Leave it up to the highest forms of education to use completely different genres and story types to compare two groups.

I would expect them to compare Forest Gump to GI. Jane, or Thelma and Louise to Lock Stock and two smoking barrels.

It was a discussion to answer a question someone raised, and we tended to look at picaresque qualities texts had, not try to shoehorn everything into the same category and say everything was the same. Forrest Gump can be seen as a sort of picaro character because he has to deal with issues of his body in a lot of ways, he's absolutely outside of the norms of society and still needs to deal with the laws of that society in some way. I'm sorry, I haven't seen GI Jane or Lock Stock, so I can't comment on whether either would fit myself, though I will look into them!

@Sadhyra - I've been meaning to check that book out, actually. I've only heard good things about it and how interesting it is.

@Merik - hai merik, did you like my essay?

Not gonna lie, I didn't read it. How to act feminine is not a particularly important subject for me.

I am sure it was written beautifully and was absolutely flawless though.

I'm glad I have your faith in me. It was perfect, of course, but that I have Merik-faith in my abilities is very comforting.

Regarding viewing other females as enemy: it's more viewing them as competition. That's a simple biological urge, just as men will inherently view other men as competition. Mating and so forth. I'm not saying you have to flirt and beat down other women, but most women do feel some type of competition, even if just on the unconscious level of being "better." I've noticed in games that females (again, generalization) find it more natural to compete among each other, be that in combat, crafting design, politics, than they do with their male counterparts. Being the best "girl" fighter, for example, is different than being a good fighter. It implies a more relaxed gauge of judgement, but it also implies beating up on other females to obtain the title.

This is slightly tangential, but an excerpt from a thread over on the Aetolian forums a few years back:

To add to that, the counter often happens, in that male foes will be overly friendly with a female opponent, even flirt with her if she kills him. This is, in a way, a form of denial, as it removes the comparison between the two characters, by objectifying the female into something not on the same level of competition as the man - either by elevating them or lowering them.

Another note should be made that my most bitter foes, from my earlier gaming days, were all female. I'm not so fixated on the PK as I once was, so I'm a bit more nonchalent about it, but back when I would PK for hours a day, the other female fighters and I would go at it far worse and far more bitter than we would towards the males.

Anyways, these are all generalizations - obviously, there are distinct exceptions - but these kind of analyses are things that people who make games look at, when they ponder how to tap into the female market.

Dang. When I started reading this, I was going to suggest Carey's Kushiel saga. It's quite good.

Anyways, I just have one more thing to add. This varies from woman to woman, but it's something that I've noticed in myself that I've never noticed in men -- extreme subtlety and reading into things. There's a reason why the stereotype of the infatuated girl and the oblivious male exists, and I suspect it's due to the interpretations of some women.

I'm more neurotic than most, but I find that little details in behaviour, odd changes in tone of voice or word choice, matter to me more than to my male counterparts. I'll have entire conversations with female friends about what that guy or an old friend or a new enemy 'meant' by a certain inflection they had in their speech, their choice of words, etc. When I mention the same topic to most males, particularly when I'm confronting them about why they behaved a certain way, the response I tend to get is "buh? What are you talking about?"

Of course, every human being is different. That's just my observation on what is likely a culturally-realized gender difference.

As far as books? I'd also have to recommend The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. The narrative is spread over five females, each with a distinct voice and way of thinking. An interesting read, even if the subject is one that I despise after years of having it shoved down my throat in class -- Africa and the Terrible White Man.

GI-Jane is about a woman who wants to join the Armed Forces but is given many hurdles to overcome to do so. Though I guess GI-Jane would be better to compare to Anapolis. Actually those two movies would be very comparable. Forest gump sort of stands alone because it deals with so many issues, hard to compare.

Lock Stock is about two guys who are outside of the law. (If I remember correctly, it's been so long)

I'm just saying that comparing movies of the same basic plot/genre would be more helpfull to look at diferences between men and woman. Instead of looking at movies with almost no commonality between them.

great, now I'm a female gamer

Omfg yes. So true. In roleplay, however, it's very different as you are physically typing every facial tick and inflection change out...and the other person is reading them. Men are SO much more aware of things in text-based games, simply because they can't help but have the little details forced upon them.

Awesome book. That father is so terrible.

I find it very interesting that many people are mentioning that females are often competitive, or at least just as competitive as men are, in particular, when dealing with potential mates. I would agree more so with Nyir that there is competition in only certain instances; and that the norm for women isn't competition with other women. From what I have studied, women often find themselves in a web of relationships, and the time they wish to compete with each other is for the access of relationships -- be they friendly, sexual, or what may have you -- rather than compete for "bestness" (which is to say, that both sexes have a tendency to do that, a la MLK's Drum Major Instinct).

On playing a female character, I would argue just to simply play yourself. I don't think you can accurately distill a "nature of being female" -- especially if you want some sort of literature-inspired model. You will always have a broad range of personalities to choose from, such as the boudoir politician to a Margaret Thatcher-TINA.

Dear god, you've figured out men. Why can't the rest of womankind understand this?

Or she just needs to find smarter men.

My wife says she hates having female aquintances because everything is a contest and they always stab you in the back about the most minor things. I never noticed it, but apparently there are subtle things I'm just not privy to.

typical conversation:

me: Why don't you hang out with X?
her: Uggh, she's so mean, I hate being around her!
me: But you just shared some tips with eachother.
her: Well, that was different, you wouldn't understand.

I'm pretty sure that I'm so oblivious to that kind of thing as a woman that, if people were trying to stab me in the back, they find they have to stab me in the front instead for me to notice and respond.

QFT.

I wasn't aware of this phenomenon until my fiancé explained it in detail to me. On behalf of women worldwide: Sorry, men.

Meh, even my now deceased female mag alts were a magnet for Doman.

..I have conversations like this, he just shakes his head and gives up and says I'm driving him slowly to the grave.

Edit: Ps. It's a bit hard to explain, from what I've been told we're very contrary, very subtle, very manipulative, catty, etc. You could essentially be yourself, but remember women are more likely to read into things. You may be saying "I like eggs", we're hearing "I like eggs, but not yours" based on either the tone of your voice or even the simplest of actions. That's kind of an extreme example though, but hey!

I feel like I have been given a glimpse into the female psyche and now understand women completely, 1000% after reading this thread.

This feeling is akin to staring into a black hole, then the black hole tells me that my staring just isn't the same as the last time I stared, but it totally was.

I'll make a real woman out of you, Sojiro. You can be my Japanese School Girl and I'll be the betentacled monster.


Oh, this isn't your thread. The offer stand for you or Nyir.

I just finished reading Star Wars: Specte~r of the Past, by Timothy Zahn. I found its characterizations of Han and Luukeja spot on aand