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?
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Notes -
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?
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.
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