Could you swap your characters' gender at will? And one other thing. (old thread)

Aggy B.

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I swapped the genders on the leads in a novella. Went from older man and younger woman, to older woman and younger man. The result was ridiculously more interesting. But it wouldn't work for just any story since gender and sexuality are specific choices we make for the characters and not just randomly assigned attributes.
 

Roxxsmom

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I did swap the genders of a couple of minor characters, though in one case it also involved combining two characters. I took the male partner of my protagonist in the city watch and made her female, because it made more sense for that person to be the same watch member he spoke to later on in the story (when he was no longer in the watch). And showing a female watch member early on in the narrative does a good job of showing some differences between the culture my male character came from and the place he's now living.

Sometimes the change just works better.
 

ULTRAGOTHA

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I got two questions/ponderings.

1. I was talking to my mom the other day about my book, and she half-jokingly suggested I made one of my characters a girl, for two reasons. To me it was fully a joke, because I cannot imagine it working like, ever. Not compatible in my brain. But I wonder - are others the same? Or could you turn your boys into girls or girls into boys and carry on with the story?

2. When you read a novel, do you need a character your own gender to empathize with that's either the main character, or their closest friend/lover/co-worker? Do you lose interest/detach emotionally/stop caring if that's not the case?

I couldn’t. My story is entwined with strongly male and female roles and revolves around the death of the King and who will be the next King in an alternate history where only males would be considered for Kingship. It’s based on Britain during the Napoleonic Wars but with an AU back history. So the roles are very gender-dependent (though not as gender-dependent as we generally think of for the time period). Can’t swap.


I read tons of books with fantastic characters of many genders. Some where I don’t even know the gender of the characters. I empathize with them all.

Well written solid characters are easy to relate to, regardless of the gender of the reader, in most cases.



I think a woman in the Roman Army might look a bit suspect (and ever so obvious). :D

There were no doubt women in the Roman Army. There have been women in probably every other army. We have always fought.

(Linky won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work.)
 

Roxxsmom

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There were no doubt women in the Roman Army. There have been women in probably every other army. We have always fought.

(Linky won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work.)

I was wondering about that, because the general assumption based on most of the sources I could find is that the Roman army was particularly devoid of women, even among camp followers and so on (though there are records of female gladiators). Rank and file soldiers weren't even allowed to marry, let alone bring women with them on campaign (as was the case with many other historic armies). But some recent discoveries suggest there were probably women living in Roman camps after all.

But aside from an account of a Roman praefect's daughter who accompanied him to battles, and some accounts of gladiators who were women, I can't find a darned thing about women in the Roman military. The general idea seems to be met with derision on the reenactment and gaming sites where such things are discussed (how would they hide their gender in a camp full of men that share latrines, tents and bathhouses? is the general gist of it).

But women managed to do it, with varying degrees of success, in other armies and wars throughout history. So if there really were no women at all who ever managed to sneak into the Roman army, what was it that made it so much harder than in most historical armies? Naked communal bathing? Physical exams of new recruits?

Regardless, the fact that the Roman army was supposed to be a "woman free" zone would certainly change the dynamics of a story centered around a Roman soldier if you flipped the gender from male to female. The need for secrecy, and the terror over being discovered would definitely become an important focus for that character.
 
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Lillith1991

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Regardless, the fact that the Roman army was supposed to be a "woman free" zone would certainly change the dynamics of a story centered around a Roman soldier if you flipped the gender from male to female. The need for secrecy and the terror over being discovered would definitely become an important focus for that character.

Roxx makes a very good point here I think. You could have a female soldier if you wanted, but in a historical or less egalitarian Alt History there would be a different dynamic underpinning the entire thing. She would have to deal with things men who join don't, like hiding her menstral cycle or anything else which could give her away as a woman.

As an aside, I don't really understand people who prefer characters that could easily be any gender or think they're the "best" kind of character. I understand it's a preference, but I don't personally like Bilbo because he's essentially gender neutral. I like him and characters like him because they're people in the general sense. Characters which are strictly male or female, whether they follow western gender roles or not are just as interesting however. A good character is one who is dynamic, a real person in the metaphorical sense for the entire time I'm reading. Not a book, but the movie Rag Tag wasn't enjoyable to me because the leads were both manly men who happened to have been in love since childhood. It was enjoyable because they were human.

