(tl;dr: PEOPLE. MORE SIMILAR THAN THEY ARE DIFFERENT.)
Exactly. After reading your post, I actually went back and checked (because, my memory is like a blackhole this evening, apperently) how many fics I wrote with POV as one gender versus the other. Not quite half- and half, and a fair portion I switched within the story too. Its just who's head- due to the story I want to tell- makes the most sense or the character I feel I understand better, sometimes. Both seem equally easy (or rather hard) to write, but now makes me wonder if I am putting enough though into how a person's gender would effect their POV in stories....
You do hit upon one of my biggest pet peeves in reading though- that balance between historical accuracy and women/modern views. I HATE it when it is a woman with 21st century sensiblities in a histoical setting.
Depending on how close an author is hewing to historical fact, most male characters would have a lot of sexist ideas about women and a lot of women were severally limited in what they could believably be doing and the amount of agency they had. This is true, but at the same time its only half the story. I think there are women from every age and walk of life that defied convention, in some way, and led lives that are admirable to us now. But it is also unfair if authors (well, or readers too I suppose...) ignore the fact that every society has social constructs, ideas or forms, or what it means to be a woman or a man, deeply ingrained things. A person might break these constructs in some ways, but all ways? No. And it is unnerving and rings untrue when a character in a historical novels ignores all social constructs of the setting of the story, and instead is a modern personage. Its less creative too- after all, our culture shaped us as surely as other cultures shaped people of the past. We may have valued different things and isn't part of the interest in looking at what could or couldn't remain the same?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Exactly. After reading your post, I actually went back and checked (because, my memory is like a blackhole this evening, apperently) how many fics I wrote with POV as one gender versus the other. Not quite half- and half, and a fair portion I switched within the story too. Its just who's head- due to the story I want to tell- makes the most sense or the character I feel I understand better, sometimes. Both seem equally easy (or rather hard) to write, but now makes me wonder if I am putting enough though into how a person's gender would effect their POV in stories....
You do hit upon one of my biggest pet peeves in reading though- that balance between historical accuracy and women/modern views. I HATE it when it is a woman with 21st century sensiblities in a histoical setting.
Depending on how close an author is hewing to historical fact, most male characters would have a lot of sexist ideas about women and a lot of women were severally limited in what they could believably be doing and the amount of agency they had. This is true, but at the same time its only half the story. I think there are women from every age and walk of life that defied convention, in some way, and led lives that are admirable to us now. But it is also unfair if authors (well, or readers too I suppose...) ignore the fact that every society has social constructs, ideas or forms, or what it means to be a woman or a man, deeply ingrained things. A person might break these constructs in some ways, but all ways? No. And it is unnerving and rings untrue when a character in a historical novels ignores all social constructs of the setting of the story, and instead is a modern personage. Its less creative too- after all, our culture shaped us as surely as other cultures shaped people of the past. We may have valued different things and isn't part of the interest in looking at what could or couldn't remain the same?
Interesting and though provoking post!