about words

[pensnest]

Led thither by goodness-knows-what meanderings along LiveJournal paths, I've spent a few happy minutes playing with the Gender Genie, which is supposed to detect whether a piece was written by a male or a female. My essays (admittedly, I only tested two of them) are resoundingly masculine, apparently. My popslash varies, I picked several and got mixed results, but the sole original fic on my site tests as written-by-female, it seems, which is good since it is in a female pov.

What baffles me are the criteria! I mean, how can the use of words such as 'the', 'and', 'where', 'who', 'at', 'it' and 'to' possibly relate to the author's sex? These are crucial components of sentences, aren't they? I was expecting something a little more, hmm, I dunno, writerly - like, maybe, men using more verbs, women using more adjectives and adverbs? Sentence length? Amount of dialogue and length of dialogue sentences?

I have found, in recent years, that I prefer to read fiction written by women (and am still pleased with myself for identifying Julian May as female based on the writing) - because they seem generally to present a fuller world, a world in which there *are* proactive women. Julian May's 'Saga of the Exiles' had a whole world, a rich variety of characters male and female, and some of them were heroic and some of them were troubled, some were strong, some were weak, some smart, some stupid, and their characteristics were *what characterised them*, and not related to their sex. (On the other hand, JK Rowling started to annoy me quite early on, when I realised that although she told us of a wizarding world in which males and females had equal importance, what she showed us was a world in which the only active people were males. Hermione and Rita Skeeter were pretty much the only females who moved the story along - everyone else with an *active* role was male.)

Still, the 'preferring to read fiction written by women' thing has pretty well nothing to do with how often these authors use words like 'where' and 'it'. Though it may, I concede, have something to do with how often they use 'she'.

Comments

[mickeym.livejournal.com]

Apparently I'm 50/50 (at least my recent popslash and my spn stuff) male and female. Go figure *g*

Thanks for the link; it gave me a little diversion for a few minutes!

[pensnest]

It is rather entertaining, seeing whether you come up as male or female. Which has absolutely nothing to do with what you have to say!

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

how can the use of words such as 'the', 'and', 'where', 'who', 'at', 'it' and 'to' possibly relate to the author's sex?

IIRC it's related to a gender bias in the construction of more or less complex and more or less reflexive sentences..

[rikes]

I would agree, plus there are other popular bias such as women being more tentative (if) emotional and interested in people and relationships (she, me, her, your etc) whereas men think rationally and talk about facts (above, below, what, who, these etc).

That would also explain why Pen's essays (and mine, too) were analysed to be masculine, and (some of) your fiction as feminine.

[ephemera.livejournal.com]

Yep! also just *essays* vs *fiction* affects the balance.

My fiction comes out about 80/20 f/m
My journal comes out almost 100% f
The few bits of essay and 'writing from a professional context'(1)I've fed the genie comes out 20/80 f/m

[1] I'd say professional writing, by some of my fiction is that also

[pensnest]

Hmm. Interesting. I wonder if there's a difference in the kind of fic that comes up 'feminine'? If maybe the plottier ones will read as male and the angstier ones (not that I have many of those) as female? Or if, maybe, it's the earlier ones that come up 'male', and the later ones are more feminine. I foresee many happy minutes wasted...

I suppose it's reasonable for essays to come up as 'male', because one ought to be decisive in essays, and to make statements which have less to do with 'me' and more to do with 'the'.

However, I ran a handful of my longer blogs through it, too, and came up mostly male again, which surprises me a bit.

[bubbleforest.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that was fun! Only 1 out of 4 popslash stories I tested was deemed feminine. Weird. I wonder if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

[pensnest]

I have a feeling I'm going to be going through all my fic and seeing what kind of results it gets... I don't know either, whether it's good or bad to get results slanted towards the male. It's tempting to say good, on the grounds that the POV in the stories is probably a male one - but then, the closer in-head the POV, the more likely there is to be angst and second-guessing and, I suspect, the kind of things that come up as female on this test. Interesting, though.

[milosflaca.livejournal.com]

*goes to check* According to this I write like a woman :P (Female Score: 1126
Male Score: 826)

My bf is the best guessing if a drawing was done by a man or a woman. I don't know how he does it, but he says the gender is imprinted in the lines.
I thought you could tell writing wise, with the verbs or the construction of the sentences. I think women tend to be more.. elaborated when it comes to sentences, whereas men are more direct, less adjectives and such.

[pensnest]

It'd be quite interesting to compare male and female writing on the same subject, or the same kind of writing, to see whether we as readers can figure out the sex of the writer. Interesting that your bf can differentiate gender for drawing - have you checked his results? I suppose it would be exceptionally hard to write a program to do that!

[vaudevilles.livejournal.com]

I looked at my bookshelf the other day and nearly every book I adored was written by a woman - especially the 'good literature'. About the only male author I really enjoy is David Mitchell.

I think it's because the rhythm of women's writing better fits the rhythm of my thoughts, longer words, more description conjuring emotion, less harshness and a more sympathetic (to me) version of humanity.

[pensnest]

Indeed. As I said above, I too find I prefer to read books written by women, to a great extent. Interesting that you find the actual prose more to your liking - I'm not sure I'd ever thought of it that way, just that the women tend, well, not to forget the women.

[vaudevilles.livejournal.com]

Absolutely - that's the other aspect of women's writing that gives me better access (or at least ensures I don't want to throw the book against the wall because the portrayal of the women involved is so frustrating).