Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (Full Version)

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ParappaTheDapper -> Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 9:51:30 AM)

VS Naipaul dropped some weird wild predictably egomaniacal comments recently in which he said among other things that female writers and male writers will always have different prose styles because "inevitably, for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house" and that bleeds through in her writing. He also said no woman including Jane Austen has ever been his equal as a prose stylist!

The Naipaul interview is interesting if you're interested in Naipaul (I am!) but I'm more scintillated by his audacious comments about men and women as writers. Do you think that in the 21st century there is still a distinctly Male voice and a distinctly Female voice? If you're interested, here is a list of sample passages that let you try your skills at identifying, in the course of a few lines, the gender of a writer.

Since it's only polite to answer one's own questions, let me drop some science:

1) I am honestly undecided as to whether there exists a Male and Female prose voice. I think there have been times, like the Victorian era, when this has been more true (George Eliot, one of my favorite writers, wrote a classic piece about this called Silly Novels by Lady Novelists ) but I think that questions of sex and gender have always been subtle and slippery and that feels even more true in the 21st century. My kneejerk reaction to comments like the ones Naipaul made is to remember those old Sinbad standup routines about how women be walkin' all like this but men be walkin' all like that. Still this question of a male and female voice in literature is an old one and some very smart people, both men and women, have come down on all sides of it so it still strikes me as interesting.

2) Full disclosure! I got 7/10 right on the test to tell men and women apart! But this doesn't really weigh heavily in favor of a "Female voice" since in 5 of the cases I was familiar with either the work being quoted or with the style of the writer who wrote the work, so those were gimmes. Funny bonus though: Most of the people I know who took the test improperly guessed the passage they quote from Naipaul as having been written by a girl!

3) My feelings about Naipaul are that he is a likable pompous blowhard and that he is a supremely gifted jackass who is often wrong but has a knack for being wrong in achingly pretty prose. I also find it laughable that he compares himself to Austen as a writer because she is sooooo out of his league!



Muttling -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 9:55:44 AM)

I think there is, but I don't think it is decided by gender of the author so much as the tone and style of the writing.   I've known several amateur authors who could write in a wide variety of voices, but the voices always struck me as having a male or female tone.   Many of the best writers I was friends with would seem to shift gender of the writing style based on what part of the story was being told and it gave great tone to the writing.



HeatherMcLeather -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:04:00 AM)

If there is a difference, I can't see it. I got a 3/10 on the test.

Actually its something I've never thought about, but I'm not a big reader for entertainment purposes. I read when I want to know something, so my favorite books are encyclopedia type books you can look something up in.

<as usual, leaves a Parappa post with more questions than she came in with>



xssve -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:07:56 AM)

I think there are some stylistic differences, but what makes good writing is more complicated than that - a fatuous voice, for instance, I find much more annoying than sentimentality.



GreedyTop -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:09:14 AM)

I think it depends upon the author.  Some can seamlessly switch the prose, many cannot.



VaguelyCurious -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:20:52 AM)

7/10, recognised the Rushdie passage and suspected the Naipaul one, guessed the others.

I'm not convinced that there's an actual difference - I think those passages were selected quite carefully.



0ldhen -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:31:07 AM)


I don't think so. I think it depends on the author. I have a friend who writes fantasy, and his females are all female and his males are all male. Even stranger to me is that there is a certain amount of sex in his books, and he writes both sides equally well.



0ldhen -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:32:12 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: GreedyTop

I think it depends upon the author.  Some can seamlessly switch the prose, many cannot.



Yayyyyy.....big boobie squishes to the monkey!!!!!



GreedyTop -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:37:35 AM)

*tacklesmoochesandgropesthechickie*



snappykappy -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:40:13 AM)

one of the best that i have seen but cant remember where i saw it

"Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" is not a nice safeword to give someone, Lotsa fun, but not fair.



xssve -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:41:10 AM)

I only got 6 out of 10 on the Naipaul test.

You scored 6 out of a possible 10

Sloppy thinking. You clearly need to read more books by men.

For reference, the novels quoted were:
1 A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul      (r, guessed male)
2 The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks           (r, guessed male)
3 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison              (r, guessed female)
4 Harnesssing Peacocks by Mary Wesley   (w, guessed male, but it was a toss up)
5 Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie    (w, guessed female, and I read that one, lol)
6 A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving  (r, guessed male)
7 The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood   (w, guessed male, but I think I meant to check female - the teeth thing, women notice stuff like that)
8 On Beauty by Zadie Smith                        (r, guessed female)
9 Atonement by Ian McEwan                       (w, guessed female)
10 A Forever Mother by Laura Abbot           (r, guessed female)

If anything, I think women's writing is less sentimental, in fact it's as close to a dead giveaway as I can glean.



