BRAIN SEX: HOW TO EFFECTIVELY CROSS-DRESS FOR YOUR CHARACTERS
Linda M. Donovan

Talk about a can of worms! When Carrie challenged me to condense eight months of blood, sweat, tears and research on the sexing of the brain into an article for Novellas County Gazette, it seemed like a worthwhile pursuit. Probably even debate provoking. But if I could articulate the physiology behind the differing ways our male and female characters might react to the same situations, it would be worth dodging a few pieces of rotten fruit fast-pitched at me.

It started with an idea so simple, it was (IMHO) brilliant. Write a novel on the value of trust in our modern society. So I rolled up my sleeves and started my internal brainstorming.

Trust is a worthwhile premise, but more important would be a solid storyline to show the complexities of trust. I needed a platform; one that was familiar to many people and preferably one upon which they depend.

The internet! Of course, being a fantasy/romance writer, I had to have a romance angle, so maybe romance via internet? Can a person meet their soul mate on the internet? Can one truly trust the cyber-persona of the person on the other end?

After days of mentally poking and prodding, I decided to tell the story twice within the same story: once from her POV in her voice, then again in his voice from his POV. And thus, An Affair of the Heart/My Side of the Story was born.

Her story, An Affair, was easy enough, but damned if the ink didn't dry up when I, a writer of the female persuasion, blessed with two X-chromosomes, tried to write not just a different voice, but a voice with that elusive Y-chromosome attached to it.

The male voice, My Side of the Story, shouldn't be this difficult. The external markers of the male POV could be deliberately over-characterized—a change of sentence structure, a few grunts, a scratch or two in a strategic area of the anatomy—but what I really wanted was the male perspective on trust so I didn't have to rely on the external markers of male-versus-female. What was going on inside my male character's head was the important point.

So I asked my husband how he felt about trust. He stared at me blankly. There had to be a clue in that stare somewhere, but it eluded me.

Okay, okay. I'm a computer engineer by training, if not current employment. When in doubt, research! Before I hit Amazon.com with my One-Click Shopping, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray leapt off my shelves at me. Two hundred eighty-six pages later, I found myself checking over my shoulder when I closed my bedroom door at night. How did John Gray get in here anyway? My husband didn't seem bothered, although he did wonder at my sudden need to turn out the lights first.

It was time to write, yet the male POV felt as if I were pouring molasses through silk, so I resorted to blackmail. A male collaborator was needed to jumpstart the process. What I got back from my cohort sketched out the most probable male thought process (including the title), so I finished the story. His Side now felt like a man to me, but reviewers (more-or-less) kindly pointed out that he was too feminine. Men wouldn't think or act like that.

Time to rewrite, but it seemed as if I needed to know more about the fundamental differences in the ways a man and a woman look at the world. Sigh. Resisting the urge to add more grunts and scratching, I picked up another research book, Brain Sex by Anne Moir, PhD and David Jessel.

Now this made sense! I opened my bedroom door again, changed from incandescent lights to scented candles and returned to my manuscript, invigorated, ready to write the quintessential male POV on trust.

The assertion by Anne Moir and David Jessel that men and women are different is no surprise to anyone who lives on this planet, either past or present. That they are equal is a sociological question not addressed by scientific research. But the brain, the chief administrative and emotional organ of life, is differently constructed in men and in women; it processes information in a different way, which results in different perceptions, priorities and behavior. (From the introduction of Brain Sex, by Anne Moir and David Jessel).

Maybe I should take a sidetrack here before the rotten fruit starts to fly. We are not necessarily talking about men and women in the biological sense, but the sex of the brain itself, which is determined in utero. Therefore, it makes more sense to talk in terms of the male brain and the female brain. Yes, most men have male brains; yes, most women have female brains. Yet there are degrees of influence that allow male brain traits in a female brain and vice versa.

