I've been trying to be high-minded lately. I've written about memory, tolerance and understanding, and what we can learn from good literature. We've had some great discussions about this – most of us are on the same page when it comes to wanting to improve the planet. Now I'm going to spoil it all by being annoying. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

Take this miniquiz. These quotes are from a current TV show in the US, called Mad Men. (It's available in the UK, too.) The story is set in the 1960s. Half of the quotes are from male characters, half from female. Guess which is which. (Answers in a footnote.)

Mad Men Miniquiz

1. 1. 'I've got good news.'
   
   'You finally found a hooker who will take traveler's checks?'
2. 2. 'You hate that Daddy supports my dreams. You just think I'm a pain in the ass.'
3. 3. 'One minute you’re on top of the world, the next minute some secretary’s running you over with a lawn mower.'
4. 'Why don't you join this company and read a memo once in a while?!'
5. 'This cannot be made good. It's shameful. It's a shameful, shameful day!'
6. 'And then I realized I don't know anything about you.'¹

How did you do? Were you surprised at some of the answers? Did your right/wrong guesses tell you anything about the way you personally see male and female characters as interacting? The reason I bring this up is that most of us, as writers, are starting from either a male or female perspective. (I'm assuming, although we might, of course, be aliens from a planet with three or more genders.) How well we write the 'other' gender depends on how much understanding and empathy we bring to the process. It might also depend on our having a clear-headed view of the difference in social strategies used by either gender – with allowance for time and place, as well.

Which Planet Are They From?

Back in the 1970s, there was a book that said that men were from Mars, and women were from Venus. Bah. The idea was that gender differences made humans aliens to one another. Now, we know that's nonsense. But cultural settings can cause men and women to use different strategies for solving the same set of problems – much in the same way that occupational training does. Consider this joke:

A farmer has a problem with sick chickens. He calls in three 'experts': a biologist, a chemist, and a physicist. The biologist examines the chickens, but can't locate the problem. The chemist performs tests, with no result. The physicist studies the chickens for a long time without touching them. Then he scribbles complex calculations in his notebook. He announces, 'I have the answer! But it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum.'

You know that kind of joke. Different training, different approaches.

So how does that affect the way we write gender? It depends on us, and on our characters' nationality, social class, educational background, and place on the historical timeline. If you write a 19th-century upper-class Englishwoman who talks and acts like 'Buffy, the Vampire Slayer', shame on you.

Self-Diagnostic

Just to see what you think, try this out:

How do you think men and women react differently in these common situations?

• A disagreement at work: We're not talking here about who is more conciliatory. That's an individual issue – some men are peacemakers, some women are confrontational. But which group is more likely to meet the situation head-on? Which is more likely to want to discuss how the situation makes them feel? Who is more likely to seek allies among coworkers, and in what way?
• Disagreements generally: Which group is more likely to focus on what aspect of a situation? What are the differences in language that they use? Is this a possible source of strategy conflict for your characters? How does that affect the way you write family or workplace scenarios?
• Bad driving behaviour: Are men or women more likely to sideswipe you when passing on a narrow curve? How about rear-ending? Which is more likely to say, 'I was tailgating you because I couldn't figure out why you were going so slowly.'? As compared to, 'I was tailgating you to see how you'd react to the challenge.'?
• Physical danger: No, we're not saying 'men are macho, women wait to be rescued.' Particularly not today, when the US news is agog about the courageous (and furious) woman in Texas who defended her minivan and small children from a carjacker. The carjacker ended up in hospital. Her quote, 'I didn't really mean to run over him,' was priceless.
  
  No, women can be tenacious and physically brave. But how do the emergency strategies they use differ from those of men? Look around you and find out. Then you're ready to write about Ripley on the spaceship with the monster.
• Speaking of danger, what do men and women fear? You might be surprised. Vincent Price once pointed out that the reason horror movie directors used so many cobwebs was because men feared them. Women don't: they just attack them with a broom. This Researcher's mother was tough when it came to rodents, though she wasn't fond of them. But I've seen other people's mothers go nearly catatonic at the thought of a rat. What else can you find?

Now, you may believe that it's high-minded to assert that men and women do not, on the whole, use different strategies in social situations. If so, I guarantee that somebody, somewhere, will yell at you for creating characters that are indistinguishable from one another. Those characters will all be using one set of strategies: yours. Stop that.

Go out and study some people. And remember: Xena, Warrior Princess is one tough cookie. But she's a tough female cookie, and don't you forget it². If you want to start your study by examining what some very hip young people think about it all, click on that link. You'll be amazed.

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Dmitri Gheorgheni

01.07.13 Front Page

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