Writers and Gender

[dragon wench]

I have been noticing, as I've thought about the books and authors I like, that the vast majority are male.... I have not made deliberate choices here, I am motivated by an author's style, intelligence, insight, wit and the book's content.
But it is a trend I've observed in my selection of reading material.

I am not one of those politically correct people who feels that just because a book is written by a woman or somebody from a 'minority' that I should automatically like it. IMO, that is tokenism and utter BS at its worst.

However.. I am curious at why I seem prefer male authors over female. The reasons are probably numerous and complex. Maybe it is because I tend to be fairly tomboyish in my general outlook on things, so perhaps I just identify more readily with a male perspective.

Or perhaps, in the case of the less modern writers it is also that often women did not have the same types of wordly exposure and experience that their male counterparts frequently enjoyed. I'm not saying all women writers were confined to the parlour and denied a varied existence, but it often occured.

Any thoughts on this? Do you have a tendency to prefer one gender of writer over another? If so, why do you think this might be?

[jopperm2]

I have never liked a single book by a woman that I can think of. Kinda strange though. I havve no idea why. Of course I have read many more books by men than women though so that may have something to do with it.

You bring up another good point that until recently most women simply didn't have anything to write about because they were excluded from everything.

Most of the modern stuff that women have written that I seem to end up with is very pretentious, whiney, super-liberal, feminist stuff that I'm sure it's no surprise that I don't enjoy. Not that there is anything wrong with them expressing their concerns, but it's unbearable to read.

I'm interested to see if anyone else has a masculine reading list.

[Darth Zenemij]

[QUOTE=dragon wench]Or perhaps, in the case of the less modern writers it is also that often women did not have the same types of wordly exposure and experience that their male counterparts frequently enjoyed. I'm not saying all women writers were confined to the parlour and denied a varied existence, but it often occured.[/QUOTE]

I agree with that.

There are many female writters but it still depends on the Genre, that you enjoy to read. I haven't really found a lot of sifi books with female writters, but sifi is almost all that I read.

[fable]

To tell the truth, I like the writers I like, and they come from both genders. I've never really paid much attention to the gender issue in the field. For me, Madame de Stael and Josephine Tey are just as interesting in their respective ways as Voltaire and Arthur Conan Doyle.

If I end up preferring more male writers to female writers, it's because the period and culture in question didn't include many, if any, female writers. I love Sappho's poetry, and rank it as high as Catullus: but if I'm looking for a Greek history to equal Herodotus or Thucydides, who can I turn to in the female ranks of that time, that place?

[Cuchulain82]

RE: Fable

Are you saying that reading more male authors has to do with volume (quantity nor quality)? I would tend to agree.

I read more male authors than female because I tend to be interested in the plot/storyline. I also like philosophy and epic-type writing, and those genres are absolutely dominated by men. I did read a book by Elizabeth Hurtzel that I really enjoyed though- that is the only book that comes to mind immediately though

If you like Plato though, try reading a critique of Platonism by a feminist author (ie- Rosemary Radford Ruether). It is very illuminating.

[jopperm2]

To tell you the truth, I'm trying to think of females that I have read and they are very few. Can anyone think of any that I would have read perhaps in school? I can't stand the Bronte sisters or ****inson, I do know that much. Though there are many of their male contemporaries that I also disdain, it could just be that period that I hate.

[Magrus]

Well, I go for fantasy books. I use them as a distraction and something I can read and drift off to until I fall asleep. Anything that's written in a manner that will keep me interested, yet still allow me to fall asleep is fine by me. Most of what I read is by male author's but then again some of the books I was truly entranced with were written by female's so I don't think it honestly matters. A good written story is a good written story.

The only thing that matters is a viewpoint in which the story is written. I think this happens to be why people tend to lean one side or the other. A female writer, in general from what I've found will tend to write about characters that are more sensative, caring and less violent than male writers will. Some don't differ all that much, but I have noticed female writers focus more on such things in the books I read.

[moltovir]

All literature I read for my profession is written by males - not very surprising, as I study greek and latin, and, as Fable pointed out, there's not a single female author from the Classic Ages who's worth noting. But if I read for entertainment, I read both male and female authors. I enjoy Donna Tartt's thrillers as much as I do Steven Erikson's fantasy books, and I like Nicci French (a writers duo, a man and a woman) a lot too. I do think however that female authors focus more on feelings, relationships and the emotional background of their characters. It's not that every woman writes only about love and relationships, but if you compare Jonathan Kellerman to his wife Faye Kellerman (they both write thrillers) you can see the difference between the two: Jonathan's plots are stronger and more consistent, while Faye's characters are much more developed.

[C Elegans]

[QUOTE=dragon wench]I am curious at why I seem prefer male authors over female. The reasons are probably numerous and complex. Maybe it is because I tend to be fairly tomboyish in my general outlook on things, so perhaps I just identify more readily with a male perspective.[/QUOTE]

There may be other explanations. I am not tomboyish at all, and I also prefer male authors, male artists and male musicians before females. Why? Probably because they are historically many, many more and I like art from all eras and cultures, not only the current relatively gender equal era in my own relatively gender equal culture. Thus, the number of possible artists to like has an extremly skew gender ratio to select from already from the beginning.

Like Fable points out (I love Sappho too, btw), there were no female equivalents of Aeschylos, Virgil, Dante or Shakespeare. When the female writers started to gain acceptance and could make themselves a name in European literature, they initially would often write from a "women's" perspective, which limits the themes and the perspectives. During the 20th century there were heaps of "feminist literature" that aimed to put a special focus on women and women's situation, which to me naturally, is less interesting than literature than fathoms all types of human beings.

Among contemporary writers, I haven't noticed any difference between male and female writers and not a personal preference from me. I like Gao Xiangjiang more than Toni Morrisson and Umberto Eco more than Donna Tartt, but I don't think that's a gender issue. My favorite comtemporary Swedish writer is a women (she's totally unknown) and I am currently reading Elfriede Jelinek who I also like a lot, and I haven't even thought about that she's a women.

[quote="Jopperm]
Can anyone think of any that I would have read perhaps in school? [/quote"]

Jane Austen? (who bores me to death) George Sand? Virginia Woolf? (who I like) Toni Morrisson?

[VonDondu]

Allow me to pose a similar question. If you were to read a book, a newspaper column, or a message on a message board like this one without knowing the gender of the author, would you be able to tell whether it was written by a man or a woman? If you disregard references to spouses or other references to gender, could you tell just by reading, say, Fable's posts or C Elegans's posts or my posts which gender we are? (On a controversial note, I deliberately chose what I consider to be "neutral" examples of the members here rather than members who are more obviously male or female judging by the content of their posts.)

If "male writing" and "female writing" really are different in character, then I think we'd run into gender issues such as socialization, brain structure, and economic opportunity, and those would cause me personal distress to address. So I'd have to fall back on the question, "Do you prefer male writers or female writers?" and try to answer it from there.

I'm thinking of two New York Times columnists who I read regularly, Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd. Well, I can't say who I like better, because each of them appeals to me for different reasons. So that answers that. But now that I think about it, here's a new question: would it be possible for a woman to write just like Paul Krugman, or would it be possible for a man to write just like Maureen Dowd? What about some other authors that spring to mind? What about J. K. Rowling, whose books outsell everyone else's, regardless of gender (which proves that books written by a woman can have a very wide appeal)? I don't know if I can sort out my biases and isolate any sort of "control group", but my gut reaction is that, no, no woman could write exactly like Paul Krugman, no man could write like Maureen Dowd (even if he wanted to), and no male author could write books like J. K. Rowling's.

But of course, no American author (not even a woman) could write books like the Harry Potter series or, for that matter, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, because they are distinctly British. Would I be spamming up the thread if I suggested that this brings up another issue--that is, whether you prefer American authors or British authors? And how many people who have a Western education (which is dominated by male authors) have even read Eastern literature (which, not coincidentally, is also dominated by male authors)? Questions, questions.

[fable]

Apropos of gender in writing, there is this test intended to determine sex through literature. Curiously, I find that it calls my critical work, done in imitation of the style required for my magazines, male. But when I input my essays or fiction, it say I'm female. As far as I can tell, my gender doesn't shift according to what I write, so I suspect it's just a fairly gross attempt at applying gender rules to written content. This would also seem to confirm the idea that male and female writing styles are a matter of preconceived bias.

[VonDondu]

@fable, I just entered a few of my Gamebanshee messages and some random essays I have stored on my computer into the text analyzer you linked to. By a 3:2 margin (on average), it "thinks" I'm a woman. Based on the fact that it makes its determination on the basis of keywords, I would guess that the results are based on statistics rather preconceived biases, as you seem to suggest. (Not that I don't have my doubts about using keywords to determine an author's gender.) Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you have declared in the past that my writing style strikes you as masculine. Clearly, you are not using the same keyword method as the text analyzer. So I wonder, what led to your own conclusion?

[fable]

The statistics I would suggest seem biased. Consider, for example, that female writers use language that to the algorithm's developers seem "more involved" (their words) while those of men seem "more informational." The fact that these extremely subjective impressions are being given objective weight leads me to feel that the developers have in no way removed themselves from the process.

