Sunday, October 5, 2008
Response to First Person Female
First of all this was a great topic that i never even thought about. Harrison hit on a lot of different prospectives, and brought in a lot of topics or ideas surrounding the main point. In my on personal opinion i think it all depends on the message the author is trying to expose and the surrounding circumstances, when it comes to men posing as women and vice versa. Some men and women attempt to do this, and sometimes it can come very close when they have been around the opposite sex all their lives and have studied them for a extremely long period of time. The author will start by laying the background information in to place such as the gender, age, race, childhood, hobbies, education, social status, and etc. By applying this and public persona to the character the author can come very close to successfully capturing the voice of the opposite sex. However, when it comes to the psychological point of view the text becomes harder. I think it is difficult for a men to have full access to the thoughts of a women like Harrison mentioned and vice versa. This is usually when stereotypes come into to play. The author tries to write off the typical man or women and sometimes this makes it hard to be original. This is not always a problem because some documents can get away with this when they main focus is to criticize a aspect of reality that is pretty much dominant in a culture. However this can also be a set back because in certain situations it is hard to determine exactly how that sex feels about the subject. So in the end i think it can be done depending on the situation and circumstances surrounding the story. Its not always possible to reach every audience member but in some instances the author can satisfy some.
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3 comments:
Interesting reflection on the possibilities; in the end, it may not have anything to do with gender but how the writer creates the voice....????
Thanks for the reponse.. however what makes you think that it doesnt have anything to do with gender???? I think it has everything to do with gender...the whole point of the article is a male writing from a female's point of view and vice versa, and the challenges invloved with it. As the article states and i concur, it is not impossible for a male to write as a female in some cases.
What are your thoughts???
You hit the major problem about writing as the opposite gender on a psychological level: writing in stereotypes. Even in writing in the same gender you can only write what you know but a female writing in a female voice will likely be closer to reality than a male writing in a female voice, but both can easily end up falling apart if the author isn't careful.
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