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

phantasy said:

Even if the story was in 19th-century Victorian England and was about a woman who was being forced to marry in order to save her family's wealth, she could work as a male.

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I misread this first time by as something like: a story about a woman being forced to marry to save her family's weath, but she's actually a male.

Hey, if you want the idea, steal it.

phantasy said:

Makes me wonder if they people who can't gender switch just haven't met enough people or their cultural gender roles are so inundated that they can't separate it from the person. I've met soft-spoken, cooing fathers, I've met mothers who curse and smoke and whup their kids. Gender didn't get in the way of their personality nor their sexuality.

I mean no disrespect, I'd love this explained.

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Generally, I agree. But sometimes a person's gender is a big part of who they are.

I have a female character. A ex-military engineer living during the zombie apocalypse. Before the apocalypse, she was a target for sexual assault; she fought back violently and was discharged for it.

Now she's living out the end of days, and nothing has changed. It's an uphill battle. Every survivor she meets is a potential threat; she's either not taken seriously or she's targeted. When she's finally accepted by a community of survivors, some of those problems go away, but she still has to fight. She's the most competent military leader there, but her experience is ignored. But she doesn't fucking give up, and she claws her way up the chain of command.

She's tough and she's funny and she's smart. She's been called a slut, called the n-word, relegated and dismissed and beaten. And she has this seething anger in her that pushes her to survive and to win and to become better. If she were a man, she wouldn't have those experiences.

So... generally, I think most characters can work as male or female. But when characters exist in a sexist world, they're limited in different ways.

... not w/o making major changes. E.g. having the MC wear a pink outfit instead of a blue one or vice versa. Way too much of a hassle. So I will keep my males male and females female. But thnx for the suggestion all the same !

;-)

Hmm, seems like some characters can be swapped better than others.

Anyone run across this re swapping Bilbo's gender in the Hobbit? It evidently works, and it's probably because there is nothing that Bilbo does or is that really defies or embraces anyone's notions of femininity (or masculinity). Gender isn't relevant to the story at all. He's a small person, in over his head initially, and he finds his own courage. He doesn't prevail by becoming badass with a sword, or growing huge muscles, or having a hero fall in love with him (though something tells me Bilbo/Thorin FF exists), or reassessing his own conceptions of masculinity, or by discovering he's the secret heir to a throne.

It's about wit and grit prevailing over brawn.

Both genders can relate equally to this, I'd guess, and the story/character arc really isn't affected by a gender swap.

But with some stories, the gender of the person (and how they relate to their society and its expectations as a member of that gender) is an important factor. Say your protagonist is a woman who dresses up like a boy so she can join the military in a patriarchal society , or a man who has been "emasculated" by the things that were done to him when he was a captive in the wars (and he has to deal with that somehow). Or a story about a woman who is a pennliless immigrant in a matrilineal culture where (for a girl) your maternal line is the source of prestige, wealth and status, and this culture is not a simple flip over of patrilineal/patriarchal medieval Europe?

Cliches, perhaps, but it might be hard to reverse the gender without changing a lot else in the story. Whether or not doing so would make for a better story? It's probably case by case.

Even a character with personality traits that fall well outside the "average" or expected norm for their gender may have to deal with social consequences they wouldn't if their gender were simply swapped.

phantasy said:

Because I don't understand how you can't switch the genders, I really can't. I mean, does the male character constantly check out the females? Are they in the the army or something, are they gruff, do they curse, etc? How wouldn't that work for a woman? Obv, you can switch the gender they're attracted to if you want.

Makes me wonder if they people who can't gender switch just haven't met enough people or their cultural gender roles are so inundated that they can't separate it from the person. I've met soft-spoken, cooing fathers, I've met mothers who curse and smoke and whup their kids. Gender didn't get in the way of their personality nor their sexuality.

I mean no disrespect, I'd love this explained.

Even if the story was in 19th-century Victorian England and was about a woman who was being forced to marry in order to save her family's wealth, she could work as a male. Just make his family a little more domineering and him more of a B-personality and it could work. Little tweaks can go a long way. No gender switch is instant, you have to edit the story to make it work. But you'd be surprised how few scenes you need to change.