In order to rewrite my story, I needed to understand more of these differences and how they manifest themselves in our daily lives. The danger of synopsizing years of research and vast quantities of data into fewer than 1500 words is the generalization required to be concise. With that in mind, here are the bare bones to cross-dressing for your characters. Please keep in mind that I shall use male and men to mean the same thing: the sexual orientation of the brain, not the biology of the chromosomes inherited from the parents.

Fact: the template for the human brain is female. In utero, up to the sixth week of pregnancy, the brain of the fetus is female. At that point in time, lack of the hormone testosterone moves the brain on a continued path to being female. On the other hand, infusions of vast amounts of testosterone superimpose the neural net of the male brain, changing the physiology in significant ways.

Fact: the male brain is specialized and right-brain dominant (visual). This produces a brain capable of high degrees of focus, which easily perceives abstract patterns and relationships. Scientific research concludes that the most significant difference between the male and female brain is spatial ability, the ability to picture things, their shape, position, geography and proportion. No wonder the male brain is better able to process maps.

I capitalized on this in An Affair/My Side by having the female character read her map by orienting it to the direction she was traveling a female-brain characteristic. The male character kept the map in one position and navigated accurately regardless of his position relative to the map a male-brain characteristic. A nit? Yes, but a little thing that leads to credible characters.

Fact: the female brain instead of right-brain dominant is more diffused, using the right and left sides with equal facility. The female brain consistently processes multiple, sensory-induced data (smell, touch, sight, hearing, taste) at the same time. The female brain has a broader auditory spectrum, so the female will hear sound that the male cannot.

How does this affect your male/female characterization? Try this test: turn on a faucet in the next room so it drips quite audibly. Drip... drip... drip... drip... Sit in the next room with someone of the opposite sex, maybe reading the newspaper. The female-brained person will ALWAYS notice the drip first, be distracted by that drip, and have to do something about it. The male-brained character with the narrower auditory spectrum and right-brain focus won t even hear it. (No wonder your female character gets out of bed in the middle of the night to let the cat out, while your male character sleeps undisturbed.)

Fact: in order to accomplish the multi-tasking typical of the female brain, the nerve bundles that connect the left and right sides of the female brain are measurably larger and measurably more active than the male brain. This culminates in that greater perception often termed women's intuition. She is processing multiple inputs at a subconscious (whole-brained) level. More than likely, she is unable to tell you why she gets a certain impression. She just knows! Infuriating, isn't it?

One last observation: Let's take the comedic situation of the morning breakfast. Man reads newspaper; woman is talking. Man wants her to shut up so he can finish reading and go to work. Woman goes to work, complaining that he never listens, never mind telling her what he's feeling.

Why is this so apt? Emotions are right-brain resident; speech is left-brain resident. The female brain easily passes emotions from the right side of the brain over a broad, active superhighway to the speech center on the left side of the brain. The female brain is wired to verbalize emotions.

On the other hand, the male brain is not only processing right-brained emotions over a footpath to the speech center on the left side of the brain, but the male brain splits the speech center between the front and back lobes! No wonder your male character doesn't verbalize his emotions as easily! (Remember my husband's blank stare when I asked him to tell me about the male perception of trust?) Scientific research shows that the female brain produces two spoken words for every spoken word from the male brain. This verbal facility is present as early as six months of age and continues throughout the male/female (brain)'s life.

Want to know the funny thing about An Affair of the Heart/My Side of the Story? Her side was 10,000 words; his was 5,000. Go figure.

© Linda M. Donovan 2001

Linda M. Donovan, the director of To Write Well, has been teaching writing workshops since 1992. TWW focuses on writing and storytelling skills using lectures, discussions, assignments, peer-to-peer and instructor-to-student interactions. Current offerings include a 10-week online course, Impact of Style, which focuses on language and the richness that emerges as writers select and arrange words for their greatest emotional impact. Lectures and supplemental materials are presented in a down-to-earth manner; readings are accompanied by written assignments in which the theory of rhetoric is 'penned' to the page through practical exercises.

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