From the Male POV
Upon discovering the protagonist in my novel is male, a friend remarked on the challenge of writing from the other gender’s perspective.
Until then, I hadn’t thought it difficult to write from the male perspective at all. It hadn’t once struck me as challenging. Almost immediately I knew why.
Is there ever a time when I’m not thinking from a male perspective?
Don’t cry when you’re talking about something difficult, it’ll shut them down, make them uncomfortable, cause them to disrespect you.
Use facts, not feelings.
Be supportive of their tirades. Calming of their outburst. Responsible for their comfort.
In just about every season of life and in every industry I’ve worked, I’m always thinking from the male perspective. You have to for survival.
One thing I have found challenging, however, is, in this particular story, for this particular character, the power dynamic is reversed. Throughout the story, there isn’t a stereotypical gender gap and there aren’t stereotypical gender roles.
I think, even when I’ve seen a world without those gender gaps and roles portrayed, it’s typically a male creating that world—even in art.
I can’t tell you how many times a man has described the ideal situation for women in the family, in the church, in the workplace, while women sit around him at the table.
Never once does he ask the woman’s opinion.
He got it into his head women were unhappy and took it upon himself to fix it. Not realizing, in the fixing, he still left the women out.
I’m writing from wishful, what-would-it-be-like-if perspective. From very little actual experience.
Someone said to write what you know, and if you don’t know it, learn it.
How do you learn something that’s never happened?
How do you learn something that has yet to exist?
That’s why I love the creative process. You can invent worlds that haven’t happened.
How many apocalyptic, dystopian stories have been written before a Pandemic hits the world? How many times has this COVID-19 thing happened in books and in movies before it happened in real life?
In the Ted Talk from Aja Monet and Phillip Agnew they say, “Data rarely moves people, but great art always does.”
I don’t know what it’s like to live in a world where men and women work together, side by side, supporting one another and caring for one another, without the push-pull of power dynamics and gender disillusionment. But I can imagine it. I can write about it.
And maybe I can influence the world.
“Laws never change culture, but culture always changes laws.”
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash