Pourquoi les hommes écrivent si mal les femmes ?

Summary

The video argues that many depictions of women—especially those written by men, and sometimes even by women through internalized bias—are “bad” in a specific, recurring way: women are reduced to male desire and stereotypes rather than portrayed as complex characters.

1) The “male gaze” and sexualized description as a pattern

• A starting point is a 2018 Twitter post by Whitney Harner, asking (sarcastically) women to describe themselves “as a male author would.” The flood of replies is treated as evidence that men often write women clumsily, particularly by repeatedly focusing on breasts/sex appeal regardless of context.
• The narrator uses long examples from literature to show women being described through biased, objectifying wording—appraising body parts, emphasizing “fertility,” and treating attractiveness as if it were women’s defining function.
• A key claim is that even if the narrator is “biased,” repetition across an entire book suggests the pattern is an authorial choice, not just a character’s perspective.

2) Subjectivity vs. author responsibility

The video addresses common defenses and explains why they don’t fully excuse the pattern:

• Intradiégétique / character viewpoint: Even if narration is from a character’s perspective, dwelling on women’s bodies still reflects a man-shaped perspective—especially when it’s consistently repeated.
• Extradegiégétique / neutral or omniscient narration: If the narrator is “neutral,” the author is still responsible; neutrality shouldn’t inherently turn women into objects of desire.
• Woman describing herself: Even when a character is a woman, the same male-coded judgments appear, suggesting the authorial bias is driving the portrayal.

3) Stereotypes and “shortcuts”: not just objectification, but narrative laziness

The video expands beyond body-focused writing to broader stereotypes, including portrayals of women as:

• always elegant or clean,
• polite but emotionally incapable,
• needing male control.

It criticizes stereotypes as non-neutral choices often tied to male expectations. It also describes extreme cases where women become foils—linked to the “woman in the fridge” syndrome—where a woman’s death or humiliation primarily motivates a male protagonist rather than giving the woman real interiority or agency.

4) A proposed remedy: write women as full characters (and question your bias)

The video suggests:

• Avoid objectification by giving women goals, decisions, and personality—rather than treating them as desire-objects.
• Reflect on why certain physical traits are described at that moment, and what narrative purpose those descriptions serve.
• Use practical tools like proofreaders to catch unconscious patterns and provide an external perspective.

5) The “alien method” and why it has limits

• The “alien method” is introduced via Alien (1979): Ellen Ripley is framed as a badass woman written in a way that can be interpreted neutrally—or “like men”—and later adapted for a woman.
• The video argues this can reveal micro-biases, but it may also erase real-world gendered constraints.
• It uses examples (such as workplace communication expectations) to show that society often expects women to be softer/less direct; therefore, a “male-style” email or behavior can become implausible—or emotionally frustrating—in fiction if those constraints are ignored.

The video generalizes into three “errors”:

1. Write women as we want them to be (fantasy/projection)
2. Write women as we think they are (stereotypes)
3. Write women like men (denial of gendered social realities)

It recommends learning from women’s experiences and reading women authors—specifically pointing to Elena Ferrante as an example of writing original female relationships and friendship.

6) Does the reverse happen? Writing men as women’s fantasies

• The video argues that male-as-love/fantasy tropes are less widespread than the male-gaze phenomenon, but it acknowledges some parallels in certain romance genres (e.g., rich, perfect men—“mysterious” and effortless).

• It offers “three signs” a male character might be written by a woman (from the narrator’s perspective):

  • men’s feelings are expressed too openly and are consistently listened to (contrasted with real experiences),
  • vulnerability is always supported rather than judged,
  • men behave more passively and without the competitive pressure typical of men-in-groups.

Overall conclusion

The video’s main thesis is that “writing women badly” usually means systematically turning women into objects or stereotypes through authorial bias—often learned and reproduced unconsciously. The proposed fix is to challenge that bias, avoid shortcuts, give women full agency, and account for how society actually treats women rather than merely mirroring male storytelling norms.

Presenters or contributors (and referenced names)

• Whitney Harner (referenced Twitter poster)
• Barlot Adams (referenced as a source of a “reverse roles” male-description example)
• Haruki Murakami (example author)
• Ernest Hemingway (example author)
• Philippe Roth (example author; subtitles may spell incorrectly)
• Ian Fleming (example author)
• Charles Bukowski (example author)
• Michel Houellebecq (example author; subtitles may spell incorrectly)
• Joël Dicker (criticized)
• Pauline Machadow (journalist quoted; Terrafémin article referenced)
• Lauren Donovan (mentioned character from Dicker, per the video)
• Patricia Witmiths (mentioned lawyer character; subtitles may contain name errors)
• Madeleine (mentioned character; author not specified)
• Ken Follett (The Twilight and the Dawn referenced)
• Alex de Wht (referenced as “Alex de Wht”; likely a name/subtitle error)
• John McEnroe, Daniel Medvedev, Alexander Zverev (tennis examples)
• Serena Williams (example)
• Billy Eilish (example)
• Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan (film comparison)
• Helen Ripley / Sigourney Weaver (Alien referenced)
• Elena Ferrante (recommended author)
• Green Lantern (comic referenced)
• Terrafémin (source referenced)
• El (or LV426) / Alien: Romulus etc. (film details referenced; subtitles appear auto-generated)