Tagbo (Tag) chose law and went to school for it because as a kid, he thought if he knew the rules he could find a way to get Raymond (Rag) back after social services sends Rag to live with his grandmother. But he enjoys sports, and isn't particularly interested in touching people except for Rag (both of which are considered masculine things by western standards.). The reason he became a lawyer is downright sentimental, and so could be considered a feminine trait. (God do I hate the stereotype that such motivation makes anyone male or female more feminine.) He has other traits as well that say male. And Rag for that matter has an equal number of "masculine" traits that Tag does. If one of them was woman however, the dynamic and conflict I enjoyed produced by the characters being Black and gay wouldn't be there. And that is something that I feel is missing when someone thinks gender neutral characters are the best, and that is an appreciation for the changing dynamics a characters gender can be the cause of.

No slight, and no judgement. It's just what I've observed.
 

harmonyisarine

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There were no doubt women in the Roman Army. There have been women in probably every other army. We have always fought.

(Linky won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work.)

I was wondering about that, because the general assumption based on most of the sources I could find is that the Roman army was particularly devoid of women, even among camp followers and so on (though there are records of female gladiators). Rank and file soldiers weren't even allowed to marry, let alone bring women with them on campaign (as was the case with many other historic armies). But some recent discoveries suggest there were probably women living in Roman camps after all.

In a related vein, a study from a few years ago examined one burial site of Viking first wave settlers and determined that the old way of determining sex via the objects found with the remains is a pretty bad way of figuring these things out. The study only looked at one site with only a few sets of remains, and it was settlers instead of warriors. They determined sex by bone lengths, and found the gender ratio was split nearly down the middle in a situation where the old way (using weapons and other grave items) would have determined most if not all of the remains to be male.

This indicates that all of these warrior graves we find need to be reexamined to tell how many are actually men, and sort of throws some doubt on "But women/men didn't DO that!".

(Study is here)
 

Reziac

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I don't think many women do understand men.

Possibly related:

http://www.medicaldaily.com/men-are...ve-womens-memory-same-cant-be-said-men-319020

It might be that given how much we rely on other folks' facial expressions to relate to 'em -- given this research, that generally women rely more on emotion to interpret faces, while men rely more on a sort of 'objective' interpretation (and of course either can interpret rightly or wrongly). And that this then colors their (mis)understandings of each other -- as if each is color-blind, but in different parts of the interpretive spectrum.

Occurs to me that having one's interpretive spectrum naturally skewed might contribute to gender dysphoria.
 

Reziac

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From the abstract:
The behavioral results showed that females evaluate in particular negative and positive , but not neutral pictures, as emotionally more arousing than males.

Continuing with my theory on facial cues vs interpretation (and that this entire phenomenon is likely much broader than mere picture recognition), it occurs to me that this gap in females' evaluations of 'neutral' pictures may be the cause of that common "What did I do??" response from men -- they're expressing what they think is 'neutral' but the female interprets it as 'did wrong'.

Further,
females' stronger appraisal of especially negative pictures
may contribute to that common trait of "she never forgets a wrong"... ie. once a facial expression is fixed in her mind as "he did me wrong", she'll never forget it, even tho he barely recalls what she's complaining about.

Also, this may contribute to that male reaction of "where'd that come from??" when she brings some up some old wrong apparently out of the blue:
In conclusion, females' valence-category-specific memory advantage is only observed in a free recall, but not a recognition setting and does not depend on females' higher emotional appraisal.

All interesting to consider if genderswapping a character; indeed, our intuitive understandings of these human interactions may help determine which gender a character is when they pop out of our heads. (At least for those of us whose characters just walk in and announce themselves without troubling to consult our preferences.)
 

phantasy

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Interesting article. Honestly I don't have an issue with the fact most men and women process things differently. The really telling fact is that they experimented on very young children, before societal norms could really effect their behavior.

But I'm proud to say I know many people who break these molds. That's the cool thing about stories, you can always write about the outlier. So if you swap the gender, you could still have it make sense, because life is messy and different life situations and personalities create different sorts of people. And even if the they are an outlier in some aspects of their personality, there'll be other parts that fit their gender perfectly.
 

