Can people tell your gender from your writing?

[sun_sea_sky]

I've not said whether I am male or female on my bio, but I wondering if there is any point (in being coy about it).

Do you think that, by reading a story or two by someone you can be reasonably certain if it was written by a man or woman? As in, 'only a man would write like that!', or vice-versa.

Of course, you could state your gender and lie, as I suspect a couple of authors have. Or maybe they haven't. It's hard to be sure.

You might also ask the same thing about age. Language usage, attitudes, life experiences, could tend to reveal your approximate age in your writing.

 

[sr71plt]

I think a good writer can fool the readers.

 

[PennLady]

When I was in college, I took a creative writing class in which we all took turns submitting our works anonymously to the class. For one of my works -- a yet-to-be-completed story -- one girl said she couldn't tell if a man or woman wrote it, and I took it as a compliment.

So I think it can be done. Whether there's a point to hiding, or trying to hide, one's gender as a writer would be up to the writer.

 

[Darkniciad]

I get mistaken as a woman more often than not as Dark and Les ( not so much in my third name ) I get emails to that effect all the time. Just got a PM from someone stunned by the revelation I'm male on my website a couple of days ago.

 

[nicecthulhu]

I don't think it should make a difference. I'm listed as male on my bio page. Some women have commented favourably about my female characters. At least I think they were women...

 

[Darkniciad]

There's at least one category where it matters: Lesbian Sex.

Male writers ( or even suspected male writers ) get bombed to hell and back in that category.

If you're not female or can't fool them there, your score is going to suffer noticeably.

 

[sr71plt]

There's at least one category where it matters: Lesbian Sex.

Male writers ( or even suspected male writers ) get bombed to hell and back in that category.

If you're not female or can't fool them there, your score is going to suffer noticeably.

I have a lesbian detective series in the marketplace under a pen name. My best-selling series.

(And the same pen name has stories on Lit.--my best-rating stories)

 

[Cruel2BKind]

In GM it matters a bit...

You wont get bombed or anything, but there are a lot of writers that are basically writing women in men's bodies. They have large fan bases, but those bases tend to be primarily female.

I like to think that my stories appeal to both, and I am favorited by quite a few men, but I'm favorited mainly by women and "Unspecifieds"

 

[Bebeslut]

I write under a female pseudonym, and some readers may be aware of that. I believe I state on my Lit profile that I am a male to female crossdresser. i believe the people who buy my CD/TV Series on Amazon Kindle may suspect I am a crossdresser, though my other two series are strictly about females, and one is very bi-female heavy.v
There is at least one other Lit writer aware of my sexuality, and he has pointed out to me that some of my stories read much more "female" than others. But the stories he pointed to as definitely by a male writer were early stories in my Punk Chick Series; it was later stories in that series as he pointed to as more "female." I believe the reason that is so is that i wrote more about relationships later in the series, plus the fact that I got to know my own characters better.

 

[sun_sea_sky]

One of the reasons I asked was because I read a story recently, told in the first person, from someone with a female name and who identified as a female author. However the story was told in the first person as a male (hitting up on a female). Now I know the author isn't the character, but I found the discontinuity made it hard to get it straight in my head whether the character in the story was female (and therefore it was a lesbian story) or male (and therefore it was a straight story). This particularly happened because the name of the story character was not mentioned often (and I kept remembering the name of the author).

Maybe the author was just messing with my mind, LOL.

 

[SexyAlison]

Yeah. If it's brash, I assume it's a guy, and I'm often right.

 

[Jett_73]

Perhaps not, but hopefully they can from my bio!

 

[Boxlicker101]

In the past, there have been programs on this site that purported to determine whether an author was a man or a woman. They always said I was a woman, and I took that rather as a compliment, because I try to slant many of my stories to women as much as I can.

Of course, since I write stroke rather than erotic literature, I can't really get away with writing lesbian stories. I just don't have the patience to put a lot of back story into them, which gets me roundly castigated.