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Well, IMO, it depends on the story, and the degree to which cultural concepts about gender (or even biological issues) influence the characters, which could be Quite A Lot.

I can think of some stories I've written or have worked on where I could switch, and a lot where I couldn't. Irish MC in the 1800s asking to join militiamen to hunt down some guy and then boarding a merchant ship and gaining the trust of the second mate and so forth would not be terribly realistic if he was female. Characters in a made-up society with hard and fast restrictions based on gender have to stay the gender they are. A character who is a weremammoth and whose musth is a major problem in the storyline must stay male because females don't go into musth. Plus there's a bunch of stuff about his prehensile penis in the sex scenes...

But sometimes I write stories where culture does not push that strongly on gender identities and biology doesn't matter so much, and I could switch then, though I agree it might be a bit more than just changing the pronouns about But yeah, switching is possible *generally*, it just depends, IMO. Gender is a cultural thing and culture varies a lot, both in nature and in importance to the individual, but it infects the pith of us, so a character could be changed by it if it so dictates...

Everything depends on the particular story, I think.

phantasy said:

Even if the story was in 19th-century Victorian England and was about a woman who was being forced to marry in order to save her family's wealth, she could work as a male.

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Right now I'm working on a romance set in Victorian England. The hero has to marry a woman (not the heroine) who's pregnant with another man's child. I'm not sure how this would work if I swapped the genders. If I make the hero a woman, she would have to marry a man who is...?

With another historical romance I have coming out later this year, the heroine knocks at the door of the hero's lonely, remote country house late one night with an unconvincing story about how she got there. It's a freezing night, so he lets her stay.

I would have to work much harder to justify it if a woman alone in an isolated house opened her door to a strange man with an obviously fake reason for how he got there, and then allowed him to spend the night. So I don't think this would work if the genders were swapped.

I agree with buzhidao that it depends on the particular story.

Roxxsmom said:

But with some stories, the gender of the person (and how they relate to their society and its expectations as a member of that gender) is an important factor.

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Yup

For this reason I could swap some of mine, but not others. In my WIP I have a brother and sister and a part of the dynamic is she has had to work harder to get the same level of acceptance in their chosen profession (and does so because she can't bear for him to be better ), where he's handed it all on a plate. Because of her working harder, she's better at various technical aspects than he is, and it galls him (He's not that emotionally mature at the start, though he learns). This dynamic, and that it plays out this way, are part of who they are, what shapes them. If I swapped them, I'd have to swap that dynamic as well and it'd change who they are.

Other characters without that, or similar, dynamics could mostly be swapped.

Good points all. I guess I just tend to read more stories like the Hobbit, where Bilbo could've easily been female without too many changes.

Marian Perera said:

Right now I'm working on a romance set in Victorian England. The hero has to marry a woman (not the heroine) who's pregnant with another man's child. I'm not sure how this would work if I swapped the genders. If I make the hero a woman, she would have to marry a man who is...?.

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She would have to marry a man who impregnated another woman and she might have to raise his bastard.

Calliea said:

Or could you turn your boys into girls or girls into boys and carry on with the story?

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?

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No, I couldn't switch genders and carry on with the story. My characters develop in my head for a long time before they're ever committed to screen or paper. I've generally followed them about half way through the story so have decided on a gender and a story arc for the primary character and a few secondary characters. How they interact necessarily includes gender differences. I've gotten to know who they are, inside and out. Their names have also become important to me and they aren't who they are without the names I've given them. All in all, to switch genders would be akin to creative murder. They'd cease to be the people they are.

As to your second question, when I read I don't need characters to be my own gender in order to relate to them. It's not even a consideration. A well drawn character is a well drawn character.

I don't think the gender switch of a main character is particularly difficult - you just have to get inside the person's head like you do with any character. The really interesting part is what it does to your other characters.

When 'converting' my MS it was eye opening to see how the rest of my 'cast' radically changed their behaviour when the main male character became female. I found it quite confronting when my own assumptions were challenged like this.

phantasy said:

She would have to marry a man who impregnated another woman and she might have to raise his bastard.

