I'm somewhat of an amateur author myself, and an avid reader, and I've noticed something quite fascinating....
Ok it uses 'female interaction' as a benchmark, but theres a quite clear trend I've noticed.
Male writers at large, cannot get into the female mindset enough to write female to female interactions beyond the most civil, brief sense...
Its very easy in my view, to work out the gender of an author (say you were given a text with no name, or an androgynous nom de plume)
The way the writer interacts with members of either sex, the main characters, and language used betrays thier gender...

Writers like Wilbur smith John Grisham, and Phillip Pullman seem to be some of the few male writers who manage to successfully work thier way into the female mind, and show clear differences in the way characters of either sex  integrate separately, or together... Whereas most male authors give a sickeningly idealized view of the gender they are not.... (ie female here).

Female writers seem to have this knack down, they can 'talk man' within text fairly easily, are men that simple? well, thats something to be4 debated. I feel that as a female, its glaringly obvious what sex the writer is when i read a piece... if it involves more than cursory female to female interaction (something most male writers have picked up on, and leave to the women it seems).

Sadly, the same can be said for most if not all cross dressers and ->-bleeped-<- authors, and some trans authors I've read on a fiction site i visit, some of the female female interactions are sickening beyond lurid cotton candy pink and uber fem... some of the stylized, and highly male view of female interaction bleeds through sadly...
Most on the other hand, are perfectly capable of both, as are most female writers.
Ive yet to find a transman writer to compare my theory to, or androgyny for that matter, within the fiction realm, but id be greatly interested in seeing if the trend continues,  are f2ms more able to write about women interacting because they have seen it? (key factor here i believe is having experienced what you write about, that some clearly haven't )
or are f2ms as clueless to the female mind as your average tom dick or harry? (hate to say it boys, but you are on that side )
how do androgyny's write? is it related to thier birth gender/ raised gender? how would someone raised androgyny from birth write?
Gender in Literature is a fascinating topic in my opinion, and something that could make for a great debate... so here i am, writing away before my coffee on a sunday morning, because ihad an awesome idea in my nearsleep state of 'UGH NOT GETTING UP ITS ONLY PAST 9AM FOR GODS SAKE'

Anyway cherrubs, discuss away! (feel free to utterly destroy my ideas here, but in a constructive way, and do try and provide some evidence and examples... (examples rock)
R >

I think that it is very much to do with interaction with opposite sex as to how an author writes his/her characters.  The more a male befriends various females, the more he can probe their mind into how they think, react to certain situations and stimuli.  Same goes for females writing for males.
There are quite a few screen writers who can write very well for women, Woody Allen and Steve Martin, are two that come to mind.  And they are known for having many female friends without the sexual component coming into their friendship.
But men who write for men basically will always write the female as a one-dimensional madonna/whore type, their dream girl! lol
I don't think all women can write male characters very well unless they have experienced first hand the male to male bonding ritual and thoughts of opposite sex 24/7, and this would only be achieved by mixing in mens circles and letting them chat unhibited by a female being present!  Fly on the wall would be the best way to achieve that, lol!
Bryce Courtney writes female characters exceptionally well, and P.D James writes like any other male author, but she's female.

I would like to add into this discussion...

I suggest that two other components regarding how males portray women is how they were raised and how comfortable they are with their own sexuality.

I will confess that I, in my youth, I was a male chauvinist pig.  It took a lot of interaction for me to see the error of my ways.  (And, of course, look at me now!  )  In this same vein, I have found that my female characters have become stronger as I have considered the question of what does it mean to be a woman. 

I also raise the question of sexuality.  As a general statement, most men tend to be less comfortable with their sexuality than women.  If you closely observe "male bonding rituals," there is a lot of reaffirming of strength and dominance - things that most men prefer to have.  (i suggest that one reason many men have trouble with MTF transsexuals is that we are considered a traitor to the male sex.)  Also, I have observed women purposely trying to gross out their husbands by talking about their period.  The husbands, shudder and walk away while the women laugh at their expense.

It takes someone very comfortable with their own sexuality to be able to place themselves into the mindset of the opposite gender and not feel intimidated.

Rachael, you are absolutely correct about how archaic some writers portray women and transsexuals, especially in trans-fiction.  I wonder if this is where some of the stereotypes about transsexuals get their start - in the fiction that some of us write.

Chaunte

Well i think you had the wrong end of the stick....
i meant how some transsexual writers portray males and females, especially how some transwomen writers, portray females and female interactions....
It seems they hold a male steriotyped view of females...

Personally i think some men are uncomfortable with m2fs... is because being seen to find a 'man' attractive is wrong, so they act against whatever natural attraction they have to the woman, because society tells him he must see them as a male...
R >

I agree that most male writers are bad at protraying women. Howerever I don't think women are generally all that good at protraying men either. Here are some exceptions -- and, incidentally, books that I really love. They all got plenty of attention, but I think the cross-gender sensitivity of the authors is something special and rare that is usually overlooked.

Annie Proulx is a phenomenal writer of stories about men -- her women are generally much less fleshed out. If you don't know her name, you probably at least recognize the short story "Brokeback Mountain" from the wonderful collection "Close Range." Her novels "Postcards" and "The Shipping News" are deep and unvarnished portrayals of men; I never knew what I was missing in literature until I read these.

I found Ian McEwan's "Atonement" to be a wonderful and intricate portrayal of a woman's life, very sensitive to the intricacies of her thoughts, relationships, and interactions, not to mention her style of verbal expression. If you can by the book that the author is male, it's because you know Ian McEwan, or because of technical aspects of his constructions of plot and of sentences that give it away. I thought that the rather shallow protrayal of Robbie Turner at Dunkirk in Part two was a clever and effective trick to help highlight the overall female voice of the novel.

Oh, also -- Elmore Leonard rocks. I'm not sure I'd say his portrayal of women (or men for that matter) is exactly "deep", but he has a real knack for making people's actions and dialogue jump out of the page.

Rachael -- John Grisham? Are you serious? I haven't read anything by him since his first few. ("The Chamber" was his last novel that I read.) Has he changed, or do you see something I don't?

The chamber is hardly a good one of his
read some more... hes quite a good writer imo... The firm is much better in text than the film too....

I think men and women that can get inside the head of the other sex make the best writers... infact, the ability to do that in thier novels to me, signifys a good writer... they take the time to think about thier characters... get behind thier name... give them personality beyond simple pen and ink...

By saying women can write male characters better... i suggest that possibly the fact that females are more socially observant plays a roll...
R >

Yes, didn't like the chamber much -- I think I read that and all his previous novels (time to kill, firm, pelican brief, client) and got tired of the genre. (What can I say? When I was 15 I was into binge reading.)

I agree with you on the "getting inside the head of the other sex" idea -- one main reason I'm so taken by Atonement and Annie Proulx's works. But I'd disagree that females are in general better at getting into the head of men. Rather, they are good at portraying the outward life of the male characters and letting us infer what's going on inside, which works because because men tend to be so guarded. The stoic patriarch cliche can get a lot of miles before the tread wears down.