"Men Writing Women": 50 Times Male Authors Proved They Know Next To Nothing About Women (New Pics)

Some male authors get undeserved criticism for their portrayals of women. F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, gets a lot of flak for having written Daisy as a shallow socialite in The Great Gatsby. But some readers might forget to consider the context in which Daisy lived. She may as well have been a prisoner of the societal expectations and values she'd been brought up with.

Beauty and social status are the most important things to her because she has been conditioned to think these are the only qualities that matter in a woman. But that doesn't mean she's not intelligent or observant – it's only one of the masks she's putting on. She even says she hopes her daughter will be a fool because she believes "that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

But let's not say that only men don't know how to write compelling characters of the opposite gender. Women write unrealistic male characters, too! They mostly come from the romance genre. Romance book fans: how many times have you come across the trope of the tall, dark, and brooding hero and the heroine who "fixes" him (think Fifty Shades and many YA male protagonists)?

At the same time, there are plenty of examples of women writing complex, compelling male characters. J.K. Rowling was able to write from the perspective of a male from childhood to adulthood and did it pretty accurately. Even early English novelists Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë wrote their female characters as full of contradictions, not just on the good/bad and dreamy/mean scale.

What are your favorite examples of men writing women badly, Pandas? Have you ever come across a description so ridiculous you couldn't help but laugh out loud? Share the wildest examples with us in the comments! And if you'd like to see even more cases of men failing to write women, check out our previous articles about the "Men Writing Women" subreddit here, here, and right here!