Reziac

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Interesting article. Honestly I don't have an issue with the fact most men and women process things differently. The really telling fact is that they experimented on very young children, before societal norms could really effect their behavior.

Yep, and as you say naturally it's a spectrum with "typical ranges", rather than a hard dichotomy. Further consider that this spectrum wouldn't exist if it didn't confer some evolutionary advantage. He looks out into the veldt and sees antelope; she looks out into the veldt and sees lions. Both viewpoints are useful for staying alive.
 

JHFC

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I don't need a character of my gender for me to hold interest. As far as swapping genders though, I try, at least in my own writing, to write characters that could be either. I call this my "Alien" rule. One of the things that makes Ripley such a great character, imo, is that in the script she didn't have a gender. She was just written as a person, during casting they decided "Hey, she's a woman," and I personally think that is what makes her so strong.
 

AmandaHelms

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On a short story, I recently did a gender swap--MC was a preteen male; main secondary character was an older female. It wasn't a matter of simply swapping pronouns and changing names. I did have some dialogue that played negatively after the swap (when I didn't *want* it to play negatively, of course) so I changed it.

I probably won't do that all that time, but I can see gender-swapping being a useful exercise for analyzing character dynamics and ingrained privilege, etc.
 

eward

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1. Depends on the character and the setting. In my epic fantasies, changing the genders of characters would vastly change the way people react to them and thus, the story. Other stories could work, but would I want to? Most likely not. I like most of my characters the way they are.

2. Nope.
 

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Having just started writing, and just wrote my fourth novel (the first with a male main character) I hear you. I think they characters could, but the situations they get into would have to change. For example, I am writing historical fiction, set in the 18th century Ireland. A young lady could find herself married off to a man she doesn't want easily enough. Not so common for a young man. Or a young man could be called to war - but not a young lady. The character itself might have different roles as well. A woman would have been trained in herbs, washing, sewing, music. Her interests would likely be attuned to that. Gender roles were much more heavily enforced two hundred years ago.
 

Roxxsmom

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I would think that young men in at least some times and places were also pressured by their families to accept brides they wouldn't have chosen for themselves, and others might have done so willingly (for the good of the family or posterity), even if they were less than happy about it on a personal level. My historical accuracy alarms wouldn't go off if I were reading a story set in, say, Regency England and there were a male character who ended up married to a girl or woman he found unattractive, uninteresting, or otherwise unappealing, because it amounted to what was a business transaction.

Or maybe he "lost" the girl he really wanted to another marriage deal (her family rejected his suit for one that was more advantageous to them), so he had to settle for "second best."

Of course there are differences. Most marriages (first ones, at least) were with an eye to producing heirs, so a younger woman was more likely to be saddled with a middle-aged or older arranged-marriage husband than the reverse. But even so, a man might experience intense family pressures to choose a certain woman, and rebelling could have serious consequences for him.

True about the war thing, though of course there are examples of women who disguised themselves and ran away to war.

I agree that gender flipping isn't something that would work for every story, however (and not just historical settings). It really depends on what it is you're exploring with your story and which personality traits are central to your character (and what you want the consequences of those to be).
 
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NINA28

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1. I was talking to my mom the other day about my book, and she half-jokingly suggested I made one of my characters a girl, for two reasons. To me it was fully a joke, because I cannot imagine it working like, ever. Not compatible in my brain. But I wonder - are others the same? Or could you turn your boys into girls or girls into boys and carry on with the story?
I do think males and females think and operate differently, so I think changing genders would slightly change my story. But that's just my story. If I could change her female to a male with ease and nothing she did or said made any difference I would worry she was too masculine. Stuff would have to change. I mean, my MC could be changed but then so would the story.

2. When you read a novel, do you need a character your own gender to empathize with that's either the main character, or their closest friend/lover/co-worker? Do you lose interest/detach emotionally/stop caring if that's not the case?
I only realized this very recently, but I have a hard time relating and connecting to a male character, being female myself. I do tend to lean more towards a female character. In movies as well. Unless they are totally dislikable and stereotypical. As far back as I can remember I've always liked the girl. I was a kid when The Matrix came out and Trinity was my favourite character, even though I felt she was the least developed of the main characters. I liked Xena better than Hercules. In Kevin Costner's Robin Hood, I liked Maid Marian better than Robin. In real life, I tend to relate better to men, but in books/TV/movies I like females better. It's weird. Maybe it's because I've only known two men in my life. My Dad and my step-dad - both are very similar. Men seem to think differently to women and seem more laid back about life in general. But that's just my experience.
Gender stuff interests me a lot. Like do women and men have specific traits more common in one sex.
 