As for your style, it fits what in today's marketplace would be considered forceful, straightforward, masculine English: nouns firmly centered, strong verbs, clear distinctions between subjective and main clauses, short spans between nouns and very final predicates, etc. It's the kind of writing that pleases a lot of editors. It never came naturally to me; I had to develop it over time, because my own style grew out of 19th century Victorian and Edwardian writers I enjoyed (such as Thackeray and Butler), French fin de siecle writers, and 20th century American essayists that were strongly influenced by Continental styles (Benchley, Thurber, etc).

[dragon wench]

I just entered some random Game Banshee posts, and oddly enough the "Genie" generally thinks I am male

I will endeavour to answer to people's actual posts tomorrow. I have been drinking quite a lot of red wine this evening, so I'm not presently at my most coherent

[C Elegans]

@Fable: According to the text analyser, I too shift gender depending on what I am writing. When I entered a scientific article I have written myself, it said I was male. When I entered one I had written together with my prof, who is male, it says I was female. When I entered a part from some fiction I wrote long ago, it says I'm femage. When I enter Gamebanshee posts, it says I'm male. For my professional writing (except the articel I wrote with my prof) the numbers male/female that comes up after the analyses are very close to each other. For my fiction, it's more like 60% female, and for my GB posts it is 60% male.

[Jormund]

About the author issue, I would like to bring some psychology into play. Science has proved that females are better suited for analyzing and 'intelligence' on matters that require study and diagrams to prove something, i.e. they use the right part of the brain more than the left part. Males, on the other hand, tend to use the left part more than the right part, which is more artistic and 'chaotic'. F.ex., I read mostly fantasy, therefore, more male authors than females(although the Cycle of Fire written by Janny Wurts is a great trilogy) because fantasy is more 'chaotic' than analytical. But if you look back to the 17-18th century, there were a lot of female writers writing about feelings and women's place in the house and daily business, making issues of the rigid society. At school, I see evidence on such as well, the girls in class mainly learn by use of notes, grammatic rules and the like, while the boys use skeches and more 'active' ways to learn, me being one of the latter. As a picture of this, think of the analytical brain to consist of lines in a strict pattern, while the chaotic brain is a bowl of water.

[Arrylium]

I put one of my stories into the Gender Genie and it correctly decided I was male, but the ratio was very close: 17016 female to 17871 male. I'm kind of descriptive and complex with my writing - I don't know if that's feminine or masculine.

[fable]

[QUOTE=Jormund]About the author issue, I would like to bring some psychology into play. Science has proved that females are better suited for analyzing and 'intelligence' on matters that require study and diagrams to prove something, i.e. they use the right part of the brain more than the left part. Males, on the other hand, tend to use the left part more than the right part, which is more artistic and 'chaotic'.[/QUOTE]

What science, what proof? No offense meant, but this sounds like some of those pop science books that try endlessly to show people how men or women are better at one thing or another because of the wonders of (cue the theremin for spooky effects), SCIENCE...!

[C Elegans]

About the author issue, I would like to bring some psychology into play. Science has proved that females are better suited for analyzing and 'intelligence' on matters that require study and diagrams to prove something, i.e. they use the right part of the brain more than the left part. Males, on the other hand, tend to use the left part more than the right part, which is more artistic and 'chaotic'.

1. Can you give references to the scientific works that have demonstrated that females are better suited for analysis and "intelligence matters" than males?
2. What do you mean by "ie they use the right part of the brain more than the left part"? How do you mean this is connected to the "intelligence matters"?
3. What measurements have demonstrated use of left versus right cerebral hemisphere? How can an individual use one hemisphere more than the other?
4. What studies have made the observations that males us the left hemisphere more than females, and what do you mean by "right part, which is more artistic and chaotic?" How can half a brain be artistic and the other half less so?

At school, I see evidence on such as well, the girls in class mainly learn by use of notes, grammatic rules and the like, while the boys use skeches and more 'active' ways to learn, me being one of the latter. As a picture of this, think of the analytical brain to consist of lines in a strict pattern, while the chaotic brain is a bowl of water.

You refer to anecdotal evidence that you believe support your ideas of gender and cerebral lateralisation (which is the medical term for specialisation of the cerebral hemispheres, ie that the hemispheres are different). Have you considered any other possible explanations for your observation?

Also I must ask you: do you know anything about psychology, medicine or neuroscience? In your post you say that you bring "psychology into play" and you make several statements about how the brain and how cognitive functions work. What do you base those statements on?

[Jormund]

Take it easy, I'm no expert on this. And no, I can't remember where or when I read or heard this, but I think one of my teachers mentioned this, more than once actually. As for the left\right brain usage, of course its best to use both at the same task, but there is proven through nerve sensors that the left is being used more than the right when f.ex. painting. Vice versa when f.ex. creating a chart or diagram.

And one thing, who are you to question everything I say? Do you actually know something about this topic? Or are you wildly attacking without knowing why?

What if I started my post by saying 'I'm not sure, but I think....' Would that make you any less hostile?