More realistic women?

[SimonDoom]

That would be awesome! An idea I'm sure nobody had before.

Nobody's done it the way I would do it!

 

[VerbalAbuse]

Nobody's done it the way I would do it!

I'm very excited and can't wait to read it.

 

[Omenainen]

Nobody's done it the way I would do it!

Yeah! At first you could have, like, a scene where he stands in front of a mirror, and gropes his boobs, because the readers won’t know exactly how hot he is now if you don’t tell them! Like, he would totally have 36DD’s, amiright?

 

[StillStunned]

Yeah! At first you could have, like, a scene where he stands in front of a mirror, and gropes his boobs, because the readers won’t know exactly how hot he is now if you don’t tell them! Like, he would totally have 36DD’s, amiright?

Realistically, the rest of the story would be a quest for the right bra while complaining about his back ache.

 

[Omenainen]

Realistically, the rest of the story would be a quest for the right bra while complaining about his back ache.

And feeling seriously creeped out by all the old wankers thinking they’re so smooth while drooling all over him.

 

[StillStunned]

And feeling seriously creeped out by all the old wankers thinking they’re so smooth while drooling all over him.

Have you seen this short clip the BBC made? About women "asking for it".

 

[MillieDynamite]

Seriously, is there such a thing as a realistic woman when it's all about sex? Yes, there are women who fuck at the drop of a Kleenex. But you don't meet them that often. And even a woman who does have sex with every tom, dick, and harry, doesn't advertise it at a cocktail party. However, some stories do manage to portray women in a realistic manner. Then again, the thrust of erotic stories is the sex. When we write about compelling women who are in control, the trolls come out to play. They don't have to be sex queens for men to hate them.

Write your stories as best you can. Make all your characters as realistic as you can. You'll learn more by writing than by getting advice. You'll learn more by reading than anyone can tell you. And honestly, your ladies don't have to be believable in real life if they behave believably in the situations of the story's confines. It's like science is Sci-Fi; it has to work in that universe. Make your ladies for the world you create.

Okay, that's all I have: take it, leave it, or throw it away.

 

[StillStunned]

And honestly, your ladies don't have to be believable in real life if they behave believably in the situations of the story's confines.

Come to think of it, some of the women I know in real life wouldn't be believable in fiction. Some of the men too.

 

[SimonDoom]

Yeah! At first you could have, like, a scene where he stands in front of a mirror, and gropes his boobs, because the readers won’t know exactly how hot he is now if you don’t tell them! Like, he would totally have 36DD’s, amiright?

Surely that's not sarcasm in your tone.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Touche.

I've installed one of those gadgets you get at the deli counter, where you print out a number and it gets called out when the server is ready for the next person story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Obviously, there's a massive overlap between genders. Men and women are obviously all people.
In a large number of stories, one can search/replace "John" with "Jane", and, aside from the physiological differnces, the behaviour and motivation of the character won't necessarily require a big rewrite.

But I think those stories aren't particularly interesting.

OTOH, "Alien" was written with all the roles gender-blind - though the makers acknowledged they'd assumed Ripley would be male - and I rarely hear people complain that it's not interesting.

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Either you can imagine people who aren’t similar to you or you can’t.

This ignores all the structural factors that make it easier or harder for certain populations to write plausibly about others.

Power, for example. There remain many fields where accurately modeling a man's thought processes is an essential professional skill. Whereas an unfortunate number of men get along just fine without any clue how women think.

Or representation in media. If I want to write a conversation between two men, not about a woman, I can crib from any number of existing works. Two women, not about a man? That's harder to find.

I'm not trying to say, oh, boo hoo, men have it harder after all. I don't think that kind of comparison accomplishes much.

Nor do I think these factors are an excuse for not putting in the extra effort it takes to cross the gender binary from one direction vs the other. (With apologies to any nonbinary people reading this.)

But "either you can or you can't" seems...weirdly simplistic and discouraging from someone who's done as much as you have to encourage realistic female characters.

Maybe this is a corollary of a larger disagreement between us? It sounds like you also think it should be easy to write characters different from the author along other axes, like race, age, wealth...whereas I also think those are hard and require thought and effort.

 

[THBGato]

Probably the biggest difference between male and female characters, if you want to be realistic, is going to be in the dialogue. There are a lot of conflicting models (Difference Theory, versus Dominance Theory, vs the Muted Group model, vs the Deficiency Model, depending on whether you subscribe to Tannan, Lakoff, Kramarae, Spender or Cameron on this), but in a nutshell evidence seems to suggest that men and women speak differently.

