Writing the Opposite Sex

I recently wrote a short story called A Fine Evening about a young female party-goer who is enthralled with a dashing stranger and goes with him back to his home . . . which happens to be a sleek star-ship nestled in the woods outside of Savannah, Georgia. Telling much more would be a spoiler, but you can probably already guess that dark things are afoot. I'll let you read it to find out the rest.

A bit of criticism I received was that Whynzee, the young woman in the story, seems to have the sexual appetite of a man. It appeared to one particular critic that her thoughts and desires were decidedly male (me, I guess) but projected onto the character of a woman. At the time I said, "Yeah, could be . . ." and it made me a little worried that I had misjudged what I was painting as female.

The truth is that it's simply more difficult for a writer to portray the opposite sex. There is no way around it. We are more competent relaying what we are more familiar with, and despite a lifelong attempt, we (and not just writers) will never fully understand what it is like to be the other gender. Inevitably in life we project a bit of our own experiences, our own perceptions, onto others when we are trying to figure out what is going on in their heads. With writing, the downfalls of that are simply more tangible and perhaps more obvious.

But I've thought more about it, and even if what I wrote is markedly misrepresentative (I hope it's not) in the specifics, I think it is on point in the large. Human beings, male and female alike, are motivated by much the same thing. Outside of base physical needs, I believe we all want love, validation, and acceptance. Whynzee wants those things, too, and she manifests those desires in the story in the form of sexual attraction to a stranger. She pins the hope of finding things that are missing in her life on a man she does not know and whom she would otherwise probably not follow back to his ship. You may think that behavior is unlike women in general, but it is very much like Whynzee. And anyway, do you want to read stories about normal people? Didn't think so.

So, there: I've over-analyzed my own work. Read it for free (it'll cost you about 15 minutes), and then let me know what you think.