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Readers share 17 dead giveaways that a male character was written by a woman

"I'm a bad boy with a heart of gold, and I only have eyes for you."

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People are sharing hilarious examples of what happens when women write male characters.

It's hard to write convincingly outside of your lived experience, especially when it comes to gender. Whether it's comfortable to admit or not, there are a lot of fundamental differences between men and women. We're raised differently, socialized different, and view the world is wildly unique ways. And that's to say nothing of our many, many physiological differences.

Most famously, you've heard the jokes and seen the brutal examples of "men writing women." There's even a whole subreddit dedicated to the worst instances found from books in the wild. One hallmark? There's usually a weird fixation on their physical appearance. The old joke/meme goes, "Cassandra woke up to the rays of the sun streaming through the slats on her blinds, cascading over her naked chest. She stretched, her breasts lifting with her arms as she greeted the sun. She rolled out of the bed and put on a shirt, her nipples prominently showing through her thin fabric. She breasted boobily towards the stairs, and titted downwards."

You get the idea.

But let it be known that it can also be hard for women to write convincing male characters! The male psyche is just so complex, so multi-faceted, such an enigma, that it can be difficult to truly capture without walking a mile in our shoes. OK, maybe that's not exactly it, but let's have an honest conversation about the last time you saw a male character in a romance novel awkwardly "adjust" himself—a phenomenon all guys are familiar with. Probably not very often, right?

A recent Reddit thread posed the question: "What's a telltale sign that a male character was written by a woman?"

Hundreds of users chimed in with their thoughts and opinions and dead giveaways, and the responses are laugh-out-loud funny and wickedly accurate. Here are a few of the best observations:

1. Only "she" gets him.

"She's the only one who gets to see his vulnerable side, which only consists of two things, a traumatic past and his inability to live if he ever loses her," a user wrote.

 books, writing, authors, men, women, sexism, masculinity, femininity, men writing women, romance, fantasy, erotica Who wants to fix this bad boy?  Giphy  

2. He's the absolute worst. No, wait, he's simply misunderstood.

"He's a total bastard... but with a heart of gold that she will help him discover," someone added.

3. He effortlessly handles her frazzled, panicky freak-outs.

"When a female character is communicating badly, but he understands her anyway," another said.

 books, writing, authors, men, women, sexism, masculinity, femininity, men writing women, romance, fantasy, erotica These hunks will never, ever give up on love.  Giphy  

4. He has in-depth conversations with friends about love, emotions, and the things they fear.

"For me, it’s most obvious when male characters are talking to each other. Men just don’t communicate the same way that most women in my life tend to," a guy suggested.

5. He could have anyone, but he just can't get her off his mind.

"Guy has literally everything(money, looks, daring badboy) and suddenly chooses the mundane blank canvass main character. He singularly and inexplicably becomes obsessed with her after seeing her once at [insert random place]" someone observed.

6. The burning. So much burning.

"His touch or his stare burns into the heroine," another user said.

 books, writing, authors, men, women, sexism, masculinity, femininity, men writing women, romance, fantasy, erotica His piercing eyes will burn straight into you.  Giphy  

7. He's an open book, or the biggest jerk on the planet.

"He's either an incredibly emotionally open and gentle man or the most annoying asshole you'll ever meet," someone wrote.

8. If he's a good guy, he never gets his timing wrong.

"He gets the timing of his behaviors just right for the FMC [Female Main Character]. He's aggressive at the right time for her and vulnerable at the right time for her. Even his apparent missteps just make him more attractive to her," another user added.

9. He's cold and distant, but only because he's afraid of how much he loves her.

"They're super handsome, but cold and distant the entire time, but then save the day and secretly have always loved the main character," someone commented.

10. He is an enigma.

"Capable but humble, Affectionate but distant, Your pleasure is his pleasure," someone succinctly added.

11. He's hardworking and successful, but always seems to be free for a hang.

"He will also be handsome, perfectly fit, very rich, travels all the time, but still somehow has all the free time in the world to be with her all day," a user wrote.

12. His natural musk is magnificent.

"When it’s repeatedly mentioned that he smells like a plant and a weather element. Pine and snow. Cedar and rain. Oak and sunlight," a commenter observed.


 books, writing, authors, men, women, sexism, masculinity, femininity, men writing women, romance, fantasy, erotica He smelled like cedar and rain.  Giphy  

13. He is a thinly-veiled takedown of all men everywhere.

"One I've noticed is male villains who are obviously meant to be allegorical critiques of sexist men. They're often painfully badly written and give the vibe that the author has not ever actually met a human, sexist or otherwise," someone said.

14. He growls, in a good way.

"When he growls or snarls [or makes other animal sounds]," another guy added.

15. He may have psychic abilities.

"He's a 'mind reader' towards others and just 'knows" what they want without the need to communicate clearly. ... He can read minds and knows what she wants without her being up front about it," someone suggested.