Some key features that most theorists agree upon:
- women are more likely to hedge (e.g. may, might, could, perhaps)
- women are more likely to use politeness strategies
- women are more likely to use indirect questions (would you mind if..., could I just ask...)
- men are more likely to swear (though this really varies with age)
- men tend to use conversation to compete with one another; women tend to use conversation to cooperate with one another
- therefore, men will be more likely to use exclusive language and women more likely to use inclusive language
- for the same reason, in a neutral setting, women will likely accommodate their register of speech to fit those of the men involved in the conversation

(Naturally, all of the above refers to English speaking countries, and is due to the inherent sexism in those societies. I'm not condoning this at all. But if you want to realistically reflect those societies in your writing, then that's the reality. Of course, if your story is set in a feminist utopia in the hopefully-not-too-far future, then none of the above applies.)

 

[Omenainen]

This ignores all the structural factors that make it easier or harder for certain populations to write plausibly about others.

Power, for example. There remain many fields where accurately modeling a man's thought processes is an essential professional skill. Whereas an unfortunate number of men get along just fine without any clue how women think.

Or representation in media. If I want to write a conversation between two men, not about a woman, I can crib from any number of existing works. Two women, not about a man? That's harder to find.

I'm not trying to say, oh, boo hoo, men have it harder after all. I don't think that kind of comparison accomplishes much.

Nor do I think these factors are an excuse for not putting in the extra effort it takes to cross the gender binary from one direction vs the other. (With apologies to any nonbinary people reading this.)

But "either you can or you can't" seems...weirdly simplistic and discouraging from someone who's done as much as you have to encourage realistic female characters.

Maybe this is a corollary of a larger disagreement between us? It sounds like you also think it should be easy to write characters different from the author along other axes, like race, age, wealth...whereas I also think those are hard and require thought and effort.

I didn’t say it was easy, nor that it should be easy. My point is no one can do the work for you.

This opening post was really polite and more thoughtful than most of these kind of threads, but still a lot of it boils down to “come, ladies, and do my thinking for me, and in exchange you get to admire how sexy my writing is.” Instead of, dunno, doing the work, reading stories by women and about women and for women, putting some effort into incorporating that into your writing, and then maybe asking “hey guys, did I succeed in this?”

If the underlying assumption is that “as a man I can never imagine what it is to be a woman,” then I don’t understand how “come and explain women to me so that I will understand” would even be possible.

 

[Trionyx]

Now was the comment from a man or a woman?

Emily

From the data given, I believe so but you know the Lit names can be misleading, to put it mildly.

She (he?) listed gender: female and age: 41-50. Not an author so no clues there.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

OTOH, "Alien" was written with all the roles gender-blind - though the makers acknowledged they'd assumed Ripley would be male - and I rarely hear people complain that it's not interesting.

But it wasn't an erotic story. I think that it's safe to assume that 90s was referring to characters in stories on lit.

It is true that regardless of gender, sexual tastes and habits vary widely, but men and women do look at sex differently. In the first world we look at it a bit differently. In the third world perhaps a lot more differently. In cave man days extremely differently. Women will often complain that men can act like pigs when it comes to sex but men are naturally wired to kinda be that way. Women are the ones with the cycle and women are the selective ones who choose who gets to breed and so they are looking for reasons for a man to turn them on. These reasons vary from woman to woman, but they are generally more important than the reasons that a man may get turned on by a woman. Of course more often than not people engage in sex with no intention at all to actually breed, but those factors in selection that trigger the hormones are still there.

In nature, the female of the species says "Uhh, you ... yes you ... now!" and the male has to be ready to go. That's how nature made him. It doesn't excuse bad behavior from men in our society but it does make it more understandable. These hormonal triggers are still there even in our de-natured western society. What does this mean for fiction erotica? It means that a guy being horny just for the sake of it is much more believable than a woman being horny just because. If you want to write a more believable female character, generally speaking she requires a little more from the man to turn her on. And if you want your female character to be a drop dead confident bombshell who can have anyone that she wants (which is a very popular template), then you're probably going to need a male lead who can keep up with her instead of some dope who effectively wins the lottery when she decides to mount him for the fuck of it.

I'm sure that what I'm saying could go into much deeper details, especially about men, so I hope that I'm not painting a picture than men are all sexually shallow. That is not my intention. I'm just already deep into tl;dr territory.

So I will add that I find it very refreshing that the OP is actually doing a little research to try to create stronger more interesting characters that both/all genders might relate to better and therefore enjoy more. His effort is appreciated.

If anything, this thread has helped remind me that my male characters and female characters are not isolated entities. They influence each other.

 

[EmilyMiller]

From the data given, I believe so but you know the Lit names can be misleading, to put it mildly.

She (he?) listed gender: female and age: 41-50. Not an author so no clues there.