 

[SynnDee]

Thought i knew

At one time I was sure I could tell the difference but read a story by a guy, I think, as a pov and it was awesome. I was so into it and feeling exactly what the main character felt that I was floored. The author did a great job. Guess it is talent.

 

[oggbashan]

I created jeanne_d_artois as an alt to try writing from a female POV. It seemed to work but when I came clean (on April 1st, All Fools Day) one of her fans was very annoyed.

 

[YDB95]

I am often mistaken for the wrong gender on the Internet in general, unless I use a gender-specific handle. A few commenters on Lit have said things that indicate the same mistake, but I love reading them in any case.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I get mistaken as a woman more often than not as Dark and Les ( not so much in my third name ) I get emails to that effect all the time. Just got a PM from someone stunned by the revelation I'm male on my website a couple of days ago.

Its the high heels and boa.

 

[AlwaysDancing]

I like this topic.

I'm a fan of viewpoint writing ... Meaning you write only one viewpoint per story section, even in third person. If you have an excellent character and are faithful to their viewpoint, I believe its easy to fool your readers. In fact, I'd even say your readers want to be fooled.

My polarizing tale of a woman confessing her infidelity garnered the comment that the author was in fact a woman (I'm not) or psychic (ditto).

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

It's possible if the writer was raised around females and has a keen sense for sound and speech patterns.

 

[lovecraft68]

My SWB series is 51 installments only 7 were from the brother's POV, everything else was "Megan"

This was where everyone started thinking me as female, because I captured her so well.

Thing is Megan was very dark, melancholy and pretty fucked up. That's what I nailed because its applied to me during parts of my life so I didn't necessarily nail her female aspects as much as simply the character.

So here on lit a lot of readers e-mail me as "Laura" because I have the Laura Lovecraft pic at the top of my bio page(which is really the other half of course)

Even before that I got a lot of e-mails saying that they love seeing a woman writing incest.

But that's lit readers. Honestly I think they want to see me as female. It goes back to that double standard that men think erotica written by a female has to be hotter.

They imagine every female erotica author as this gorgeous young thing with a porn star body typing naked on her lap top.

They certainly don't want to picture me.

Another lit author told me she could spot me as male because of the harshness of some of my sex scenes peg me as male.

Not sure if that's accurate though, because I have read some female penned stories that are pretty damn rough.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

For what its worth:

If yuh wanna capture the female watch plenty of amateur phone-cam vids of girls/women alone. The older the female the more choreographed sex is. That is, the older galz know how to ride but its bland.

 

[lovecraft68]

For what its worth:

If yuh wanna capture the female watch plenty of amateur phone-cam vids of girls/women alone. The older the female the more choreographed sex is. That is, the older galz know how to ride but its bland.

Beg to differ.

The young girls are hot, but they don;t have a clue yet, they pose, they squeal they act like little porn stars, but haven't really figured it out yet.

Older women (sad to say that would be my age now) know hat they want, how to get it and exactly what to do with it.

No games, no posing, no fake noises and giggles, they just take you for the ride and they enjoy every damn minute of it.

 

[lance gt]

There's at least one category where it matters: Lesbian Sex.

Male writers ( or even suspected male writers ) get bombed to hell and back in that category.

If you're not female or can't fool them there, your score is going to suffer noticeably.

This I agree with 100%. I'll post a chapter and it will do well, until it get's into a top spot and then it's 1 bombed, until it poses no threat to a female writer. I refuse to write under a female name, just to be taken seriously as a lesbian author.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Beg to differ.

The young girls are hot, but they don;t have a clue yet, they pose, they squeal they act like little porn stars, but haven't really figured it out yet.

Older women (sad to say that would be my age now) know hat they want, how to get it and exactly what to do with it.

No games, no posing, no fake noises and giggles, they just take you for the ride and they enjoy every damn minute of it.

What exactly do you differ with? Girls act differently from older women, thats what I thought I said.

 

[topace]

To be honest, I think my writing (wherever I post it) gives away my masculinity, but I've never lied about my gender, so it's not a problem to me and I tend to stay far away from categories where women are better than men (like Lesbian Sex).

I can't help writing romance though - that's just part of who I am!