The Naipaul test: Can you tell an author's sex?

I managed 6/10. A good few of them had me questioning whether they were tricks, intentional picks to make them seem like one sex or another.

Quiz: theguardian.com/books/quiz/2011/jun/02/naipaul-test-author-s-sex-quiz

How many did you get and what are your thoughts on male vs. female writers?

Got 6/10.
By and large women write in first person because they're narcissists, and also love gossip and useless bullshit, which is why they blabber on about what a character is wearing.

8/10 bois. I'm a master at identifying female vs male thought patterns. This is because women are fucking idiots.

I reckon most women are pretty intelligent. Men are more inconsistent, plenty dumber but also plenty more bright.

7/10. Mostly just going by feel though.

4/10 bc i put mostly female bc they were all examples of shitty fucking writing

It's a shoddy test but Naipaul is right. Women are generally abysmal writers for various reasons. They also produce a huge amount of mediocrities who feel compelled to write anyway, because women have no instinctive sense of what greatness is or why it's great, so they have no scale of reference to give them some perspective and deter them from publishing garbage.

8/10 yayy. Was going by feel mostly. And women tend to describe different things than men.

It's a pretty shit test; these are cherrypicked passages made to be as difficult as possible to guess.

The Guardian has an agenda to push, after all.

7/10. I thought Nicholas Sparks and Salmon Rushdie were women and thought Mary Wesley was a man

((go figure))

5/10 wow i suck

someone should make a test with actually random paragraphs taken, not picked

Got 3/10, they called me a girl.
Am I pretty now?

I put them all female and got 6/10. All trite.

9/10, not bad.

Yeah they specifically chose confounding excerpts

Everyone's out to get the white man!

Using dialogue isn't fair.

>For reference, the novels quoted were: 1 A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul 2 The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks 3 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison 4 Harnesssing Peacocks by Mary Wesley 5 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie 6 A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving 7 The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood 8 On Beauty by Zadie Smith 9 Atonement by Ian McEwan 10 A Forever Mother by Laura Abbot

tell me /tv/, is this paragraph an example of awful literary tastes or terrible web design?

I claim it would have been easier, had they picked good authors.

The test is literally designed to give out random grades.

Try it, answer all male with one test and all female with the other. The order does not change.

I got 7/10.

This was harder than I expected but I still think there is a difference between male and female writing. It's just a difference in thought patterns, male writers tend to be a bit more linear and logical.

Holy shit, you're right. What the fuck. That's just slimy.

i got 5/10 doing both, where is the discrepancy?

...

8/10
i though i had done far worse, i went mostly with gut instinct.

females go into unnecessary details, pay to much attention to emotions and get sidetracked a lot.

yep they also sound more like theyre talking to the page, while men see prose as a 'craft'

So I ran a few tests and I am really weirded out. I opened and closed my browser, and tried it with a different browser, and here is the conclusion I have reached so far : It seems that the test does not fairly enter your answer in the check box. The right order is M M F F M M F F M F.

However, I tried it again going with the order M F M F M F M F M Fand got 10/10 again. Unsure if it's a browser thing, basically giving you your last score over and over again, or if the test has been tampered with.

I ask of you people to run similar tests so we can figure out the truth in this affair.

they give off certain vibe, as if they're projecting or writing for their OWN "wish fulfillment" in expense of the reader , is like reading their personal diary.

It gives you the last score you had, the page must be refreshed before retaking it

Seems to be the case. I was worried because a lot of online tests like these tend to actually give out random scores.

>“I should know better than to read even as much as a headline in The New York Times; although, as I’ve often pointed out to my students at Bishop Strachan, this newspaper’s use of the semicolon is exemplary. Reagan Declares Firmness on Gulf; Plans Are Unclear Isn’t that a classic? I don’t mean the semicolon; I mean, isn’t that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is the typical American policy: don’t be clear, but be firm!”
Got a giggle out of me. Reminded me of Camus for some reason (who's nauseatingly male at times) so I clicked male and got it right.

>5/10
>"You clearly need to read more books by men"
wow I was expecting something a little more progressive theguardian.com

>I reckon most women are pretty intelligent.
Compared to what?
>Men are more inconsistent, plenty dumber but also plenty more bright.
So if you are in the 'more bright' category, how would you rate women? Assume that you remain anonymous and won't lose access to sex and future offspring if you do state things how you see them, rather than how several beings want you to see them.

4/10

I was bad at telling if they were men or women, but i'm 100% that they are all shit writers.

average female intelligence > average male intelligence
female variance < male variance

I don't know how smart I am, I'd guess pretty average on most measures or tests. I think women aren't as creative as men, less capable in abstraction, outside the box thinking etc., but on average pretty good at logic and reasoning

how about urself, and why the queries

4/10
It can be argued that the test is unfair, picking some paragraphs that make nearly no sense without context, and ignoring the general themes that might reveal the gender more clearly. (A short story with blatantly leftist themes such as feminism and racism is pretty much guaranteed to be by a female.)

Spooky rigged tests aside, the denser the pronouns are the more likely it is a woman wrote it. Especially the first and second - I said...because when you...to me...and I...but you...and then I...but you...but to me...and you.

This is hilarious, I reached 7/10 by only reading the first line. It took me less than one minute to get 70% right. When the protagonist in the story tries to come over as mysteriously playful I chose Female. Seems to be statistically significant. I must say, this test is not really helping with my Misogyny.

9/10 on my first attempt. Haven't read any of books they're taken from either.

Some tips for determining the gender

1. The Guardian is a pissrag fueled by female resentment and sullen brown bitch boys. The excerpts are often going to take an alternate gender perspective in a womanish attempt to "trick" people conscious of differences between genders.

2. Men describe things in clear and strong language. They're much more analytical. They take the time to describe their surroundings, and they recognize the importance of describing things well. Men affirm, women complain and flounder in circles.

3. Women are shallow and easily distracted. They often write in the present tense to feign a nonexistent sense of emotional propulsion, they use too many adjectives and qualifiers, and they're more concerned with fantasy social situations, personal appearances, and character interactions than ideas, excitement, or beauty.

Basically, women want literature to be like a sitcom. They want dialogue. They want attractive celebrities holding what they imagine is witty banter about inane social behaviors and interesting products.

The quote I got wrong was from Toni Morrison, who I admit is a fairly masculine writer