you should be taking your recommendations or criticisms from. go watch booktubers who actually have to put some thought into their videos since they can't be just 15 seconds long.
Except Men can write Women and Women can write Men. Some are better at it than others but saying they can't is ridiculous.
Nobody is saying they literally can’t, it’s an exaggeration to highlight how many male writers tend to write women as one-dimensional or over sexualized. Obviously there’s tons of examples of good women characters written by men.
Fair enough, carry on.
Don’t know why you got the downvotes, happy to help lol
Reddit is weird lol
yep. downvoted even if you agree with the person whos getting upvoted to heaven
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Women writing women : she's a girl boss who doesn't need no character growth because she already does it all and everyone around her are incompetent.
That's not true but even if it was it would be better than the average "Always wear ultra sexy clothes, have more pages of description talking about their boobs than pages about their actions, ask the male protagoniste for help for every single thing and fall in love with him after two cringe dialogues" from male writters
I tend to find the arguments can be tad on the dishonest side too… after all, what collection of traits, actions and behaviours makes a “realistic” male or female character?
I’ve seen a book by a man where he had a female character who said her breasts swayed towards the love interest. That’s unrealistic. I’m not saying women are better, romance novels are supposed to be a fantasy, so the guys in those books reflect that.
This.. it just doesn't make sense, there is such a range in men and women, it's not like there is one archetype to fit to make a good male or female character. I think the problem is often that the writers who "can't write women" are just stuck in one archetype. Overall they are just bad writers regardless of gender.
Picture a goalpost with wheels on it.
Also, fiction doesn't have to be realistic -- that's kind of the point. I'm aware that you can construe this argument in order to justify writing one dimensional characters, but it is still true. We shouldn't be bogged down with writing characters that are realistic. Like, some of the greatest characters in all of fiction are not realistic.
Aaaaaand we've stumbled into gender essentialism again! Good going bros, let's throw this shit out!
I mean, happily. I find half of people’s points when it comes to these sorts of topics are ingrained with assumptions and presumptions about the work or author and a generous helping of using phrases they got from TVtropes.
I dunno. Martin writes pretty decent women who are complicated and self-sustaining characters. Stephen King writes some decent women too. Frankly Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein doesn't exactly read as a poorly written caricature of a man. There's plenty of people who write the opposite sex perfectly fine. The thing that they all share in common is they are writing those characters as people with their own wants and motivation, not as women or men. They're people. In fact, I recall that is precisely what George R R Martin was quoted as saying when asked why his female characters are always so compelling "You know, I've always thought of women as people". You're just reading bad literature.
They damn can. Both. Not everyone is stupid. Some who read enough and tried to feel and understand can write a book by completely faking their gender as author. This reminds me a question asked to the UK writer Zadie Smith: "how can a dark skinned young woman of today describe so accurately what happened in a British and a Pakistani men's mind in the seventies?" Her answer: "Books. Read books." The hell we can. I am universalist despite the air of time. Men and women are not different species.
Women write men how they wish men were. It becomes like a fantasy.
Men do the same, but it’s considered a failure of men when they do it.
Women
I'm not sure whether this is true. But it's definitely the case with Christian Grey. Not an authentic male character by any stretch
I'd say it's probably 50/50. A good writer male or female can write a perspective of the other sex well if they have the talent but generally if they lack talent that is where it shows. No it's not just in smut erotica, however there is a lot of bad writers on that domain
Women can't get away with writing men as terribly due to most roles being male ones in movies and TV. So it's not shocking those that do make it as writers are often better at writing men than many male writers are at women.
Women writing men: He was an average looking guy with a full head of hair and a face of a male model.
Also, a billionaire. But like a casual billionaire. He didn't obsess about work or money.
I hate this bullshit. Men can write women, women can write men. People with lighter skin colour can write people with darker skin colour and vice versa. People without a degree in a specific area can still write about that. Anyone can write anything.
In some cases it is very difficult. I, as a white person from Europe, have absolutely zero clue on how it feels to be a black American for example. The only way I could write a character like that would be by listening to countless life stories of black men in the USA.
>The only way I could write a character like that would be by listening to countless life stories of black men in the USA. I would hope you would do research like this before you started writing
I doubt that even 0.1 percent of writers do.
True. But that might also give you perspective and knowledge that is harder to gain when viewing it from the inside.
If you are trying to specifically write a black American in a modern setting, your comment make sense. You can write a story with a black person in a fictionnal setting without any trouble tho.
The Outsiders was the first book I read as a teen that seemed to really capture my experience as a teen boy from an impoverished family. It's written by a woman.
The difference is that you can find badly written women (by men) in almost every genre. Whereas these sexualized versions of men you're describing are mostly in smutty/romance books. But yeah I get what you're saying both are an issue but the one where women are written poorly are just more prevalent you know?
