Men or women?

Have you ever thought how would a person of the other gender react in a specific situation? Well, this is maybe one of the motifs of some authors for writing their main characters of the other sex. 

Examples of this are Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", "Her Body Knows" of David Grossman or Amos Oz's "My Michael", being all of them men that wrote novels with female protagonists. In the other hand, we have Iris Murdoch's "The Black Prince" or Josefina Vicens' "The Empty Book".

The question now could be, what are the benefits and limitations of writing their characters of the other gender? Mainly, I think, as said before, it's an opportunity to know how would a woman/man could act in front of a particular situation. About the limitations, I think that if we are speaking of literature, there aren't restrictions: the Heaven is the limit. How could it be better than practising the knowledge of the other gender than through literature? It's a magic world, where anything can happen, so it's your choice to believe in it or not; but I recommend you to believe in it, so you could eventually become a writer!