Feminism

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Do women write differently than men? (lemmy.today)

submitted 2 days ago by Wren@lemmy.today to c/feminism@lemmy.world

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Eight years ago I was tasked with writing blog posts for a tech event with little writing experience under my belt, so I was given an editor. Nothing changed my writing style more than she, who pointed out all the ways (she asserted) women hedge and weaken their language to minimize the impact of their words. It's a learned response, she told me, to not appear aggressive or unagreeable.

I still flinch every time I use the word "just," even if it just makes sense.

What do you think?

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[–] celeste@kbin.earth 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There are probably learned habits, sure. We also read things differently depending on how we gender the author, so it can be complicated to analyze.

When I think about this subject, I remember James Tiptree Jr ( which was the pseudonym for Alice Bradley Sheldon).

A quote I got from wikipedia about her:

There was speculation Tiptree was a woman, however, based partially on the themes in her stories. In 1975, in the introduction to Warm Worlds and Otherwise, a collection of Tiptree's short stories, Robert Silverberg wrote: "[i]t has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing."[19] Silverberg also likened Tiptree's writing to Ernest Hemingway's, arguing there was a "prevailing masculinity about both of them—that preoccupation with questions of courage, with absolute values, with the mysteries and passions of life and death as revealed by extreme physical tests, by pain and suffering and loss."[19]

[–] Wren@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's funny that he focused on the themes rather than the style. I wonder what women should think about in his world.