connection between sex and prefered liteature?

[sithkittie]

I pretty much read and enjoy the same things as my guy friends, and poetry and romance are both out. Westerns, classics (I especially enjoy soldiers and epic battles or adventures), science fiction, some fantasy. I think more than gender, at least in my case (last I checked I'm female), it's up bringing. I was raised around all guys. My friends consisted of almost exclusively guys until college.

Then again, not that he reads anything, but my step dad likes sappy romance movies. My dad will only read political non-fiction. My mom reads medical textbooks and journals. I think the only people in my family who fall into a gender stereotype would be my grandparents - my grandpa reads lots of philosophy, though he also loves Harry Potter, and my grandma likes religious fiction with a touch of romance.

That would definitely be an interesting study to do, survey a population that doesn't frequent a literature forum (because obviously, we read and probably have friends who read).

[Alexander III]

I suppose it is also interesting how some classic authors are read mostly by one gender. For instance ,though some men enjoy her, most guys wont read jane austen unless they have to for an english course.

I can also think of another few examples. Personally I love Byron, but do the women on the forums enjoy him or not? I can understand why a woman might have trouble relating to the byronic hero, though on the other hand the byronic hero appears to be the guy most women dream for.

[Seasider]

I can't speak for women in general but I love Byron. My favourite is A Vision of Judgement but I also like Don Juan and many of his shorter lyrics. I don't think he behaved very well to the women in his life, but that doesn't take anything away from his achievements in my view.

[Rores28]

I recognized that boys around me tend to read phylosophycal text and non-fiction while girls around me prefer novels and poetry... I myself do so (although I like some phylosophycal stuff every now and then)
did you realize simmilar tendencies?

There are most certainly differences in preference. I don't know about poetry because so few people read poetry to begin with, but I think there is certainly a tendency of males to prefer non-fiction and philosophical material (in particular, existential and philosophy of mind issues). I have yet to meet any female with an interest in philosophy (barring one professor in college) and yet most every guy I've met if you bring up troubling philosophical issues about existence or the mind will be intrigued. Bring up the same issues to most girls and they seem repelled by its lack of practicality. This is the most salient difference I have noticed living in the U.S.

Here's what dictionary.com has to say on the issue. I'd say the words are pretty interchangeable. The only reason you'd want to avoid saying sex in this instance is because it has more commonly used meanings. For instance when I read the title of this thread I thought it might have something to do with the frequency that one has sex and their resultant literary preferences.

Sex
–noun
1.
either the male or female division of a species, esp. as differentiated with reference to the reproductive functions.
2.
the sum of the structural and functional differences by which the male and female are distinguished, or the phenomena or behavior dependent on these differences.


Gender
2.
sex: the feminine gender.

[Seasider]

Not very enlightening.

[Rores28]

Not very enlightening.

Which post... or both

[OrphanPip]

While that is a valid argument and it is actually right at least in Anglosaxon criticism, for all we know, the OP might not know this and so knit picking like Mutatis-Mutandis says, is not exactly nice for anyone (I can testify). So, like MM has said, we should give her a break so that she may learn without being targeted, although it is probably in a nice way. I learned a tremendous amount just by reading other posts, my English was not even near to this a few years ago.

So just talk about 'gender' and stop talking about 'sex' in that context and he/she will learn without telling her what the difference is. Otherwise she can send some of us a message asking for clarification.

I don't think it was nitpicking though. No one was commenting on her grammar or syntax. Conflating sex and gender is a mistake often made by native English speakers as well, I think the distinction should be obvious but many people conflate these things. Being more precise in our language isn't meant to make the OP feel bad, it's meant merely to make the discussion clearer. I don't care about how people write, as long as the meaning is clear, and when the meaning is not made entirely clear it helps to establish the terms properly.

Edit: Dictionary.com is living in the 19th century apparently. Since the 70s, the distinction has pretty much been de jure in the social and natural sciences, and the humanities.

[inbetween]

sex or gender
take what you like
I watch and enjoy

[Rores28]

I don't think it was nitpicking though. No one was commenting on her grammar or syntax. Conflating sex and gender is a mistake often made by native English speakers as well, I think the distinction should be obvious but many people conflate these things. Being more precise in our language isn't meant to make the OP feel bad, it's meant merely to make the discussion clearer. I don't care about how people write, as long as the meaning is clear, and when the meaning is not made entirely clear it helps to establish the terms properly.

