Speaking for only myself, it doesn't bother me too much if I use feminine sounding words instead of masculine. In fact I find it fun that I can sound feminine or masculine based solely on word use. Remember a man might have to face the same challenge when penning a romance. I'm not offended by differences in gender whether they're stereotypes or not ( I'm a redhead with a temper - I'm a living stereotype - lol.) I'm only offended when they're used as triggers to offend or as weapons of prejudice.
Well, I got a very interesting result on the formal test. I tried 10 samples of around 500 words each from my novel. Half were from a female POV character, and half were from male POV characters. (I didn't bother testing the informal writing.) In each case, the gender finder indicated that I was writing from the POV of my character! YES!!! The parts where my POV character was female, I got either Female or Weak Female. The parts where my POV character was male, I got either Male or Weak Male. In no instance did the gender actually swap. So I must be doing something right? Cool....
@peachalulu -- I tried the same thing - one from a female perspective in a Mills&Boon style novel that got Female and one from an omniscient third that's sort of supposed to sound like a man that got male. Quite encouraging I think Something I might use in the future just for a wee look at how the style is going Leah
Does anybody have examples of which words are considered male and female? What does the program look for?
Gender, Genre, and Writing Style in Formal Written Texts This review in the introduction of the study threatens to encourage stereotypes: The researchers suggest this may result from a bias in what females write about more often rather than word choices. See the bar graph at the bottom. Males use the word 'you' in fiction less often than females. This was an interesting analysis: There's a lot more there, reading the whole paper is worthwhile.
I would suggest, the potential and very real presentation of those very gender stereotypes is, indeed, at the root of these determinations of author gender. And pretty unrealistic, at that. The part of this that really got me was, "...pronoun use is... more female than male..." Really? So, what I'm getting from that is guys overuse proper names rather than the logical choice of a pronoun in fiction?? Seems to me that, since continual and repeated use of proper names in fiction is frowned upon, this would suggest (my tongue is stuck in my cheek so don't castigate me for a heathen!) women are better writers than men. This, then, makes me wonder whence and wherefrom the statistical samples were taken. I mean, can we really use Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte as comparative writers for today's authors? The more I know about this Gender Guesser, the less respect I have for it. And, though it is nothing more than just a guess it is hardly an educated one!