Might be the tism...

Might be the tism, but I was in a lecture the other week where the lecturer was saying matter-of-factly that an author's gender can be easily, obviously discerned from even a cursory reading of their writing. The lecturer gave some examples - a paragraph by a male author and a paragraph by a female author - but I do not recall the authors or texts used.

I was completely puzzled by this. I did not see anything that would indicate what gender the author was.

Does Veeky Forums agree with my lecturer, and if so, what are the telltale signs of a male author and the telltale signs of a female author?

inb4 "if it's bad a woman wrote it"

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=zUrqUWNcSOg
theguardian.com/books/quiz/2011/jun/02/naipaul-test-author-s-sex-quiz
twitter.com/AnonBabble

your lecturer is retarded

youtube.com/watch?v=zUrqUWNcSOg

There are obvious signs in every post here which point to the gender of the poster as well.

it's all dudes here famalam

She's pretty hot desu

Considering women when given anonymity are powerless to stop themselves from mentioning directly that they are, in fact, women (regardless of the relevance of that fact to the topic at hand), I'd have to agree with this post even though it's pretty poor bait.

I'm sure there are notable trends that might indicate a certain probability, but surely there are exceptions. If I handed you Song of Solomon or even maybe Oryx and Crake, and asked you m/f, you might have to think about it.

This claim would be outrageously easy to substantiate with a test. If there was anything to it, that is. There isn't, though. It's pure horse shit.

some of these were actually funny desu

back when Veeky Forums was controlled by Goodreads libtards, all women posters were incredibly easy to spot

disgustingly catty, randomly hateful, and had a magical short-list of forgotten 20th century female authors on an open notepad .txt, always ready for copypaste whenever someone asked why female authors suck and could they list any notable ones

the fact those threads even got any replies is proof we were invaded by vaginas

Uh, your professor wasn't implying that men and women have certain essential traits, was s/he?

That might merit an investigation from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, just to make sure your professor was being sufficiently open minded towards students of differing gender identities. In the interest of open mindedness, your professor might even lose his/her job for voicing hurtful opinions.

i've never seen a gif that so well embodies the anti alt-right crowd and why the alt-right doesn't take them seriously

>disgustingly catty, randomly hateful
To be fair those traits is something all Veeky Forums posters share.

Veeky Forums is full of chicks but it only really comes out when they have period food-craving threads and shit

it's kinda spooky

>anti alt-right crowd
we call these SJWs
>never seen that gif
and we call you "newfag"

>implying they take anything other than frogposting seriously

>anti alt-right crowd and why the alt-right
>people believe in made up abstractions that oppose abstractions of abstractions

No, that's retarded.

It's so ironic that 3rd wave Feminists are making the kinds of arguments that used to be the domain of chauvinists.

>he lit a cigarette, his whisky also lit a cigarette

Not even mad, she has some beats here

>genital mutilation jokes
yeah women are cunts.

That one was nasty. Especially coming from these women who hold bodily autonomy above all else

It's pretty easy to tell if we're talking about online dialogue(Veeky Forums, youtube, etc.), but I don't think I'd be able to tell from someone's literature. I don't know though, come to think of it, I don't think I've ever read a book written by a woman.

>In Veeky Forums vagina penetrates YOU!

>female novelists

>It's so ironic that 3rd wave Feminists

Who said anything about 3rd wave feminists?

I had a teacher who claimed we could easily find out someone's gender, education and social standing by their writing. she was fucking retarded

I'm a grill

Because this type of essentialism runs profoundly in the face of everything the second wave stood for

Post asshole

m'stirner

>education

You're the one who is retarded. Can you really not tell apart someone who is college educated vs. a highshool dropout via their writing?

Kill yourself.

I doubt you could.

>You're the one who is retarded. Can you really not tell apart someone who is college educated vs. a highshool dropout via their writing?
This. It's extraordinarily easy to tell that Faulkner is a dropout.

umm why wud u think that ? just wondering cause it seems like there are plenty of guys and gals here and its impossible to tell

The OP didn't mention feminists at all.

