Why do guys chose to write gender bender?

[Jamminrabbit]

it's hot

 

[HelloHound]

It may be more simple than it appears...

 

[MajorKerina]

My time has come. Reasons vary cording to the writer of course. For me, I have always been fascinated by gender roles. I like writing about human nature and social relationships and how they are forged, torn down, and rebuilt according to massive changes in people.

Over something like 2 million gender bending words I’ve especially searched those relationships to come up with the most interesting emotions. Similar territory hit with some of my very first works which involved people in chaotic situations and especially several tales about non-humans uplifted to a human state.

I was about 12 when I wrote about a female chimp transformed into a telekinetic woman. The roots of what I wanted to explore were already there. It’s kind of like the same with Frankenstein by Mary Shelley where the monster as a full adult has an innate curiosity and perplexed response to being alive and is brutally terrifying and yet calmly childlike.

Exploring and rewriting what it means to be human is a fascinating focus and motivator for characters. It’s such an existential conflict to draw out their nature. Characters at their most vulnerable grappling for self-identity. Probably one of my most fascinating but yet unreleased works was a darkly philosophical take on a regular teenage girl whose reality is overturned when her parents and everyone around her suddenly believes that she is this boy she’s never heard of. Sort of an Orwellian/Kafkaesce social stranglehold on her identity. At the same time I used it to explore the feelings and situations of people I know with gender dysphoria being treated as someone they’re not. Gender bending in a story can be a fruitful tool for exploring these nuances and uncertainties of self.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

y not

 

[Tremaglif]

Other reason that's not talked enough is: The author is just in the closet, and they try to pretend they're writing genderbender only because for the views.

Other than that, the author probably doesn't have any preference over any gender for writing a protagonist, but some guys want to feel this 'relatability', so they create a girl but still with a guy's mind. You always see this in isekai. Being reincarnated/transmigrated doesn't really matter, as long as you can check 'modern guy I can relate in medieval fantasy world' in the list, even though such background become quickly forgotten for the whole story. The logic also applies in some genderbender stories.

 

[SternenklarenRitter]

My personal theory is that it is an excuse for these authors to express facets of their personality that are in conflict with what their culture tells them men should act like. Every cis man will feel this conflict, because the ideals of masculinity already contradict themselves. For example, my culture stereotypes men as being stoic and patient, but also as being aggressive and loud. Thus a male author may feel more comfortable expressing his rage and emotion (the opposite of his masculine stoicism) through a hyperactive female character, or instead express his intellect and curiosity (the opposite of masculine physicality) as a taciturn female character.