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But that would change the whole dynamic of the story. People would know the child wasn't hers and would feel sorry for her, if she had to raise a bastard.

Whereas in the story as I'm telling it, the hero has to marry a woman and claim responsibility for her child because the woman is basically a naive child herself and was seduced. If a man is that naive, he'd be more difficult for readers to sympathize with, but it also wouldn't be such a big deal for him to lose his virginity.

And assuming the woman who seduced him got pregnant, I'm not sure why he'd inflict his bastard on his future wife either. He would have a choice about whether or not he wanted to claim responsibility (whereas a pregnant woman in Victorian England didn't have such an option unless she had an abortion).

In fact, I'm not even sure how anyone would know the child was his, as opposed to being fathered by another man. So that's the first question I'd expect the heroine to ask.

This is why I don't think the genders in this particular story could be swapped without the story itself changing to the point where it is no longer the story I set out to tell. Some of the conflict comes from the antagonist playing mind games with the pregnant woman, telling her, "You owe your future husband so much and you can't even give him a virtuous wife in exchange." If I rewrote this as the heroine being told, "Your husband isn't a virgin!" it just wouldn't have the same impact.

I don't think it's difficult to change a character's gender though I imagine it does depend quite on the plot in your particular story because if there is a specific setting, then it might not work. Still, seeing the changes that may come with the character is interesting.

Marian Perera said:

(whereas a pregnant woman in Victorian England didn't have such an option unless she had an abortion).

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Which would be tricky/dangerous at best

Some things can;t be gender swapped unless you're writing SF. Pregnancy is probably one

Mr Flibble said:

Which would be tricky/dangerous at best

Some things can;t be gender swapped unless you're writing SF. Pregnancy is probably one

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Exactly. And the antagonist's whole purpose in seducing the woman is to get her pregnant so she's forced to marry the hero (a decent man who'll take responsibility for her child).

If I swap this, how does a female antagonist seducing a man force him to marry the heroine?

1) In most of my story ideas, the protagonist could be either male or female without essentially changing the character. In the novel I'm currently struggling to make progress on, the protagonist was originally conceived as male, but when I was describing the character's difficulties, motivations and conflicts to my female life partner, she suggested making the character female, and it worked well.

A play I'm also currently failing to complete involves a complex romantic quadrangle; it could work with any combination of genders, but I ended up making everybody female.

2) No, a main character doesn't have to be male for me to identify with him or her. I don't think there are many inherent differences between women and men in real life, and there are other aspects to fictional characters that usually interest me more.

You know, I'm honestly not sure what it means to "identify" with a character. I don't see the protagonist as a stand-in for myself. I just have to like them and understand their motivations.

I do have a preference for kickass lady protagonists. And for LGBT and POC protagonists. I don't think that has to do with identification, though. I think it's just that I've seen so many white cishet male protagonists they've all started to blur together, so anything outside of the norm stands out.

ViridianChick said:

You know, I'm honestly not sure what it means to "identify" with a character.

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Relate may be a better term. I need to understand why they are doing what they do even if it;s nothing like I would do

phantasy said:

Same goes for me.

Because I don't understand how you can't switch the genders, I really can't. I mean, does the male character constantly check out the females? Are they in the the army or something, are they gruff, do they curse, etc? How wouldn't that work for a woman? Obv, you can switch the gender they're attracted to if you want.

Makes me wonder if they people who can't gender switch just haven't met enough people or their cultural gender roles are so inundated that they can't separate it from the person. I've met soft-spoken, cooing fathers, I've met mothers who curse and smoke and whup their kids. Gender didn't get in the way of their personality nor their sexuality.

I mean no disrespect, I'd love this explained.

Even if the story was in 19th-century Victorian England and was about a woman who was being forced to marry in order to save her family's wealth, she could work as a male. Just make his family a little more domineering and him more of a B-personality and it could work. Little tweaks can go a long way. No gender switch is instant, you have to edit the story to make it work. But you'd be surprised how few scenes you need to change.