Admit it, you're obsessed.

Obvious male.

You only say this because you assume that each post you read is by default male-authored until you encounter cues which are blatantly feminine, then deceive yourself into believing you are able to distinguish the writing of men from that of women because you can recognize obvious signals on occasion. Your predicative skill is not in truth so fine-tuned.

Oh fuck off its easy deduction. Any other professor would be strung up for declaring that women are so easily identifiable

It's obvious hyperbole, but men and women tend to write differently. Writers and editors know this really well. There are men with "female" voice and women with "male" voice, but these are rare. Really, this is not really up for debate, just ask anyone in the editing/publishing industry (who is not ideologically driven).

>Any other professor would be strung up for declaring that women are so easily identifiable

Not in my experience.

Feminists do not deny differences between men and women. If they did, they wouldn't need to push for "equality".

bigots

We're not speaking here of differences, we're speaking here about whether the very consciousness of men and women are so radically different that in an act of writing it can ever be without significant doubt who the author is.

I don't think I got a single one of these.

Although that might be me not getting American humor

>Feminists do not deny differences between men and women.
They are saying women can be just as good at everything as men, and when reality spits in their face they start crying about quotas and muh patriarchy.

How so?

But the difference in mind is but one of the differences between men and women. Of course individual differences will weigh heavily, but there are very particular points where men and women shall tend to differ, relative to their respective cultures.

Let me put it this way: Tom and Sally are siblings raised in the same home. They share in common socio-economic status, race, attractiveness, health, and home-environment. Though they are extremely similar, their lives do not look the same. One day Tom and Sally sit down to watch a movie. Sally notices the heroine's desire for love. Tom does not take interest in the heroine as anything other than a thing to be obtained, finding her inactive and useless, and instead focuses on the worries of male hero and his development. At the end of the movie, Sally is ever so slightly reinforced towards passivity, which benefits the heroine, while Tom is ever so slightly reinforced towards action. Sally and Tom watch hundreds of movies, each time focusing on different aspects which suit the roles they perceive as their own. They think about different things, and to speak of separate ideas requires separate words, so Tom and Sally develop different vocabularies to accommodate their concerns, which are heavily influenced by sex. Tom uses words like "demesne" because he has an affinity for property rights, while Sally uses words such as "deflower" because of the value she ascribes to her own purity.

Even now I'm sure it's plain obvious from my words, that anyone could discern me as a Tom or Sally, without my intending to give such information.

A student in one of my second year history classes suggested that the reason why CEOs were mostly male was because men are more willing to take risks and be assertive. The (female) professor coldly told him to never bring up such "essentialist" ideas in class again, or face unspecified consequences.

Gotta love that atmosphere of free inquiry and independent thought!

>A student in one of my second year history classes suggested that the reason why CEOs were mostly male was because men are more willing to take risks and be assertive. The (female) professor coldly told him to never bring up such "essentialist" ideas in class again, or face unspecified consequences.

You must go to a shit university.

Except feminists don't push for equality.

Feminism is about righting perceived historical wrongs against women, which is why they get quotas and other manner of open discrimination against men.

>Even now I'm sure it's plain obvious from my words, that anyone could discern me as a Tom or Sally, without my intending to give such information.

They could, but they could be wrong which is the point.
Really the extent to which such deduction is accurate would be very easy to test in experiment

You write like a man. Shall I explain how?

One of the best in Canada, I'm afraid. Of course saying "best university in Canada" is a bit like saying "best basketball team in Canada."

Sure I'd like to hear

Even in that example you're showing your masculinity though. Pretty sure men are more concerned with female purity and use the word "deflower" far more than women do.

Your analysis doesn't take into account that women are often put off by the role of the passive heroine. There are far more young women who take more interest in the active hero, rather than the passive plot device female characters. I think that's probably a result of narratives being mostly crafted by men for a very long time, who obviously privilege male characters as heroes and drivers of story.