16. He's the goodest good-guy that ever good-guyed.

"He's a family man who works 60 hours a week, loves family activities and spending time with the kids. He supports his wife in her career. He's also super jacked because he lifts. Apparently, he doesn't need sleep and days have 30 hours."

 books, writing, authors, men, women, sexism, masculinity, femininity, men writing women, romance, fantasy, erotica He spends all his waking hours working and with the family, but still has a six-pack.  Giphy  

17. He's a man of few words, but his brain never stops chattering.

"The inner dialogue is off. Too many words," someone summed up.


The truth is, it's hard for writers to "win" no matter what they do. Men that write vulnerable, soft, feminine female characters will be criticized for stereotyping. If they write them tough and a little crass, they're just writing a 'male fantasy.' Too quirky and impulsive and you've created the dreaded Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

The same is true for female writers. Make your men too brutish and simple and you're playing into the stereotypes. Too sensitive and emotionally-intelligent and you're "setting the bar too high."

We have to remember that a lot of what we read and enjoy on-screen is meant to be escapism. A lot of the teasing criticisms above are pulled from the pages of romance novels, which are meant to be a fantasy. They're primarily written for women, so it's fun to imagine a hunky bad boy with a soft-gooey center that only you can access. Similarly, men love fantasy stories where they get to imagine themselves as the hero meeting a distressed damsel who loves them exactly the way they are.

It's all just a bit of fun, and it can also be a lot of fun for astute readers when well-meaning authors don't quite hit the mark.

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Education

Ever heard of 'The Tiffany Problem'? Why people think historically accurate things are wrong.

It's a strange but real dilemma for storytellers.

Ali Shaker/VOA, Tylwyth Eldar/Wikimedia Commons

The name Tiffany goes way back to Tiphaine Raguenel, who lived in Mont Saint Michel in the 1300s.

Depending on what generation you belong to, when you hear the name Tiffany, you might think of the famous jewelry store, the teen singer from the 80s or the less-in-the-spotlight daughter of the former president. Most likely, you don't think of a woman who lived in the Middle Ages.

In fact, if you were listening to an audiobook set in medieval times and the narrator introduced a character named Tiffany, you'd probably get yanked right out of the story as your brain would say, "Wait, why is there a Tiffany in this story? Isn't that a much more modern name?"

It's actually not, which is exactly why The Tiffany Problem is called The Tiffany Problem.

The Tiffany Problem refers to the fact that people in modern times will sometimes see something as anachronistic when it's not. It's something writers, filmmakers and other storytellers have to be aware of, as it can feel like there's a historical problem even if there isn't an actual historical problem.

Abraham Piper explains the dilemma and how it was coined:

As Piper shares, fantasy author Jo Walton coined the term "The Tiffany Problem" and explained it:

"Your readers are modern people and know what they know, which is fine except when what they know isn’t actually right. For instance, the name Tiffany sounds extremely modern to us. It feels jarring when we read it as a character name in a historical setting, where we’d be quite happy with names like Anna and Jane. But our instinct is wrong, because Tiffany is a form of Theophania, and it was fairly common in medieval England and France. It went out of fashion later, and it’s because we don’t have seventeenth to nineteenth century examples that it feels modern. But you still can’t use it in a fantasy novel set in the exact time and place when the name would have been historically accurate, because it will jerk the reader out of their reading trance. They know it’s wrong and you can’t tell them that what they know is wrong."

Piper had also shared that "ha ha," which seems like a casual, modern colloquialism, is actually very old, with the first known use coming from a monk 1,000 years ago. He also mentions "OMG," which was used by a World War I admiral in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917. And "hubby" as a slang term for husband? That goes way back to the 1680s. Who knew?

It's a bit ironic that writers who strive to ensure their historical fiction works are historically accurate can find themselves stymied by people being just flat-out wrong about what's accurate and what's not. Humans are interesting creatures, aren't we?

For more info about the name Tiffany than you ever thought you wanted to know but will be delighted to learn, CGP Grey created a whole video about the name that has 4.7 million views. Tiffany exploded the 1980s, but CGP Grey goes all the way back to the year 300 to uncover the origins of the name. It's genuinely entertaining. Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

If you're still here and want to take an even deeper dive into the history of Tiffany, this other video from CGP Grey is an incredible rabbit hole that will make you appreciate the work historians do and marvel at how much digging Grey actually did to provide the original Tiffany history video. We're talking trips to the deep dark corners of The British Library, the largest library in the world, and hours and hours of paging through books just to find the original source of this one poem that includes the name "Tiffany." It's a journey, but a fascinating one.

Enjoy "Someone Dead Ruined My Life… Again":

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

This article originally appeared last year.

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history
Teachers

A boy told his teacher she can't understand him because she's white. Her response is on point.

'Be the teacher America's children of color deserve, because we, the teachers, are responsible for instilling empathy and understanding in the hearts of all kids. We are responsible for the future of this country.'

Photo by John Pike. Used with permission.

Emily E. Smith is no ordinary teacher.

Fifth-grade teacher Emily E. Smith is not your ordinary teacher. She founded The Hive Society — a classroom that's all about inspiring children to learn more about their world ... and themselves — by interacting with literature and current events. Students watch TED talks, read Rolling Stone, and analyze infographics.

She even has a long-distance running club to encourage students to take care of their minds and bodies. Smith is such an awesome teacher, in fact, that she recently received the 2015 Donald H. Graves Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Writing.

