site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2284 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 11, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Buried in the culture war thread, there has been some discussion about differences between male and female writers, and how one might recognize the gender of a writer without knowing from the name.

Rowling supposedly writes all her male characters like they are girls. Draco is a bully in a mean girl fashion, while Harry falls in and out of love in a manner more similar to women than men. Another pointed out that male stories tend to converge on one point, whereas those written by women tend to move in many different directions. The "men writing women" tropes are also often telltale sign of author's gender.

I figured it would be fun to ask the rest here: Do you see different trends in how men and women write, and do you believe you can reliably tell the gender of a writer from their works alone?

What a fun topic!

Do you see different trends in how men and women write, and do you believe you can reliably tell the gender of a writer from their works alone?

Yes. As a child I would read anything that came near me (a broader selection across time and topic than I would choose if making purchases from a bookstore) and even then I noticed that I could usually tell. I think I've been surprised at the sex of a writer once in my life?

That said, Rowling has a great male character in Corm Strike so she's hardly the person I'd level shallow characterization accusations at. I do sometimes read something and agree that no woman would have that thought, and sometimes its bad enough to be silly, but I don't think a one off "admiring my breasts" would damage my enjoyment of a novel.

Another pointed out that male stories tend to converge on one point, whereas those written by women tend to move in many different directions.

I don't think this is at all true. I think its more about genre. Fantasy has a bunch of subplots, thrillers only a few. Both sexes can write shallow characters, both write plots that are simple or complex.

If anything its a matter of tending towards styles. Sparse female writing is Cather or Ingalls, male its Hemingway or Steinbeck. Cheap/easy womens writing tends towards sounding like a romance novel, mens it boils down to Crichton / Preston. Different stuff gets left out, elided. I'd say womens writing is more attractive but that could be because I have a female brain and that style of thought feels more correct. Note to calibrate my taste, my favorite books literary writing wise are "Time Travelers Wife", "Circe", and "Piranesi'. But many of my favorite authors are male (Pratchett, Bryson).

I read a lot of web serials, which I would estimate are >95% male written (the Royal Road kind, not the fanfic or gay romance kind).

One thing I can say for certain is that if there is a female protagonist, she will always be a lesbian, or "bisexual" but basically all romance is with other women. I assume this is because it's icky to imagine a man hitting on your character, but it does get a bit ridiculous.

I don't know if this applies to professionally published works, I would assume not.

One thing I can say for certain is that if there is a female protagonist

What about "medium-sized breasts"? I've heard it mocked as the most reliable sign of male writing.

So How Not to Write a Novel made a bigger impression on you than you let on, then!

In general, male writers describing female characters put much more emphasis on the characters' secondary sexual characteristics than female writers do. Even if the character doesn't have a real set of badonkers, her medium-sized (or even small) breasts will be mentioned more prominently than they would be had the writer been female. Female writers generally only describe a female characters' breasts, legs, arse etc. if it's relevant to the story in some way.

Well, I am free to disregard this advice anyway, because I am writing smut.

In that case, carry on.

I it applies even harder in smut. When describing body parts for titillation, be more evocative than a bland descriptor like medium-sized.

I'd figure a character-driven description of another character would be more relevant than the third person. Or maybe I just appreciate characters who would describe a certain movement as "breasted boobily".

It is not. At least most fantasy I grew up with, the default orientation has been straight and monogamous, regardless of the protagonist's gender. I believe in recent years there has been a trend towards more LGBT content, but that is politics rather than wish fulfillment.

I feel like Rowling is an interesting one since arguably the first 4 books of Harry Potter are far more world-buildy, expansive masculine vibes then the back half just kind of narrows the focus by a ton and focuses more on interpersonal. Part of me wonders whether it was due to receiving sufficient clout at that point to write what she was interested in.

I am not convinced that worldbuilding is such a big tell. Legend of Earthsea is considered a classic within fantasy and has a heavy focus on worldbuilding in spite of being written by a woman.