Your words show an inclination to consider accounting for error. You would like to avoid fallacy, and you feel that things which might be obvious ought to be proven or backed up with data. Women are less minded towards experiments and are more willing to accept generalities. Even those women who engage in scientific study are not propelled towards it from an internal curiosity; it is through years of conditioning and the desire to achieve some other goal, as acknowledgement, that they will reach towards truth-seeking by evidence-accumulating. You may judge me right or wrong, but I'd wager very many others would consider from your writing that you are a man.

...

Sad. Move to Australia. In my university, such a notion would be tolerated so long as it was supported by a decent argument and not obviously purposefully offensive.

My last year literary theory class was run by a lesbian queer postmodern sort of woman, yet she was still more than happy to entertain contrary opinions and argue them civilly. She was pretty cool, honestly. She gave me the worst grade I ever got in an assignment though.

I mostly agree and I am unsurprisingly a guy. But the thing is what if I was a woman? It wouldn't seem that tremendously extraordinary to me if it were the case

>There are far more young women who take more interest in the active hero, rather than the passive plot device female characters

But that's because of a conscious effort on the part of female educators, children's writers, feminist critics, etc. They're trying to do the same thing right now except with ethnic minorities.

>Even those women who engage in scientific study are not propelled towards it from an internal curiosity; it is through years of conditioning and the desire to achieve some other goal, as acknowledgement, that they will reach towards truth-seeking by evidence-accumulating

Sorry m8, but this reeks of your own insecurities and biases. If anything, women who would otherwise be logically minded and STEM-like are conditioned out of it at an early age because you know, they should be more concerned with their feeling and playing with ponies and shit.

Even under your own assumptions about men and women, there is an entirely different interpretation of that post which is possible.

"Sure I'd like to hear"

Speaks to the feminine need to make others feel accommodated and needed, to be inclusive in the group and come together, regardless of the truth of any sentiment.

Whoever wrote "Sure i'd like to hear", is probably a woman

(prob not though this is Veeky Forums)

Women, as the primary authors of erotic fiction, have absolutely zero room to complain about this

>But that's because of a conscious effort on the part of female educators, children's writers, feminist critics, etc

I really doubt the truth of this. Just from my own anecdotal experience this isn't true. Young girls tend to identify and more strongly follow the male, active heroes, because they are doing interesting things, rather than the passive characters. It's just nature. Passivity is boring to watch. It seems they only become interested in passivity at later ages, after its more likely some serious conditioning has taken place.

Was the lecturer older? I would agree but not sure if I would ever try to teach this to a class.

>She breated boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards

If men are concerned with notions of female purity, women are consumed by it. Women are, like men, egoistic creatures. They focus on how best to obtain the object of their desires. Purity is a woman's safety net, that when she has nothing else to offer, she can offer the possibility of being owned entirely as if to say, "No one has staken me for claim. I belong to you and no other."

Passivity is a sort of activeness in the minds of many women. A girl's adoration for the mermaid who makes herself mute to win her prince never dies.

Women have finally discovered irreverent irony? Whoa....

...

You just have to pretend that you know what's being laughed about and that you're equally disillusioned with it, no one will notice
this is the basis for modern american humor

And what are my insecurities and biases?

No, it wouldn't be extraordinary. It is only an estimate.

Which is the point really. There's no serious person who would ever claim its not ever estimatable. The question is really to what accuracy those estimations will ever be.
Especially when it comes to fiction which is far more prosaic and less socially constricted than in a conversation like this.

Could a woman have EVER written Moby Dick?
I wouldn't say its impossible but yeah thats like an infinite monkeys on a type writer deal.

*infinite monkeys on a typewriter deal.

Shakespeare was not educated.

if all language is performative then you could tell by identifying the female/male devices in style but the problem is, a female/male writer could easily write in that style. I think your teacher is underestimating how muddy the problem of authorship is.

