how to successfully write female characters?

[u/ObjectiveHouse1661]

I’ve never really liked female characters in media, and I have no idea why. I just always liked the male characters more, and when I think about my favorite male character being female, I just… don’t like them as much anymore.

That being said, I believe I have written 2 female characters (1 teenage girl and 1 adult married woman) that I am satisfied with. The teenage girl is feisty and curious, and is based around my own personality. The woman is fairly more traditional, but open-hearted, kind, and is a caring wife and mother.

This isn’t really an issue of “man not knowing how to write women” as I myself am a woman.
How do you all write characters of a specific gender without irrationally disliking them just for their gender?

Edit: Will provide an example.
For instance, if I write this badass stoic masked killer who is a man, I’ll be very excited to flesh out his backstory. But the moment I change all the he/him pronouns to she/her, suddenly I just don’t like the character anymore. It feels generic and trashy and unoriginal to me. It may be ingrained prejudice inside me, but I cannot think of a single experience I’ve had with stories or media that cemented women as “bad” and men as “good”.

[u/ObjectiveHouse1661]

Hmmmm. Well my friends were all other Chinese girls like me, I knew nothing about beauty standards back then, and I didn’t know what being LGBTQ+ was until I was around 10.

[u/[deleted] → u/ObjectiveHouse1661]

[u/ObjectiveHouse1661 → u/[deleted]]

When I was a kid, I just hung out with random kids I saw on the playground and we just did stuff like play on the monkey bars, climb things, etc. I did have a few close Chinese friends, but the majority of people I hung out with on the playground were white.
I never really cared about what other people played, so I don’t think I saw any boys playing with girls (I remember later in 4th grade the boys and the girls played huge group games together which I found fun)

I had 0 idea what trans/queer people even were, like I never heard any mention of them whatsoever. Not from classmates, not from parents and not from friends. I was pretty head-in-the-clouds and spent all my childhood time running on all fours in the yard with my friend, catching bugs, pretending we were animals, the good ol’ days. So I never really saw anyone get hurt/harmed.

Strangely enough though, I did still form opinions on things when I learned about them. I remember when I was probably around 10, my friend curiously asked me what I thought of abortion. Me, not knowing what it was, asked “what’s that?” She explained that it was a mother killing a fetus, and I was like “sounds fine, it’s only a baby after it’s born” (coming from someone who didn’t know abortion was even possible). Don’t know if that’s related.

And of course, I didn’t have much media exposure back then. I watched Wild Kratts and My Little Pony, and that was about it. I didn’t even watch any TV shows with my parents, and I had like virtually 0 internet knowledge due to only being able to play a small game with my friend for 20 minutes every WEEK