Edit: Dictionary.com is living in the 19th century apparently. Since the 70s, the distinction has pretty much been de jure in the social and natural sciences, and the humanities.

Right, dictionary.com deals more in common parlance than philosophical / sociological jargon. For the OP, someone trying to learn English, its important to realize that in 99% of the conversations you have, this distinction is not a crucial one.

sex or gender
take what you like
I watch and enjoy

See ambiguous... I don't know if you are watching and enjoying the thread or watching and enjoying sex.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Rores, quit being an a-hole.

[Seasider]

Which post... or both

My comment was about the dictionary.com definition. In this case the distinction was a crucial one. As Orphan Pip wrote, the correction was in the interests of precision which is the goal of most writers.

[Jozanny]

There are feminized male authors, just as there are masculine female authors, though the latter who do not define themselves according to our contemporary view of GBLT identity are rarer. Muriel Spark and Doris Lessing are two I can think of who don't identify, like Willa Cather, as lesbian.

I recently had a snafu, I will call it that, with the fantasy novelist Lee Doty, whose work I would deem feminine, and unsuccessfully so, yet I was riveted by Stephen Baxter, whose realism falls into hard (i.e. male) science fiction, and as a consequence I gave him a five star rating. How this breaks down along traditional gender roles and readership I cannot say, but it might serve as a critical study OrphanPip might enjoy pursuing.

[JCamilo]

My comment was about the dictionary.com definition. In this case the distinction was a crucial one. As Orphan Pip wrote, the correction was in the interests of precision which is the goal of most writers.

This Merriam-webster, not in 19 century or anything.

: either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures

The nitpicking is annoying, anyone reading the title may have doubts but not the first post. The words can be used as synounimous (Merriam-webster do list Sex as defintion of Gender) and humanisties use or water, is a restricted use. It does not nullify the use in other contexts, just amplify it.

The nitpicking was annoying. I mean, there was more things to comment or correct in his first post that are on topic, than this.

[OrphanPip]

The nitpicking is annoying, anyone reading the title may have doubts but not the first post. The words can be used as synounimous (Merriam-webster do list Sex as defintion of Gender) and humanisties use or water, is a restricted use. It does not nullify the use in other contexts, just amplify it.

The nitpicking was annoying. I mean, there was more things to comment or correct in his first post that are on topic, than this.

True, but general use of a lot of words is imprecise and not very useful for discussion. As a biologist, I often face an uphill battle trying to make people understand why categorizations of living things are often merely for convenience of reference and that they fall apart under any kind of serious scrutiny, discrete species concept being the major archaic concept that hangs around in the general populace. Sex is a roughly archaic concept, which is why it is ultimately likely to be usurped entirely in academic writing by gender. Masculine and feminine is more than genitals, even at the level of biology genitals facilitate categorizations but they aren't really adequate for defining everything we mean by masculine or feminine biologically, if we took a child with a vagina and fed them male hormones are they then male, a masculine

I think it's important that we distinguish between what gendered behavior we think arises directly from biology, and what arises out of cultural understandings of how we relate to our biology.

This is not nitpicking, it is merely clearly defining what we are talking about. Seasider wasn't even correcting the OP, she/he was just proposing new, and more precise, terminology for the discussion.

Edit: I'll add that I'm probably just a tad persistent on this terminology because I think it has honest sociological effects that propagate certain repressive systems of thought.

[Jozanny]

True, but general use of a lot of words is imprecise and not very useful for discussion. As a biologist, I often face an uphill battle trying to make people understand why categorizations of living things are often merely for convenience of reference and that they fall apart under any kind of serious scrutiny, discrete species concept being the major archaic concept that hangs around in the general populace. Sex is a roughly archaic concept, which is why it is ultimately likely to be usurped entirely in academic writing by gender. Masculine and feminine is more than genitals, even at the level of biology genitals facilitate categorizations but they aren't really adequate for defining everything we mean by masculine or feminine.

I no more bow down to scientific narrative for guide posts than I do to religious doctrine. There are two methods for procreation, asexual generation and sexual generation and humans care more about the latter because we define ourselves along gender roles, inclusive of those whose orientation switches are biologically confused. Indeed, the best I've seen writers imagine in terms of alternative sexes are humans who have both genitalia, and that isn't saying much, because we can't imagine another type other than male, female, neuter. Culturally, socially, how we view ourselves as men and women matters, and this will always be reflected in our literature.