I feel like sometimes I feel more comfortable writing male characters than female character, despite being a woman. I remember reading an article about how woman are more comfortable writing male characters than men are writing female characters (in Western media at least) because women often have to read/watch stories told from a man's perspective but men don't often need to watch stories told from a woman's perspective. I don't know if I could find it since it's been like ten years and idk if this has changed at all since we have gotten more female lead characters in genres that are traditionally "boy movies" ie action, superhero, fantasy etc etc.
I think the other thing is that I'm not a super feminine person and, while I'm comfortable with who I am, I feel like I always second guess my female characters because they do tend to trend more tomboy like myself so while I like them, idk if other women will like them or relate to them. It's not really an issue when writing men if they aren't as feminine, cuz that's generally not what male characters are criticized for.
This is also just my opinion and probably just my anxiety, but with the rise of a lot of video essay channels and movie analysis/react channel, it feels like any female character, regardless of how they're written, is just dogpiled on. Either they're torn apart by misogynists for not being feminine enough, too grumpy, existing in a traditionally male genre etc but the trend on the other side of the perspective is that writing a female character that is "more masculine" ie not super emotive, super strong (physically), saving themselves etc, means you hate traditional femininity and you're not supporting all women, but if you write a more traditionally feminine character then you get people who will criticize you for not writing strong women and implying that you need a man to survive. I fully acknowledge that sometimes the character are just bad and actually do come across this way, but it is EXHAUSTING just how literally every female character is put under a microscope and if you don't meet their arbitrary exacting standards, then it's not just a bad character or bad writing, its a reflection on all female characters being made and/or a reflection on how you think about women IRL. Like I do enjoy and appreciate the videos that are done to help people write better female characters, but their are so many videos and conversations that tend to be like "I want more feminine women in stories and this character isn't feminine enough in my opinion, so they must be a badly written character." I get that it's cuz the internet is not a monolith and people have conflicting opinions/standards. I try to stay away from those channels/videos like that, but I do genuinely like watch videos on writing and how to write better characters that are different than me so sometimes they slip through the algorithm before I catch them lol. There's next to 0 videos on how to write male characters and male characters are allowed to be bad without it immediately being picked apart or that we should never have male led action/sci-fi/etc stories anymore (unless they're POC but that is a whole different post).
Idk maybe nobody else has noticed and it's just me and I need to go touch grass or whatever, but sometimes I swear I'm going to give up and just go into writing Yaoi lol. Just kidding(maybe lol). Sorry to go off on that. I can deal with it 90% of the time, just nice to vent with people who might understand.