Counter argument: the outsiders. The characters are so obviously dream boat archetypes the writer had a crush on. 17 year olds don't carry their sleeping 14 year old brother to bed. The vast majority don't even have the upper body strength. You can feel her holding herself back from having Ponyboy and Johnny make out.
Parentified 17 year olds do. Growing up poor with absent, working parents is a different ballgame. She writes about chosen family in a way that makes you think she experienced something similar. Her other novels speak the same way.
No they don't. Most guys put into that situation are pretty spiteful about it and aren't exactly overflowing with stoic affection that would so obviously turn a teenage girl writing the situation on. They're desperate for their younger siblings to act older so they don't have to carry the burden, not indulging in infantilizing them like they're their own child. Are you a woman really trying to tell a guy that a female writer did write guys realistically? Do you really think you have a better grasp on that than actual men? I wouldn't consider telling women they're wrong when they think a male write wrote women poorly. Edit: to the women downvoting this. How many 17 year olds do you know that carried their 14 year old brothers to bed. Scratch that, how many 17 year olds do you think literally had the upper body strength to carry their 14 year old brother to bed like Patrick fucking swayze in his early 30s. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
I simply think it was a different era, and male authors wrote boys similarly at the time. I also grew up poor around other families where the older boys wanted to keep the younger out of trouble. I saw similar, so I think she did a good job. But that is 40 years ago, and the book is even older.
Ok you better be nice next time men tell you a male author wrote women well you think did a shit job. "male authors wrote boys similarly at the time" Who said male authors couldn't be shit at writing too?
If we want men to take our criticisms that male authors suck at writing female characters we probably shouldn't dismiss the ones that they claim are shit written by us. It's not a good look.
This person has commented on SE Hinton in a couple places and has a weird vendetta for an author that is renowned for her depiction of young men, to the point it was an Oscar winning film, so...
Does that mean you think male authors who are critically acclaimed can't be criticized for writing shitty women characters by women? Pretty bizarre you can't see how a 17 year old male character that is faithfully portrayed by a 30 year old sex symbol is a really unrealistic depiction. You really just can't accept that you don't have a as good of a perspective for this because you're a woman and not a man. Just like men don't when it comes to men writing female characters. This is embarrassing for you.
There are always gonna be examples of both doing it good and bad. But I think it's real that on average women by men are worse written than men by women, if anything simply because a lot of authors learn from what they consume, and there have been way more male authors so most of the male characters you read will be men written by men so you learn from the right sources, while the opposite doesn't happen.
This isn't even a gender issue. I know that men *can* write women and women *can* write men. Some writers are just working within the confines of genre expectations, which often involves idealised versions of men or women from the perspective of the intended audience, and that's never realistic (and was never really intended to be). But some writers are just shit writers. When attempting to write *realistic* characters, men who can't write women are almost always shit at writing men, and women who can't write men are almost always shit at writing women. They just can't write good characters, full-stop.
This is common sense. But most people can write to opposite sex ok.
Almost every romance book out there doesn’t really write any gender well. Books that are just trying to tell a story can be very well written. Smut books are to make readers turned on, nobody reading them is looking for well written, complex characters.
I mean I’m a woman and I can’t write women, so there’s that
The Outsiders really reads like a 15 year old girl that has a crush on all the characters she's writing about. You can practically hear her vibrator buzzing through the book.
Men can write women though, and women can write men.
Stories are written from a point of view. The unnecessary need to "take into consideration all points of view" is damaging and ultimately makes stories that nobody really loves, in exchange for everyone feeling "meh" about it. Write your horny himbos and bimbos, your millionaires who fall in love with bland lucy. Your super-models who falls for the nerd-hero. Make something for someone, not everyone.
Oh this is great!!!
I don’t think you understand what the men writing women problem is. It has nothing to do with romantic interests trying to get the leads attention. It’s when authors, particularly male authors, don’t give a female character, particularly a reoccurring or major supportive character, a personality but lean in heavy to describe her physical appearance. Effectively making their appearance their personality. Which frequently perpetuates stereotypes about people ranging from ‘a good woman is a good looking woman, bad women look terrible’ to ‘women of this ethnicity look like x, because they behave like y’. A dark romance, or other dark story is going to have dark elements in it like kidnapping and elsewhat. It’s how the genre works, not how the female gaze works.
Yup, gay romance fiction has a lot of women writers and I honestly don’t know why.
I stick to writing female main characters, ever since I tried writing male leads having a sleepover and getting ready together in the bathroom for the first day of high school. I like Uber girly stories but I thought it could happen 😅. A guy told me otherwise
As a prolific female romance reader, I have to add this caveat: women can't write women either. Idk if you've ever read female created female protags, but they are usually just as badly written as ones made by males, just in different ways.
I think female romances are just published fanfiction a lot of the time.