It had always been her dream to work with children in urban areas, so when Smith started teaching, she hit the ground running. She had her students making podcasts, and they had in-depth discussions about their readings on a cozy carpet.

But in her acceptance speech for her award, she made it clear that it took a turning point in her career before she really got it:

"Things changed for me the day when, during a classroom discussion, one of my kids bluntly told me I "couldn't understand because I was a white lady." I had to agree with him. I sat there and tried to speak openly about how I could never fully understand and went home and cried, because my children knew about white privilege before I did. The closest I could ever come was empathy."

Smith knew that just acknowledging her white privilege wasn't enough.

She wanted to move beyond just empathy and find a way to take some real action that would make a difference for her students.

She kept the same innovative and engaging teaching methods, but she totally revamped her curriculum to include works by people who looked like her students. She also carved out more time to discuss issues that her students were facing, such as xenophobia and racism.

And that effort? Absolutely worth it.

As she said in her acceptance speech:

"We studied the works of Sandra Cisneros, Pam Munoz Ryan, and Gary Soto, with the intertwined Spanish language and Latino culture — so fluent and deep in the memories of my kids that I saw light in their eyes I had never seen before."

The changes Smith made in her classroom make a whole lot of sense. And they're easy enough for teachers everywhere to make:

— They studied the work of historical Latino figures, with some of the original Spanish language included. Many children of color are growing up in bilingual households. In 2007, 55.4 million Americans 5 years of age and older spoke a language other than English at home.

— They analyzed the vision of America that great writers of color sought to create. And her students realized that our country still isn't quite living up to its ideals. Despite progress toward racial equality with the end of laws that enforced slavery or segregation, we still have a long way to go. Black people still fare worse than white people when it comes to things like wealth, unfair arrests, and health.

— They read excerpts from contemporary writers of color, like Ta-Nehisi Coates who writes about race. Her students are reading and learning from a diverse group of writers. No small thing when they live in a society that overwhelmingly gives more attention to white male writers (and where the number of employees of color in the newspaper industry stagnates at a paltry 12%).

— They read about the Syrian crisis, and many students wrote about journeys across the border in their family history for class. The opportunity particularly struck one student; the assignment touched him so much that he cried. He never had a teacher honor the journey his family made. And he was proud of his heritage for the first time ever. "One child cried," Smith shared, "and told me he never had a teacher who honored the journey his family took to the United States. He told me he was not ashamed anymore, but instead proud of the sacrifice his parents made for him."

Opportunities like this will only increase as the number of children from immigrant families is steadily increasing. As of 2013, almost 17.4 million children under 18 have at least one immigrant parent.

Smith now identifies not just as an English teacher, but as a social justice teacher.

ethnicity, responsibility, empathy

Teaching in a racially and ethnically diverse world.

Photo by John Pike. Used with permission.

Smith's successful shift in her teaching is an example for teachers everywhere, especially as our schools become increasingly ethnically and racially diverse. About 80% of American teachers are white. But as of last year, the majority of K-12 students in public schools are now children of color.

As America's demographics change, we need to work on creating work that reflects the experiences that our students relate to. And a more diverse curriculum isn't just important for students of color. It's vital for everyone.

As Smith put it, "We, the teachers, are responsible for instilling empathy and understanding in the hearts of all kids. We are responsible for the future of this country."


This article originally appeared nine years ago.

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Pop Culture

Legendary writer Alan Moore explains why it's important to read ‘terrible’ books not just good ones

"Terrible" books can be an inspiration.

via Gaius Cornelius/Wikimedia Commons

Writer Alan Moore speaking in London.

Alan Moore, 69, is a legendary comic book writer best known for “Watchmen,” “V for Vendetta,” “The Ballad of Halo Jones,” “Swamp Thing,” "Batman: The Killing Joke” and "From Hell."

Moore is known as one of the best comic book writers in the English language, and his advice for fellow scribes is a bit counterintuitive. He believes that it’s as important to read "terrible" books as it is classic literature.

“As a prospective writer, I would urge you to not only read good books. Read terrible books as well, because they can be more inspiring than the good books,” Moore says in a clip taken from his BBC Maestro online storytelling course.

“If you are inspired by a good book, there’s always the danger of plagiarism, of doing something that is too much like that good book,” Moore says in the video. “Whereas, a genuinely helpful reaction to a piece of work that you’re reading is, ‘Jesus Christ, I could write this sh*t!’ That is immensely liberating — to find somebody who is published who is doing much, much worse than you.”

Moore also believes that being exposed to bad writing can help you learn from other writers' mistakes. Knowing why something doesn’t work can be as valuable as understanding why something succeeds.

​“And by analyzing why they are doing so badly, this will immensely help your own style. You’ll find out all of the mistakes not to make,” Moore continues. “‘Why did this story offend me so much?’ Analyze that. Find out why you didn’t like it. Find out all of the examples of clumsiness or bad thinking that spoiled the story for you.”

So, next time someone judges you for reading something that some would call “terrible,” remind them that the only way to be great is to be able to understand the awful. 

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