I meta, therefore I am.

[bandgeek]

So I've been reading about feminist criticism of Hamlet for my Lit Studies class. But what I'm interested in isn't so much the Hamlet stuff itself (although I'm sure we can all ruminate on Ophelia until the cows come home). What I'd really like to know more about is this

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[thisficklemob]

So here's my question to you: is there, in your perception, a gender to writing? ... If I presented you with two unlabelled samples of prose, would you be able to tell which was written by a man, and which by a woman?

I suppose it partially depends on the subject of the paragraph. In many cases, I'd say no. On the other hand, if the subject were one that typically evoked different responses in women and men, then that might come through in the paragraph.

I wrote a paper (sort of) about this once... but instead of focusing on the writing, I focused on my own gendered response to the writing. It was for my African lit class... and I talked about how I tried to relate to statements female characters made in a female-authored book... that gender felt like a point of commonality, through which I attempted to connect... when with a male protagonist, time, gender, ethnicity, geography, and language divided my identity almost totally from another African novel. I didn't even try to relate. And I initially (in high school) blamed the author for the sexism of his protagonist.

And I talked about how I responded differently to authors based on whether they were male or female... for example, it was easier to take implicit criticism or flaws of a female character when written by a female author. And I talked about how in one short story, I didn't know whether the author was male or female... because I didn't know if Ousmane (?) was a man's or woman's name... and I somehow felt it mattered.

But that author (who is male) is widely praised for his sympathetic treatment of women's lives. He stood in contrast to the many male authors we read who dealt with issues of colonialism primarily, and always from a man's POV... when the women dealt with colonialism and gender issues, from women's POVs. Of course, in one class, it wasn't a huge sample size... but you could usually guess the gender of the author, if you didn't know, based on their perspectives, their priorities, what and who they discussed and how, and what they deemed important.

So I suppose that Woolf may have had a point in that sexism is part of what distinguishes male and female writing, and the differences may diminish as sexism diminishes, as women get more autonomy and men consider women's perspectives as worthy and important. And also as women's and men's lives expand to encompass more experiences, outside their traditional roles. There are far more men who could convincingly narrate from a mother's perspective than in decades past, because there are more men who are very involved in childrearing. Etc.

I don't think I can help with the m/m slash question, since I don't read that much m/m.

[bandgeek]

Hmm ... yeah, I can definitely see how gender would matter when it comes to men's vs. women's socio-political experiences. I guess something I'm interested in that vein is whether or not a man can really understand or write from the perspective of a female. Regardless of his level of sympathy toward women, I mean. I guess I'm not really thinking as much of politics as of just the way men and women experience the world ... kind of like as much as I can read and try to sympathize with men, I will never really know what it's like to get a blowjob. :)

[thisficklemob]

Hee hee. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. And I think it's all filtered through our own sense of gender ownership as well... it's much easier to say, "women don't think like that, he doesn't understand women," about a male author. If a female author writes what seems to us an unauthentic female voice, we're left more with questions like, "Who the hell is she? Is that really how she thinks?" or else we question her insight and skill as a writer, period.

But when it comes to utterly subjective and gender-linked experiences, a woman writing about a blowjobs, I think what the best authors do is consult sources. Whether that be male-authored sex manuals, or perhaps even better, her husband or close male friends. And then even if she doesn't have the experience herself, she can gather the gist of it and produce a reasonable male POV account. Or she can rely on first-hand observations from the other side of things. *g* Like, ok, when I do that, he loses the capacity for coherent speech.

And then of course there can be wild disagreement over whether an author does a good job with a POV not their own... gender-wise or other-wise. I had a friend who out-and-out loathed She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb - which I have never read because I'm sure it would piss me off - and it drove her nuts how women were saying how good he was at getting a woman's voice, when she thought he came off as completely clueless. But I definitely think there are female authors, even in fandom, who do a very good job writing male characters' perspectives. (It's harder to say if the reverse is true, since there are far fewer male fanfic writers, at least in my fandoms.)

And that's another thing - it's possible that women do a better job writing men than the reverse. Which could lead to all sorts of generalizations about empathy etc. etc., but to me suggests more of a reflection of a power dynamic. I remember reading about a study once, where they asked both white and black participants to list the ways in which black people are different and the same. What ended up happening was, the black participants could list many ways that blacks and whites are different, but the white participants came up with mostly similarities. (One could argue that maybe the white participants were being especially cautious about not being or seeming racist.) But the conclusion the study's authors drew was that it had to do with power dynamics and the dominant culture in society. The black people would pay more attention to white culture than the reverse, because historically they were in a position of less power. Knowing how the dominant society worked was a survival skill. They suggested that the same could be said of women historically in regards to men - women may have had to develop greater empathy and sensitivity to men, because the men had the economic and social power. So women's empathy, far from being a real sex-linked trait, could be a social creation, which would disappear or reverse itself within centuries in a matriarchal society where women had the social and economic power.

[bandgeek]

Eeek! Revelation! :)

It's the power dynamic! This is making all kinds of sense to me. In order for women to survive, we've had to get good at understanding and appeasing men. Oh, wow ... I guess I've always thought of women's empathy as something more biological, but this is so much more logical.

Must ... set up ... scientific ... study ...

[thisficklemob]

Hee hee hee. I wish I could remember where I read about this, but it was years ago. On the other side, my strange science teacher (like that narrows it down) once gave me an article to read about differences in female and male brains... women have more links between the right and left brain, or a thicker connector thingy, or something like that. They speculated that this was the basis for "women's intuition." This was even longer ago. So I guess one could find... or at least posit... evidence either way.

Of course, it could be both. If males have had a dominant social position in most of human and human ancestor societies for long enough... which may or may not be the case... then the greater survivorship of empathic females may have lead evolutionarily to their genes surviving more, and therefore that trait being selected for.

I kind of doubt it, though. Especially since we know next to nothing about most of human history... and there's some evidence that matriarchal and goddess-centered societies were more prevalent before the rise of monotheism, (perhaps before men figured out they were involved in conception?). The physical anthropology supporting any kind of patriarchal or male-dominated society among early hominids is sketchy (and I think it's mostly assumption and projection), simply because evidence of any kind is scarce. Add in the fact that things like heartiness, cleverness, and attractiveness would have far greater effects on someone's survival... and I doubt it's heavily evolutionarily weighted. But who knows.

[bandgeek]

I've often wondered just why it is that so many societies are patriarchal. I mean, aside from the fact that men tend to be bigger and stronger, there just doesn't seem to be much of a logical reason for this to be the case over and over again. And because of the factors you mentioned -- like women's fertility and intuition -- it would almost seem more likely that women would be the dominant sex.

As for the brain chemistry ... well, I just don't know. I'll have to poke my finger around in there and see if I've got this connector thingy ... ;)