What is ‘gender-flipping?’ Well, simply speaking, it means flipping the gender of a known character (making a male character female and vice versa). Sometimes, that can lead to interesting results, which is why I want to talk about it here.
A long while back, while I was just getting into e-books, I stumbled over a gender-flipped version of “Dracula”. It was bad, really, really bad. Essentially, the ‘author’ had uploaded the whole text of the novel to some word processor (which might have been the hardest part) and then simply used the ‘find and replace’ feature to exchange the pronouns for every character. That’s not really gender-flipping, of course. Female Jonathan Harker still shaved, for instance, and the now male wife of the innkeeper still wore dress and apron.
Yet, a gender-flipped version of “Dracula” could be interesting, nevertheless. What would one change about the story to fit it with the new gender of its main characters? Why would a female Dracula keep three attractive men in her castle? (Well, why does the male one keep three women who are never referred to as ‘brides’ in the book? Dracula clearly has no more sexual urges the way humans have them, so what is he doing with his harem?) Would male Lucy still bemoan the fact that he can’t marry three women and has to break the hearts of two of them? What would a female Quincy Morris be like? As you can see, there’s quite some interesting things you could do with the story just by flipping the genders of the main characters (I wouldn’t even flip everyone’s gender in there).
Gender-flipping works with every kind of story. You can flip genders in a superhero movie. You can flip genders in a fairy tale. You can easily flip genders in a mystery story. Yet, if mainstream media does it - like a comic special where all heroes are gender-flipped -, it’s often done to make fun of all the proud male characters who have now become women. That is where things get annoying. For what is so bad about being a woman? Female Thor would still wield her hammer (there was, after all, a female Thor for a while). Female Tony Stark would still be the most intelligent person in most rooms (unless female Bruce Banner is there) and build useful stuff. Female Superman would still be the strongest being on earth by far. Female Batman would probably be no less brooding than her male counterpart and still a great detective.
It’s also a good way to check your own characters and story. Flip a character’s gender and ask yourself if you would write this character the same way if they were a girl instead of a guy or a guy instead of a girl. If the answer is ‘no’, you might want to look into that character or the plot or both again. Quite some stereotypes can be caught just by flipping the gender of the character, because you’d never write one of the opposite gender that way.
If you flip a character’s gender, there will always be some details which are no longer working, as the shaving of the female Jonathan Harker (although there are women who shave, too). Yet, those are minor details and can be replaced without destroying the story or the plot. Whether Johanna Harker shaves or brushes her teeth, both can be used to show that Countess Dracula doesn’t turn up in a mirror, which is weird to say the least.
Sometimes, gender-flipping happens by accident. Ripley from “Alien” was originally written as a man, but since all characters only had one name, the producers assumed that Ripley was a woman and the screenwriter had no problem with it, thus the last survivor of the alien encounter became a woman - and one of the first ‘final girls’ in horror movies.
Gender-flipping is an interesting way if you want to retell an old story, especially something like a fairy tale. This can also be especially telling - a lot of fairy-tale princesses are very passive, seeing that in a male character can drive the point home very well. On the other hand, a lot of the common women in fairy tales tend to be active, anyway, so flipping them won’t make things that much different. It will demand changes to the story, but you can still preserve the core. Sometimes, it’s a good way to find out what the core of the story actually is.
A while ago, I wrote a gender-flipped version of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson for my own amusement. I’m not sure whether I’ll publish it, but the story was based off “A Study in Scarlet”, giving me the chance to rework the revenge story, too. Since I wanted for the Jefferson Hope stand-in in this one to be a woman, too, I needed to change things. The story became different, a woman taking revenge for the repeated rape of herself and her grandmother and the murder of the grandmother and attempted murder of herself. Watson’s plight became a different one, too - instead of having come back injured from Afghanistan (not that I couldn’t have worked that in), she was now working at a hospital where she wasn’t appreciated and later on joined the employee ranks of the Scotland Yard morgue where she was appreciated.
I wanted for her and Miss Holmes to be women in the Victorian era, not living in an alternative reality where women had a different social position at that time. I preserved the basic characteristics of both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, but I changed the story so they fit better with female realities of the time (I have a second story plotted where the killing of a young woman to take her baby will feature). Sherley Homes is no less intelligent than Sherlock Holmes, yet she has a different way of dealing with some people and getting some information. Joanna Watson is no less of a good doctor than John Watson, yet it doesn’t take a war to get her into a difficult financial position. Being fired because her superior doesn’t want a woman on the payroll was enough.
I guess it would be interesting to do the same with “Dracula”, but I don’t really feel like writing a whole novel in diary entries, so I would also have to change the style. I’m not sure whether I’m up for that - it’s a long-term project. I do have a lot on my plate already, have plotted quite some stories which need writing. Yet, there are interesting aspects to that…
No matter whether you do it as a writing exercise, to check your character design, or because you want to retell an old story with new faces, gender-flipping can be a very useful tool in a writer’s toolbox and I can only suggest trying it out every now and then. It can lead to a few really interesting characters and help you understand how not to write in stereotypes. In the long run, it may make you a much better character creator and thus a better writer.
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