ParappaTheDapper -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:49:07 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Muttling

I think there is, but I don't think it is decided by gender of the author so much as the tone and style of the writing.   I've known several amateur authors who could write in a wide variety of voices, but the voices always struck me as having a male or female tone.   Many of the best writers I was friends with would seem to shift gender of the writing style based on what part of the story was being told and it gave great tone to the writing.



That is interesting! So would you say that there is historically such a thing as Male and Female styles but that good writers have evolved to the point that they can switch between the two types of voice at will?

I think a lot of people actually feel this way. At least it's what I hear when people say of a writer "Oh, he writes female characters surprisingly well!"

If this point of view is true, I'd posit that a lot of it is due to the historical differences in education between men and women. This leads to some interesting questions, like I wonder if women who have attended all female schools tend to be more conscious of the Female voice (this consciousness could cause them to write more in the Female voice, to reject the Female voice out of hand, or to be more apt to play with the notion of the Male/Female voice). I also wonder if men and women who have grown up in cultures where traditional Male and Female rules are more rigidly enforced are more/less conscious of the historical Male and Female voices.



ParappaTheDapper -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 10:57:40 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: HeatherMcLeather

If there is a difference, I can't see it. I got a 3/10 on the test.

Actually its something I've never thought about, but I'm not a big reader for entertainment purposes. I read when I want to know something, so my favorite books are encyclopedia type books you can look something up in.

<as usual, leaves a Parappa post with more questions than she came in with>



I'm a questionable character, no doubt about that!

It's also interesting, because if there really is a Male/Female voice then the voice presumably bleeds through into more dry and academic writing as well. Obviously with a standard encyclopedia or dictionary entry there is little if any indication about who wrote it, but if such a voice exists it probably can't be turned on and off.



ParappaTheDapper -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 11:06:47 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: VaguelyCurious

7/10, recognised the Rushdie passage and suspected the Naipaul one, guessed the others.

I'm not convinced that there's an actual difference - I think those passages were selected quite carefully.


I found the selection of the passages interesting as well. The Naipaul passage in particular, which I was familiar with but which most people I know guessed was written by a woman, was clearly a dry drollery. The one that interested me most was one I wasn't familiar with, from Mary Wesley:

quote:

“Mungo drove with verve and dash. They had spent the night in an hotel by the Helford river. He had feared, when Alison insisted on stopping at a chemist in Truro, that she was planning one of her fucking headaches (to be exact a non-fucking headache) but this fear had been groundless. After dinner with Rory, who entertained them during the meal with a description of his life as a milliner, he had, elevated by circumspect consumption of wine, gone up to their room to find that she had bought not, as he supposed, soluble aspirin, but a choice of contraceptives. ‘Which do you prefer?’ Alison presented her offerings. ‘Arousal? Elite? Fiesta?’”


To me that was a total gimme! It was very obviously a woman writing in the voice of a feckless meathead dude. It also immediately jumped out as British and reeking of class privilege. For some reason I'd never heard of Wesley before, so I looked her up and she seems kind of awesome, so thanks, Guardian! It did make me wonder, though, what point they were trying to make in selecting that passage.



ParappaTheDapper -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 11:11:39 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: 0ldhen


I don't think so. I think it depends on the author. I have a friend who writes fantasy, and his females are all female and his males are all male. Even stranger to me is that there is a certain amount of sex in his books, and he writes both sides equally well.


If there is a difference between Male and Female voices, I suspect writing about sex and sexual attraction must be among the most telling topics!

Of course sexual orientation also comes into play. Once one begins dealing in issues of sex and gender and sexual orientation one opens up such a wonderful, reticulate, opalescent puzzlebox!



tazzygirl -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 11:17:44 AM)

I got 6/10, and I read a lot of books written by men. The man loves his spy novels.



LaTigresse -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 11:57:16 AM)

I got a 7 out of 10. However.......anything that sounded whiny or oh woe is me, or look how cool I am, I attributed to male. Anything that romantically glorified men in a gooey way, I attributed to female. The 3 were examples that were not obvious to any of the above.



ParappaTheDapper -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 12:01:16 PM)

The last passage, I was sure was a man doing a terrible impersonation of a girl going ga-ga over a guy; it turned out to be a woman doing a terrible impersonation of a girl going ga-ga over a guy!


quote:

ORIGINAL: LaTigresse

I got a 7 out of 10. However.......anything that sounded whiny or oh woe is me, or look how cool I am, I attributed to male. Anything that romantically glorified men in a gooey way, I attributed to female. The 3 were examples that were not obvious to any of the above.




LaTigresse -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 12:37:47 PM)

It reminded me of the bad romance novels my mother reads. Or at least, used to read.



VaguelyCurious -> RE: Is there a Male writing style and a Female writing style? (6/3/2011 12:43:30 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ParappaTheDapper

It did make me wonder, though, what point they were trying to make in selecting that passage.

I think that one and the romance novel-style one were there to make the readers feel clever - people don't like to come away from a quiz with 0/10, innit.



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