Part of the error in estimation would largely come from those who are simply bad at picking up on social cues. I'm not claiming that the below-average portion of the population is magically above-average in their ability to discern male-authored writing from female-authored writing. I should rather say there are such cues that could allow one to decipher the sex of the author of one had the mind to pick up on them. As you said, one may have an error among a handful of cues, but in taking a vast number of cues as in a novel and producing one answer, the estimation fallibility should drop.

The Guardian had an online test for this. I think most people scored little better than a randomized selection.

This is it

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

Although I would wonder whether their selection of texts were random or intentionally deceptive

I got 5/10, ironically three out of the five I guessed were women rather than men while I was more worried about the opposite

6/10 here, with most errors coming down to me going for women too liberally. either that, or a long list of faggot authors.

This must be intentionally deceptive. I got all the women right but some of the men wrong.

This could be interesting pattern as we normally assume writers are male but the test itself has you second guessing that assumption.

I can remember when I was very young and reading through the Harry Potter books I became acutely aware of the author's gender as the characters in the book entered their teenage years. In the later parts of Harry Potter there is a shift from magical adventure to more mundane interpersonal drama. Even as a kid the way that Harry worried about his relationships with others, whether platonic or romantic, felt very 'feminine'. It's been so long since I read them so I don't know how to better expand upon it, but it definitely seemed that things the J.K. Rowling believed teenage boys cared about was probably more akin to the things teenage girls care about.
This is a shitty anecdote really since Harry Potter isn't exactly great literature or anything anyhow.

In general, yes. The type of details the author focuses on, the way it's described etc. can be either masculine or feminine. Surprised a lecturer is allowed to say this in 2017.

Yeah if it was written by a guy there would be a section about Harry jerking it to the memory of staring at Hermione's bare thigh during potions class

Male novelist here. I have been told repeatedly and by different people that my writing style feels "girly".

I write low fantasy adventure and am the straightest man I've ever known.

You sound like a faggot from this post so I say they're on the ball

>on the ball
I hope it's neither of mine.

There is a topic, macroscopic,
Causing me to vex.
In this index, kin to tropic,
'Tis the lesser sex
Its thoughts are vile, inducing bile--
I fear that I shall never find
A man worthwhile, who won't defile
Each thought with pornographic grind.

>not wanting girls to step on your balls

Are you sure you're straight

6/10

I got two males wrong and two females wrong.

would have been more honest desu sempai

The exerpts were too short.

There are some novels which come off as more feminine, surely, and this is sometimes an easier indicator that the novel might have been written by a woman. There is some quality in The Passion According to G.H. that, every time I read it, I get a distinctive womanly voice that is just removed from a masculine conception of how women think in general (and this is not a bad thing, it's a fantastic novel partly because it gets its voice so right and is an interesting psychological nosedive as well).

Then there are other books like The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley where there is no fucking way someone would be able to tell in a blind reading that the prose was written by a woman, namely because it also gets its voice so right and utterly removes itself from gendered perspective for a story that plays into the scheme of historical sagas (this too, is good).

A great writer knows when a gendered voice will work or not, and knows how to use it. Writers who are not great don't, and thus it might be easier to read off where the authorial voice comes through rather than a character's or story's.

I mean what you're speaking about here really is a far wider reaching question of whether it is ever truly possible to escape oneself in writing. That the biography of the writer wont always be intrinsically present in the work they produce.

Not that anything you said is incorrect but I think at the same time a sufficiently deep analysis of a work will always come back to the author even if the voice they create itself manages to be authentically seperate from them the very intention to provide such a voice and the material surrounding it are still of the author.

7/10 here.

>OP is in the 2nd grade
>OP's 'lecturer' was just explaining the difference between boys and girls hand writing.
mystery solved.

is this your first day here

people who follow abstractions tend to live up the characteristics of those abstractions and then the abtractions themselves are no longer meaningless since they now manifest themselves in the material world