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Well, for me it is the type of stories I write and what the stories need. One of my stories centers around a pair of male/female fraternal twins, both of whom are LGBT. If I made either of them the opposite gender then they would be straight and that would interfer with my premise. I wouldn't be able to do the story I had in mind. In another story I recently wrote, the conflict centered around a young woman who's mother had invited her and her lover for Sunday diner after months of not talking because the MC is a lesbian. If the character wasn't female, the entire central conflict of that short would be out the window.

I could possibly swap minor characters in some of my stuff, but I tend towards having a reason that my mains are the genders they are. Something big in the story that would drastically change if they were a different gender.

Marian Perera said:

If I swap this, how does a female antagonist seducing a man force him to marry the heroine?

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At gunpoint??

screenscope said:

I don't think the gender switch of a main character is particularly difficult - you just have to get inside the person's head like you do with any character. The really interesting part is what it does to your other characters.

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I still think it really depends on the story. If the way this person deals with the pressures and expectations (some of them possibly internal) that come from being a member of that particular gender, are an important part of the story, then swapping the genders would require that you either change what those pressures and expectations are (which may really change the entire story). Or the writer would have to flip the story around.

One of my female characters, for instance, is barren, and there's a lot of baggage that comes with this for her, because her culture has matrilineal inheritance, and she is her mother's only daughter.

Yeah, I could make her male, but that would actually require my converting my culture to something more "standard" in fantasy terms (as in, patrilienal). I like it better the way it is.

But I'm already someone who doesn't default blindly to traditional male/female dichotomies in my characterization. I've had one critting buddy (a female one, ironically) tell me that my MMC doubts and second guesses himself too much, because "guys just don't think everything to death the way we ladies do."

We can argue all day whether or not this is true for "most" guys (and if so, whether it's 51% of men, 70% of men, 90% of men, or 99.9999%), but regardless, it's not true for this particular guy. He has reasons for being who he is, and yes, in some ways he does step outside what his culture (and our own, evidently) thinks men should do and be. I didn't do this by accident.

Flipping his gender would remove that aspect of his personality.

Another one of my characters is a gay man. I suppose I could make him a straight woman, and the story logistics would still work. But then we're getting into the whole erasing LGBT people issue.

How about asking ourselves if we could flip the orientations of every character in our stories and still have them work without major rewriting? The answer is probably that sometimes they might and sometimes they might not.

Depends on the story and the character.

When I direct shows, I often play around with the casting and sometimes change the sex of characters.

When I write, sometimes the point of the story is specifically about gender or sexuality in ways that would make no sense if switched around. Or sometimes a whole plot or subplot hinges on whose sperm ended up in whose uturus when, and thus couldn't exist at all without the requisite parts pertaining to the requisite characters.

But in terms of personality traits or sexual preference, I like to switch things up when possible.

Hmm, yeah, now I come to think of it, some of characters just would not work if I gender swap them. Sometimes, there are personal reasons why I would not gender swap a character. For example, my first book is a YA about a fat girl in assassin school. I would never dream of changing her to a boy, because it's first and foremost a book I want girls to read and see that overweight girls have a place in fiction too, and not just as "the fat best friend", but as the MC in an adventure/fantasy setting. Aside from that, I think her character would be okay as a guy, but because of own personal reasons, she will most definitely remain a girl.

I have changed the gender of one of her classmates though, because my first agent said I don't have enough male characters. The characters change as a result of me flipping them, but so far they've always changed for the better, because they become more unique, more unexpected, and as a result, more refreshing.

I have a hard time writing female characters. My whole family is women and I, like many men, feel as though I have a progressive view of women in society but I don't really realize how much the stigma has gotten to me until I try to write a fully fleshed-out female character. Then writing the plot is like going through a minefield of social issues that I dare not touch. Consequently, all my female characters wind up being kind of androgynous… but I'm not big on girly girls or manly men anyway.
What I'm trying to say is, I feel ya. The only thing you (and I) can do is break out of the comfort zone.

Seven-Deuce said:

I have a hard time writing female characters.

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I'm a little curious why it seems like a good percentage of male writers are uncomfortable writing females (not all, but many). Meanwhile, I've met virtually no women who are uncomfortable writing male characters.