exactly

Morgaine of What She Said:

The point she's making is that "there's no such thing as Women's Writing". There's just writing. Some of it is good, some bad, some brilliant, and none of that is determined by the writer's gender. Half the women on the net have taken that crazy test to see whether their writing is "male" or "female" and most score male. Apparently, it has something to do with complete sentences and accurate punctuation, and nothing at all to do with plumbing or a second X chromosome.

Wouldn't it be nice to just be a writer, without being shoved into a subset with an assumption of inferiority? To be judged by the work, and only the work? To write about one's own experience without apologizing for it? To express a complete range of emotion and imagination without being told that those should be limited by a cultural norm? To write whatever comes to mind without worrying about the comfort level of anyone who might read it?

Trying to get across the same point, I challenged my juniors to identify writing samples by gender. The results were hilarious for their sheer, confident wrongness. "If that's by a woman, I just don't know what to say," said one of my female students. "Women just don't use that expression."

The supposedly male phrase? "The thing is."

Tell that to Barbara Cooper. Or danah boyd. Or Allison Keiley. Or Susanne Denham. Or Jennifer Squires.