Male Writer, Female Character

Two things occurred to me as I was walking back to my car today after class: I had a really good idea for a blog post and it had also been a shamefully long couple of weeks since I'd bothered to write a blog post. Ergo, my presence here tonight. Tonight's also a little bit unique in that usually, I novel-write before I blog, which means that this is all happening out of sequence. I think I'm okay with that, though; the sequence has been a little bit messed up, as of late.

So, anyway, as I was walking, I started thinking about male writers and female protagonists in stories, and in particular, my own story which centers around a female main character and is told from the first person perspective. When I first started thinking about the story several months back, it never occurred to me to ask why I always thought of my character as a "she," it just felt like part of my sense of the character's identity. And, indeed, as a character takes shape in the mind, there comes a point in which you really can't just arbitrarily change these things, because by then, the character feels like a real person in your mind, and you don't just... you don't just change that. Not without possibly losing whatever sense of personality you might have had.
My thoughts on my female character led me to wonder what it meant, that a heterosexual male like myself would choose to write in the persona of a female. Obviously, I have a great deal of affection for females and some of my very favorite characters are female (I might even venture to say that I could more readily name favorite female characters than I could male ones.) Originally, I thought that perhaps the female character is a way of making the character distinct from the male writer; that is to say, I cannot write myself into the story with a character who is fundamentally different from me, at least not without getting a creepy "she's me, but a chick."

It reminded me of when I still played online roleplaying games like World of WarCraft, and the female characters I created for that game. Most male gamers who play females will tell you their reason for doing so is some variation of "well, if I'm gonna stare at an ass for 80 levels, it might as well be a hot one." But that was never my reason for doing so.

Is it some kind of latent trans-gender thing? Do I choose to imagine myself in the mindset of a female character as I write out of some desire to explore my own feminine side? Possibly, especially considering how rare it is for males in our culture to be allowed to demonstrate any "feminine" traits, but that would imply that I feel some sort of oppression, which I don't really think is true. So it's not the imaginary experience of "being" female for a time, or at least, I don't think it is.

The conclusion that I came to, as I was walking, and that I come to now as I write out my thoughts, is that, at least for me, there is, indeed, a certain sense of intimacy when a male writer creates a female character. It's not some sort of twisted god complex, it's not some notion that I can make my imaginary female do whatever I now wish, especially since I don't really believe I can control the story once it starts to happen.

However, part of the appeal, if not part of the actual reason, is that yes, there is that level of intimacy between writer and character. As the story takes shape, as the character takes form, it all becomes real to a certain extent. The character becomes realized in a way that brings her out of my thoughts and places her in a space that can be shared with readers. Readers who may feel the affection that I feel for my character, or desire, or protectiveness, or whatever else a particular character evokes. Because, let's be honest, we've all felt something for our favorite characters, and I think there's a character in all of our minds that we wish was real, if only for a moment.

So there is at the core of it that level of intimacy, and being the writer means that I'm closer and more intimate with my female character than anybody else is or anybody else ever will be. I don't think of my character as myself nor do I think of her as something that I can control; rather, I think of her as an individual, separate from me and yet dependent by virtue of the fact that I'm the creator and the writer. It's that level of intimacy, I think, that drives me to write her not as some idealized vision of my own desires, but as the complete person that all good characters strive to be. There is the sense, even as I subject her to the story, even as I introduce her romantic interest, even as others read her and make a place for her in their own hearts and minds, that no one else will ever get to be her writer. No one else will ever get closer to her than I get to be.

I'm not sure what to make of that. Quite possibly, all of this is more telling about my own various little deep-seated emotional insecurities, fears, or whatever. It's entirely possible that I'm subconsciously projecting something, or maybe even blatantly declaring something about being a control freak. I don't know.

What I do know is that I freely admit to having a great deal of affection for my female protagonist; it might even be fair to say that I have a little bit of a crush on her.

I do not believe that this means that I some day hope to meet someone who has all of the characteristics of my character. This does not mean that I will wish, no matter who I meet, that they could be like my character. I do not hold her up as some ideal, some icon or standard of comparison. In fact, I don't know what it means, that I feel this affection at all. Maybe it means nothing.

And maybe it's why creating these characters is even worth doing in the first place.