" Not long ago, I reread Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. I was amazed to discover what she had written in her note about the difficult composition of the book--which had taken her many decades:

Another thing virtually impossible, to take a feminine character as a central figure… Women's lives are much too limited or else too secret. If a woman does recount her own life she is promptly reproached for no longer being truly feminine.

We all struggle with this--still. The woman who chooses to write disguised as a male character is hoping to avoid the problem. But you cannot avoid the problem of being a woman. "

― Erica Jong , Fear of Dying