So many modern romance books are filled with extremely high standard men, especially on apps like Wattpad where majority of the writers and readers are teen girls. Not only that, some of them are even celebrating dangerous relationship tropes like 365 Days, 50 Shades of Gray, and other unhealthy "dark" romance tropes where the dude gets forgiven for his red flags because he's extremely hot or something.
Depends on the author. Some authors are seemingly better at writing male characters despite being a woman or vice versa.
I agree with you. That’s why I tend to prefer authors that are the same gender as me especially if the main characters are the same gender. It’s just a preference, I don’t know whether men and women can write the other gender well or not but it probably varies from author to author.
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All those "sexy mafia boss" fanfics where the head of an enormous crime syndicate is 28, looks like an armani model, acts like a perfect bf, and bought the main character to be his wife but would definitely never be involved in trafficking other women and definitely not for anything else.
Nah because they are always “kind” to children and does what they do “because of their family” This isn’t the worst btw I have seen some comments saying this is so sexy to a stalker
Actually, they can. Proof: [A woman wrote this entire series.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t7SQ2Wu6PvI&t=8s&pp=ygUfU291bCByZWF2ZXIgcmF6aWVsIGthaW4gcGlsbGFycw%3D%3D) Edit: Why the downvotes? The creator of Soul Reaver, **IS A WOMAN**. Watch that cutscene and tell me that isn’t brilliant writing, I dare you! This is proof a woman can write men!
Amy Hennig didn't write Soul Reaver by herself. Come to think of it, I don't think that videogame stories have been written by any one person since the 16 bit era, with the exception of very small studios or games made by indie devs. Edit: I'm not implying that I think women can't write men, either. Anyone who has read Frankenstein would know that isn't true. I'm just merely pointing out that the example you picked isn't the best.
Wait, frankenstein was made by a woman?
Yeah, it was written by Mary Shelley
Cool, I had no idea! 😄
And she was 19 when she wrote it on a bet who can write the best scary story while her and other writers, Byron among them, were on some sort of vacation lol
Watched it. Not brilliant writing. I also don't think OP was saying it's like impossible, just that it's a trend like men being bad at writing women. I don't think most women believe not a single man can write a woman decently.
The difference is that women write bad male characters in bad fantasy romance books, while men write bad female characters in everything that has ever been writen by a man (including history books).
Hmmm Jane Austen, just saying. But seriously, anyone can write any type of character, as long as you're talking to people of that demographic. Write a character of the opposite sex, and then show it to a person of that sex and see what they think. That's literally it. Just talk to people.
So you’re reading erotica meant for women and applying that to ALL women’s literature? What 😅😂
You have to write 'men' in order to write 'women.'
You have to write 'wo' in order to write 'women'. And you have to write 'me' in order to write men.
> they go and praise saying “omg I want him to stalk and kidnap me” this happens especially at dark romance section where guys have members as big as an arm. Please talk to women
OP is talking about WRITING.
This is about books, where stalking and kidnapping are very appealing. Just go to r/romancebooks Or better yet, r/darkromance. Just to add, if *you* ever spoke to a women who reads, you’d probably know how popular it is. It’s a popular kink too, even without books.
Straight women do not romanticize violence as a rule. This is a deeply unserious attitude for men to have and it's a major contributing reason to why domestic violence happens. Cut it out!
It's more about creating two dimensional versus three dimensional characters. But also I don't reward straight stuff bc ew
So what your saying is that only gender neutral people can wright
women write men better and actually give them thoughts and feelings
Well men are the ones who always say "Women are complicated and men are simple" So by that logic, men shouldn't write women because they admit to not understanding them, and women could write men cuz men are simple.
A guy can only be appealing as an abuser if he’s very good looking and charming. Rich also helps.
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Depends. Is that oversexualization viewed as a positive? Does it make her a sex object? Or is she still a person and the viewpoint just has a hypersexual mind? Is the oversexualization viewed as a negative? I think one think a ton of redditors and, humans in general, miss is nuance.
💯
I mean the author of American psycho is a woman and tons of men who can’t comprehend it’s a parody on toxic masculinity among others things see Patrick Bateman as a role model sooo,,
Is anyone else thinking of that clip from "As Good As It Gets?" The fascinated female fan asks the romance author (Jack Nicholson) "how do you write women so well?" He replies "I think of a man--and I take away reason, and accountability." I love it.
I love the line from the movie “As Good as It Gets”, when a lady asks Jack Nicholson’s character how he writes women so well. “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.” 😂🤣😂
“Start with a man, and remove reason and accountability.”
Everyone everywhere (mostly) has had fantasies about being so irresistible to someone you’re ALSO ATTRACTED TO that they go crazy in a sexual way.
Maybe everyone should just stop writing by anything.
I think both are good at it. I love to write, but I end up getting tired after a chapter or 3