Where's my other X?

Sometimes, I have to admit, I envy women. Oh sure, both genders have their advantages, to be clear. But I think a women has a better time channeling the male in her than a man has in picking out his inner female. I think a lot of this has to do with the latitude we give for the female personality as opposed to the stricter rules we place on males.

Take, for instance, Professor Rebecca Priestley, designer, inventor and creator of the Kronosphere. She's a woman working in a man's world, the world of academic Physics. She is a woman, she likes to dress nicely and has a lovely house in a quaint part of Notre Damme de Grace, or N.D.G. as the Montréal locals call it. She's more or less secure in her job, though constantly in danger of loosing her funding and her recent focus of research has gained her much ridicule among her peers. This makes her driven, and so sometimes she spends the night on her couch after a late night's research and experimentation. Sometimes, she may look disheveled, but she's keen to get cleaned up when the opportunity arises. But she's most assuredly left-brained. She's mathematically methodical, almost Aspergerian. She's quick to anger but soon lets her more passive, feminine nature calm her back into reason. She's not a girly-girl or a fashion Deva or a sex-crazed Cougar. What the Professor is, is extremely intelligent. She's a woman with 2 PhDs with very diverse academic and professional experience. Does this make her any less a woman?

Sure, I've not told you everything about our Professor in Episode 1. I haven't even revealed it all here. There's so much more to the Professor; it will take time to tease out the threads of this woman's life. We must wait until she's good and ready before she's reveal her past pain. Until then, we must accept that the Professor holds her past close to her chest and doesn't trust easily. Does that make her any less a woman?

Or is it just me? Is this Y I can't write her? Because my X lays along on the chromosomal roller-coaster? Does this prevent me from channeling this woman into my stories?

No!

In fact, I disagree with this postulate. In fact I posit there be more inside a gender than there be betwixt. A nerdy male may better know a nerdy female's mind than he may that of a sports-crazed arm-chair quarterback. An atheist female can channel an atheist male better than he can the blind faith and ecstasy of religion. That's not to say an atheist nerd can't write a devout Christian and Sports Fanatic. Just that that type of person is less likely to navigate in her circle of friends. We tent to surround ourselves with people like us, male and female. And this leads to our experiences being highly colored by similar personalities.

So can I write for a woman? Well, I was told I cannot by a genuine, to the best of my knowledge, XX woman. Does this mean she's right? Perhaps she is, perhaps she isn't. Certainly being told this makes me question whether I should even bother continuing. Especially when positive feedback's been so few and far between. So perhaps she's correct right now, in this one small case, but not over my full abilities or the total future of all of my writings. In the end, when I present this show to you, my dear reader, in it's final, recorded form I will leave it to you to judge if I've correctly described the Professor and all the other characters that appear within and surround the existence of the Kronosphere.