One thing you didn't read into my response to you is that I was writing it before coffee (ha), so my apologies for uncalled-for prickliness, on my own part.
It is also true that the process of communication inherently involves reading things into what is said, so I have of course read things into your response. This is the line that got my dander up:
You don't want your male character to emote in some generic 'average male' fashion, you want him to emote in the way HE, as an individual, emotes. Does that make sense?
Of course not. Of course people are just people, deep inside, and men have deeply felt emotions just like women do.
However: notice that I referenced the feel--act--speak sequence. That is where men and women differ. While they both feel, genders are conditioned to act in very different ways. You don't need me to explain what those ways are.
What I said in my post--which was my matter-of-opinion response to the OP--is that writing another gender means you have to pay careful attention to the act--speak portion of the sequence. The same goes for writing other ages, other nationalities, other socioeconomic groups. There are plenty of essays written about being careful when you write ethnic groups other than your own, for example. I don't think a statement that it takes more thought to write a different gender merits a scolding. The other gender has had a different experience from the author's own.
Since I'm new here and nobody knows me, let me explain why I'm interested in this question: I'm a woman. I just finished writing half a million words about a male character dealing with the disconnect between his own emotional instincts and how a contemporary/near-future society expects him to behave. I have a really appropriate 300 words I could post to illustrate how I have handled it, but I don't know the etiquette about posting snippets in threads like these.