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I think we have biases, and I think we write so-called 'throwaway' characters in our stories, too.

Imagine a character has a baby and the important thing is that the character is a parent. So, the baby could be a boy or a girl. Or, maybe there are some businesspeople and we didn't put much thought to their genders, because their role is to fill in an office scene. They might be named, or maybe they aren't even named. I can imagine lots of cases where changing the gender of a minor character in a scene like that wouldn't matter.

I'd suggest writing intentionally--that means things like be aware of how many women are in your cast compared to men. If it's important to you to have an all female cast, do it. Same for male. If it's important to make it 50:50, do it. If it's important to weight it for some intentional reason (say, historical accuracy or something), do it. But be intentional.

Changing the gender of the principle characters, the main characters, is going to be a different thing. My guess is that it might feel different to you, to read the story with that character as a different gender (unlike a random baby somewhere in the middle of chapter 3). But who knows--maybe it won't. It might depend on your perspective, and on how you wrote the character to begin with.

I recently reassigned gender for three lower-tier characters in my novel upon the advice of a fantastic beta reader. I was very pleasantly surprised at the (both) overt and nuanced ways it reshapes my manuscript. In my case, I only changed the genders. Example: I changed a business owner to a woman. She is only present in one small scene. But since it is an early scene, the change shifts the entire feel of how this world is set up. I'd originally defaulted to a male business owner, but there was no need for the character to be male--and this actually works better from a 'big picture' perspective.
 
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Roxxsmom

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One function those background characters have in a scene is to reveal things about your story world's culture, including gender roles. This may not be as needed in a contemporary work, but in a work of speculative fiction (or in a particular historical setting), it can clue readers in about how things are in your society. Do women and men fill many of the same roles in society, or are they strictly segregated, or are they somewhere in between? How diverse is your society in terms of race? How do children occupy themselves in this society? How do people of varying ages, genders and classes dress and carry themselves?

Even so-called throwaway scenes can (and should) accomplish things in a story.

An amazing number of books, even those set in contemporary or futuristic societies, have few women out and about in the world. Think of that Hollywood casting issue, where most speaking roles go to men (and to white men at that), and even crowd scenes are male biased (and the casting calls are pretty sexist and racist too, often requiring younger women and emphasizing good looks over personality traits). This sort of thing seems to influence people's perception of reality, and it makes its way into books.

Even in a very traditional society, women are everywhere (unless the culture is so patriarchal they literally keep women of all social classes cloistered, but that's not the norm), yet they are often not mentioned or noticed by the narrative. Of course, this could reflect a genuine pov if you are telling the story through the eyes of a sexist character who dismisses the existence or importance of most women, so he simply doesn't "see" them. But if this is not the author's conscious intent, it's something to think about.

It's amazing how many stories with female leads have the character adrift in a support cast that is almost entirely male, with any other female characters being trivial or portrayed as rivals or obstacles. McCaffrey's Dragonflight, for instance, has only a handful of named female characters but dozens of male ones. Sometimes the isolation of a woman in a "man's world" is a major point of the story, but often it reflects unconscious biases about who is most important and interesting.

I've seen more books recently that rectify this, with friendships and relationships between women in a more central position and portrayed more positively.
 

dickson

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1. I can imagine that, easily. But. In my novel-in-progress, I decided it made a more satisfying character development arc for the main character to come out as lesbian, rather than bi. The funny thing is, it involved changing no more than maybe 500 words out of currently 169,000.

2. No, I don't. I'm gay, so most fiction with a male protaganist involves my empathizing/identifying with someone who's not really like me.
 

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I kept a daily journal for years. I decided to go back through it and change every "I" to "she." I finished with a novella of slightly over 100 pages. Boy would I like to have met her.
 

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Just a note that the OP is almost 5 years old.