Well, it’s a well-known fact that there are no women on Literotica, just guys with gender identifiication issues

Eddie

 

[mildlyaroused]

How women and men see danger, risk, security, approval, success. That's gendered too.
How women and men see commitment, threat, rivalry, affection, power. So is that.

Some key features that most theorists agree upon:

I will still caution these sorts of attempts to distill differences between men and women.

The reality is that you will never be able to write the nuances or complexity of the real world into your male and female characters. Trying to specifically write a MAN or a WOMAN is in my eyes only going to get you into trouble, and you are much more likely to churn out caricatures. There is as much diversity internally among women than there is between one specific woman and one specific man.

I think that @joy_of_cooking touched on the main difference, which is structural: societal. Men and women have different roles in the world. Also physiological, obviously.

 

[EmilyMiller]

But it wasn't an erotic story. I think that it's safe to assume that 90s was referring to characters in stories on lit.

You could argue that H R Giger’s art - on which the xenomorph was based - is deeply erotic, admittedly in a rather nightmarish way.



Emily

 

[StillStunned]

the reasons that a man may get turned on by a woman

 

[big_cane_sugar]

Probably the biggest difference between male and female characters, if you want to be realistic, is going to be in the dialogue. There are a lot of conflicting models (Difference Theory, versus Dominance Theory, vs the Muted Group model, vs the Deficiency Model, depending on whether you subscribe to Tannan, Lakoff, Kramarae, Spender or Cameron on this), but in a nutshell evidence seems to suggest that men and women speak differently.

Some key features that most theorists agree upon:
- women are more likely to hedge (e.g. may, might, could, perhaps)
- women are more likely to use politeness strategies
- women are more likely to use indirect questions (would you mind if..., could I just ask...)
- men are more likely to swear (though this really varies with age)
- men tend to use conversation to compete with one another; women tend to use conversation to cooperate with one another
- therefore, men will be more likely to use exclusive language and women more likely to use inclusive language
- for the same reason, in a neutral setting, women will likely accommodate their register of speech to fit those of the men involved in the conversation

(Naturally, all of the above refers to English speaking countries, and is due to the inherent sexism in those societies. I'm not condoning this at all. But if you want to realistically reflect those societies in your writing, then that's the reality. Of course, if your story is set in a feminist utopia in the hopefully-not-too-far future, then none of the above applies.)

Thank you so much!

This is very helpful.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

View attachment 2324466

But I don't want any land ...

 

[big_cane_sugar]

I didn’t say it was easy, nor that it should be easy. My point is no one can do the work for you.

This opening post was really polite and more thoughtful than most of these kind of threads, but still a lot of it boils down to “come, ladies, and do my thinking for me, and in exchange you get to admire how sexy my writing is.” Instead of, dunno, doing the work, reading stories by women and about women and for women, putting some effort into incorporating that into your writing, and then maybe asking “hey guys, did I succeed in this?”

If the underlying assumption is that “as a man I can never imagine what it is to be a woman,” then I don’t understand how “come and explain women to me so that I will understand” would even be possible.

Thank you for this. I'm definitely trying to do my homework, including reading more "stories by women and about women and for women."

 

[EmilyMiller]

Probably the biggest difference between male and female characters, if you want to be realistic, is going to be in the dialogue. There are a lot of conflicting models (Difference Theory, versus Dominance Theory, vs the Muted Group model, vs the Deficiency Model, depending on whether you subscribe to Tannan, Lakoff, Kramarae, Spender or Cameron on this), but in a nutshell evidence seems to suggest that men and women speak differently.

Some key features that most theorists agree upon:
- women are more likely to hedge (e.g. may, might, could, perhaps)
- women are more likely to use politeness strategies
- women are more likely to use indirect questions (would you mind if..., could I just ask...)
- men are more likely to swear (though this really varies with age)
- men tend to use conversation to compete with one another; women tend to use conversation to cooperate with one another
- therefore, men will be more likely to use exclusive language and women more likely to use inclusive language
- for the same reason, in a neutral setting, women will likely accommodate their register of speech to fit those of the men involved in the conversation

(Naturally, all of the above refers to English speaking countries, and is due to the inherent sexism in those societies. I'm not condoning this at all. But if you want to realistically reflect those societies in your writing, then that's the reality. Of course, if your story is set in a feminist utopia in the hopefully-not-too-far future, then none of the above applies.)

It would be nice if people wrote FMCs who didn’t adhere to these - frankly kinda horrible - societal norms.

And women use less expletives? Fuck!

Emily

 

[Omenainen]

Thank you for this. I'm definitely trying to do my homework, including reading more "stories by women and about women and for women."

I have a whole event dedicated for writing more women centric erotica, Pink Orchid. The list of this year’s entries comes out on Friday, I’ll link it on the event thread. So that’s one place to start. You could also consider participating next year.