Chels

If, like me, you spend a lot of time online, you’ve probably heard the phrase men written by women. The term really blew up in late 2021, and it’s taken me nearly four years to actually sit down and work it out. That’s the thing with these online trends – the girls who get it, get it, and the girls who don’t, don’t – and if you’re not with it during the conception of the trend, you end up pretty out of the loop for most of the trend’s lifespan.

When I first heard about men written by women, I assumed it was a counter to the men writing women phenomenon – which, if you aren’t aware of, I recommend browsing the reddit community; it involves a lot of breasts bouncing, nipples intuitively hardening when sensing danger, and other bizarre depictions of women’s personalities and anatomy by male authors. Perhaps men written by women was a trend highlighting the way female writers get men wrong? That wasn’t the case though.

As it turns out, the trend is twofold. It celebrates the fictional men written by female authors that are dream boyfriends, but predominantly, it highlights the real life men that would be written by women, if they were fictional. Men written by women are the male actors who treat their female costars with respect, boyfriends who bring their girlfriends flowers for no reason, or singers that interact sweetly with fans. You get the picture. It’s a way of calling them good eggs. It’s a bit like the female gaze, but for actions, rather than physical features.

Still, this confused me. While I understand that we have a bit of a tendency to allow female characters to be one dimensional; I don’t think we have that same problem when it comes to men. In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite. There’s such a range when it comes to male characters in literature – everything is covered, from the ideal man, to outright evil, and everything in between. Even just isolating male characters written by women gives the same result – yes, we have Mr Darcy, and all of the Austen love interests that make us swoon, but we also have Hercule Poirot – clever and meticulous, if a little arrogant, and Victor Frankenstein – passionate but obsessive, making all the wrong decisions along the way.

When I think of men written by women, I think of those iconic characters. I realised, though, that it was probably due to the niches I’m in. I tend to stick with classics – and the contemporary novels that I do pick up are either sapphic romances, or not romantic at all, and as such, the male characters aren’t designed to be the ideal man. While they may be, technically, men written by women, they’re almost the opposite of the men written by women characterisations. I realised that it’s not necessarily men written by women that are celebrated, it’s men written by romance authors. A Jane Austen male character would fit into the trend, but one by Virginia Woolf wouldn’t. 

I’d consider myself an outsider to the romance sphere (I’ll occasionally read one, though there’s not often a man involved); but a lot of Booktok is centred on the genre. It’s a strong association these days – the romance novels get popular and get talked about, so other romances get recommended, and soon enough, booktok has essentially become romancetok. Not that I think it’s necessarily a bad thing. It just means that the conversations that come from Booktok often centre romance novels, without specifying so.

Men written by women, to me, makes a lot of sense in that romance context. But once it’s taken out of that context, it begins to make a lot less sense. Your boyfriend buying you flowers is definitely romance novel coded, but you certainly wouldn’t describe your boyfriend locking himself away to obsessively work on a project to the point he neglects the relationship and his health a man written by a woman – but that’s Victor Frankenstein, and he was written by a woman.

There’s an element of feminism implied in the phrase. A man written by a woman respects women, but even then, that logic begins to fall apart once you step away from the romance novel. So many female authors consistently write terrible men who do not respect women, are the antithesis of a feminist man. You see it in pretty much anything written by Katherine Mansfield or Sylvia Plath.

The problem is that men written by romance authors doesn’t have the same ring to it. It’s not as catchy, and it traps the phenomenon within the romance reader niche. It certainly wouldn’t have become as culturally relevant a term as men written by women – it’s not as universal. Being universal makes the trend more relatable, but at the same time, it makes the concept less accurate. You win some, you lose some.