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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12692 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026

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What are the signs?

Besides obvious cues, the biggest tell is simply that men tend to depict both men and women like stereotypical men (e.g. stoic and rational) or women like children, i.e. struggle to imagine thinking like a women, and focus on masculine interests like logical systems while ignoring feminine interests like dress...while women do the opposite. I think that women's writing tends to sound more passive and/or casual, men's more direct and/or profound, and men tend to draw more geometric or skeuomorphic...but I don't know if that's accurate or my shallow intuition.

The female main character who wakes up and checks herself out in the mirror while admiring her breasts and curves is an absolute classic sign of male author. Or is that one too obvious?

It is, but /r/menwritingwomen material is almost always rather dated.

In my years of reading, the best way I can break it down is that male writing is more mechanistic, whereas female writing tends to be more intimate.

I’ve always struggled trying to find the best way to phrase it, and that’s what I keep coming back to.

I think the biggest tell is how they focus on people, on the relations between them. Men and women have different ways of assessing the men and women around them, different ways of relating to the same and opposite sex.

the biggest tell is simply that men tend to depict both men and women like stereotypical men (e.g. stoic and rational) or women like children

This is another huge one, especially in the field of pseudonym-cloaked online writing. In theory, I know literally nothing about author CoffeeBacon666, but in practice their female main character is just an autistic dude in a dress with some childish affections.

I could see myself being more confused in a genre I was less familiar with. It would be interesting to take on a challenge like "Read these three mystery writers. All have male names, but some of them are actually female writers. Can you figure it out?"

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