A much clearer tell is understanding of the opposite gender. Feminist authors in particular tend to write worlds in which there are no inherent differences between men and women. This leads to situations where girls written by men act like boys, and boys written by women act like girls. In extreme cases, this leads to the "if I had boobs, I would definitely admire them in the mirror. There are no differences between men and women. Thus my female lead wakes up and admires her breasts." cliche. Though more likely is just a female hero who perceives the world essentially through the eyes of a man. Or Draco Malfoy who acts like a mean girl rather than your schoolyard bully.

Not like this is insurmountable of course. There is no reason why an author cannot build a good understanding of how people generally work or how men and women tend to act in different ways. As a counter to the Draco Malfoy example, the role of schoolyard bully is already taken up by Dudley, so a bully who is less overtly violent is a good fit for the story. And there are certainly boys who act like that.

Not writing related, but after looking at a lot of fan art, it's quite easy to tell whether it's a male or female artist. There's a few tells, the main one probably being the way that women tend to put more attention into eyes, and especially hands. The more detailed the hands, the more likely the artist is female. Also the way they draw bodies, women tend to draw different things. For example when drawing "thick" women, a man will draw her with wide with a flat stomach, while a woman will include belly fat that's hanging off.

I don't read very many female writers, and is that the female writers I do read, tend to write in a very gendered fashion, something like josei, for example.

Like I don't think I could necessarily clock Bujold's writing as female. I don't think I could clock Harry Potter as having been written by a woman either, but the last time I read it I was a child, so maybe I'd notice it today.

Overall, I think it's very noticeable in art than and sometimes noticeable in writing. But it really depends on what is being written. Romantasy is written primarily by women, and so the tropes themselves are coded in a specific way, so even if a man would write according to the norms, would you be able to tell? I wouldn't, because I don't read the genre at all.

I believe that a lot of erotica is written by men using female pennames as that helps the books sell better. I would not be all that surprised if the same were the case for romantasy.

I write some genre fiction under a female pen name. One thing my partner constantly has to point out is that I focus entirely too much on events that are happening, rather than how the characters in the story feel about those events. There are a handful of things related to voice and psychology that also come up, but that's the big one.

how the characters in the story feel about those events.

Hunger games comes to mind as an example where the female lead spends most of her time quietly reflecting about what is going on without doing much. A somewhat common criticism of the first film was that the actor seemed emotionless. Issue being that this is actually somewhat accurate to the source material, where she simply sits and thinks a lot.

I honestly felt cheated by the movie [and have the impression the book was similar] simply because Dankness Evermeme (or whatever her name is) was mostly just getting lucky with conditions suitable for environmental kills (with maybe an excusable reflex shooting to make that one guy rue the day he dared set foot in the arena). If there was manipulation to place those convenient weapons right in her way, it wasn't clearly stated.

It is supposed to be a commentary on reality shows. The TV hosts will do whatever they can to create an interesting narrative. The reader is supposed to assume that everything that happens in the game is a result of manipulation by the hosts. Being good at surviving in the wild helps you, but the most important factor that lets you get home in one piece is being liked by the audience. In the books it is made pretty clear that she spends a ton of time metagaming and trying to appeal to the viewers.

Katniss is being kept alive by the producers because they wanted a tragic love story. They manipulate the environment to place her in dangerous situations where her skills give her an edge. The movie leans more into the action though, so I understand why that might be disappointing when you realize she basically cheats.

Honestly the part I felt cheated by had more to do with the "oh, so we're just going to make the protagonist basically blameless" thing than anything else.

It would have been more interesting had the killer bees been delivered as a gift more than the chug jug ointment beforehand.

