question of the day: What advice would you give to a writer creating a female superhero?

An interesting post at GeekFeminism.org caught my eye yesterday. A reader of that site writes in:

I am male who wants to write a novel about a female superhero. Since this is a superhero novel there will be violence and at some point my hero will have to lose a fight (though of course she wins in the end).

I am wondering how I should write the scene where the supervillain beats the crap out out of my female hero. Should I just write as if she were a male? Or do I need to take precautions so I don’t end up glorifying violence against women?

The uncredited GeekFeminism.org editor writes, in part, in reply:

[Y]ou don’t want to “write as if she were a male”... because she isn’t. You want to write as if she was a person. Your current thinking on this seems to be edging towards “men are the pattern for people, women are special unique cases of people” which is a little concerning for your characterisation of a woman!