Do you think it's entirely possible for a man to write about a female character to their fullest and vice versa? Is there amount where an author can't quite intellectually grasp the totality of the lives experience of another gender?

[mids2019]

So for centuries authors have written both female and male characters extremely well.Shakepeare, Dickens, Eliot, Austen, Bronte sisters etc. etc.

however I think literature has become more gendered in audience with the advent of chick lit and hyper masculine novels like Jack Reacher with a host of aubiographies from ex SAS/boxer/sportsmen types. I don't actually think this a direction we should go in? I think it's a little worrying that in a typical high store there is now a divergence between 'male' and 'female' literature.

do you think modern authors are becoming a little more reluctant to write in depth characters from the opposite sex as presumably this is more of literary challenge? Is there sterling in modern society that it is authoritative to write about another lender's lives experience in much the same way as writing about a character from another ethnicity may not be construed by some as entirely ethical?

I do hope this isn't the case and authors in general do continue to write about other genders at a dee p emotional leve..

Khaled Hosseini wrote two amazing female protagonists in A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is one of my favourite books.

I’ve read a few Fredrick Backman’s books recently (a man called Ove, my grandmother sends her regards and apologises, and Beartown) and have found his female characters to be as realistic, and complex, and well written as the male characters.

I think it's possible if the writer asks advice and opinions of someone of the opposite gender to check. Some men may find asking a woman for her opinion and her subsequent advice quite challenging for his ego.