Men tend to be interested in abstract systems, while women tend to be interested in people and interpersonal relationships. This is reflected in the kind of genres of fiction that the two sexes read and write (men tend to favour thrillers, crime novels and hard SF, while women tend to favour romance novels, family dramas and literary depictions of psychological interiority). Even among writers working in the same nominal genre, the people-vs-things distinction is readily evident: fantasy novels written by men tend to be high fantasy, D&D-adjacent novels which place a lot of emphasis on the rules and mechanics of magic systems, or pseudo-historical fiction examining the political machinations of warring tribes or factions; while fantasy novels written by women are often narrower in scope, focusing on interpersonal relationships in a fantasy setting (e.g. the "romantasy" genre). The people-vs-things distinction is apparent not just at the macro level (plots and genres), but also at the micro level (words and sentences). I imagine if one were to perform an analysis on books written by men vs. women, the latter category would feature a much higher proportion of sentences about the relationships between characters or a character's interior psychological state when compared to the former category, even when controlling for genre.

Needless to say, there are exceptions: one of the most popular romance novelists ever (Nicholas Sparks) is a man, while the most commercially successful novelist ever (Agatha Christie) is a woman best known for her work in a mechanics-focused genre more commonly associated with male writers. But on the whole, women tend to write (and read) novels which are focused on interpersonal relationships and psychological interiority, while men tend to write (and read) novels which are focused on abstract rule-based systems.

Accordingly, I daresay that if I was presented with a thousand words of prose by a novelist with whose work I was erstwhile unfamiliar, I would be able to guess their sex significantly better than chance. Maybe I'll create a survey.

Rule-based vs relationship-based is an interesting idea. If you consider the worlds of JK Rowling and Brandon Sanderson it certainly works. One makes a vibes-based magic system where the magic one uses is often symbolic of their character, while the other makes magic a force of nature which is understood and researched. People vs things.

On the other hand I would argue that Neil Gaiman's magic usually also leans into symbolism, and that his writing focusses heavily on the relationships between characters. The same goes for the Monogatari series, a popular light novel series written by a man, in which paranormal phenomena are closely intertwined with the struggles of adolescence.

From a purely "writing as a craft" perspective, it seems like characters are usually loadbearing in terms of commercial success, much more so than the world and plot. It is a Hollywood cliche that "people don't care about whodunnit. They want whydunnit." Sanderson has also stated that although he thinks worldbuilding is the most interesting parts of fantasy writing, his audience cares much more about characters and plot, in that order of importance.

So even if men tend to be more object-focused, a professional might still make his stories more people-oriented in revision, in order to make them appeal to as many people as possible.

On the other hand I would argue that Neil Gaiman's magic usually also leans into symbolism, and that his writing focusses heavily on the relationships between characters.

Which is why Gaiman has been wading through an ocean of poontang and indulging in dirty kinks to Gideon the groupies to a manageable number.

I broadly agree with what you're saying but my impression was that crime/mystery novels were a mostly gender equal genre or even one with a slight female lean.

Hmm, let's see.

  • Searching "bestselling mystery novels of all time" brought me to this list of the hundred best crime novels of all time. By my count 68 entries on the list are solely credited to a male novelist.
  • Time has a similar list of the hundred best mystery/thriller novels ever, with the caveat that they only include one novel per author (so Christie only appears once). Of these, 46% are male, bearing out your hypothesis.
  • This article lists the seven best-selling mystery books in history, of which four were written by men.
  • Wikipedia has a list of the best-selling books of any genre. Searching "crime", "mystery" and "detective" returns ten entries, 7 of which were written by male authors.
  • Penguin polled their readers on the hundred best crime books, of which 47 were written exclusively by male authors.

I think you have a point, books in the crime/mystery genre have a more even gender split than I thought.

That penguin one looks super sketchy with none of the top ten being super popular. https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/mystery

I'm not going to do a bunch but of the top 25 on goodreads (it goes by shelved as mystery popularity not total readership) its 9/25 male authors. Dan brown and stieg larsson each double dipping and agatha christie sweeping 4.

Goodreads has the disadvantage of recency bias and possibly could skew more female than readership in general. But the science fiction stuff skews heavily male. https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/science-fiction Suzanne Collins and Martha Wells are the only women that crack the top 20.

What the fuck kind of push poll did penguin do for that.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats