6 ms·

I liked this, but you could tell a guy wrote it, the tip off was when the women (briefly) contemplates killing her girlfriend for for embarrassing her.

by cwmma 3y ago

ReactiveJelly 3y ago
ok that explains why the author is "Conor". I've met women with traditionally-masc names, but never a female "Conor".
frereubu 3y ago
Surely the tipoff is the name in the domain name, ConorBarnes.com
bruce343434 3y ago
Women don't contemplate murder? Even fleetingly?
- flkenosad 3y ago
  Not unless their hormones are way off.
  - bruce343434 3y ago
    And where did you get this idea from?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- striking 3y ago
  In response to being listed in a spreadsheet? It's not a great thing to experience but women are pretty much constantly objectified in our society so it does seem a little out of left field that this particular incident sets our main character (briefly) on the path to murder. A male author might find this premise to be novel simply for not having had the same life experiences as a female author might have had (i.e. not being regularly objectified). I too found this work to feel a little weird, for the same reason as GP. It feels like a story told the way a man might experience it, but with a woman's voice and tone. Less believable still is the way it goes on and on, with the protagonist trying to turn herself into a perfectly scoring example. I get that sometimes it's okay because otherwise there would be no story, but I don't buy the motivation or the end result in combination and that really makes it hard for me to read. I've actually heard of this particular thing (spreadsheets of dating partners) already and the way it was presented to me it seemed pretty reasonable. It's hard to know what you value in a person, so for your own benefit you might try listing a few scores and see which ones match up most strongly with how you feel about someone. Maybe you care deeply that someone knows how to cook, or maybe you think their music taste matching yours is of the utmost importance. It's kind of hard to figure out otherwise. I don't really feel it's quite like an attempt at a linear ordering / sorting of people as much as it is for one's own benefit. All in all, I kind of wish the author had spent more time consulting women on how their relationships actually work, even if it means the story might never have been written.
  - jojobas 3y ago
    >In response to being listed in a spreadsheet? Women sometimes viciously attack each other over petty things like wearing the same dress. Just because women in your circle have restraint doesn't mean they don't have urges.
    - striking 3y ago
      Even if you accept that premise, why did this character snap at this moment? Usually people who engage in that sort of behavior do so as part of a pattern, sometimes as part of dealing with something that happened to them and other times because it is part of their personality. Meanwhile this character, with whom we are intended by the author to empathize with and who otherwise is portrayed as a normal (though exceedingly neurotic) human being, briefly has the urge to murder. It just kind of feels like it doesn't follow, is all. Anyone can have urges but I'm not quite buying this character having that urge without a little more explanation. (and to be clear: I reject this premise, because without the work making it clear that this specific woman feels this specific way, it feels like the work suggests that we should just accept that any woman might feel this way without serious provocation or a serious backstory and I don't)
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > In response to being listed in a spreadsheet? There's a whole YouTube genre of documentaries and true-crime-vlogs dedicated to the topic of "women who kill". A woman I know likes watching these, which is how I got to overhear some of the things talked about, so believe me, women can kill for whole host of reasons, many of them far more absurd on the surface than being listed in a spreadsheet. And so do men, by the way. It's not a gender thing. And if you don't believe me, feel free to watch some of those videos, or read up on the investigations they cover on your own.
    - striking 3y ago
      I understand that. I invite you to read the reply I wrote to the sibling comment that roughly says what yours does: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38512845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38512845
layer8 3y ago
Also the lovemaking training with a random male acquaintance.
- stavros 3y ago
  What sort of lovemaking do women authors write?
  - striking 3y ago
    If you wanted to get better at making love with women, would you practice making love with men?
    - stavros 3y ago
      Is this a kind of mistake only male writers make?
      - lmm 3y ago
        Depends what level of meta you're thinking about it on. Female writers make converse mistakes and write e.g. a male character who doesn't care whether he's good in bed, or doesn't even conceptualise that as a metric that one ranks people on.
      - striking 3y ago
        If you end up asking a woman that, please let me know what she says.
    - cwmma 3y ago
      You know I almost mentioned that in my original comment but the more I think about it, the more I don't think it's actually bad. I think a lot of what men might consider "soft skills" in the bedroom (pun intended) would not only transfer to a lesbian context but have more salience there.
      - striking 3y ago
qaisjp 3y ago
Knowing that a guy wrote this ruined the post for me.
stavros 3y ago
This comment bothers me, because here I was, reading this story, not generalizing about what gender does what, just seeing a character with flaws, and then your comment comes along and makes it not just about the gender of the character, but the gender of the author as well. Your comment alleges that it's obvious that a man wrote this character (this sounds sexist to me), because only a man can write a bad female character (this also sounds sexist to me), and the character is bad because no woman thinks like this (I don't know what generalizing something over three and a half billion people sounds to me). I read the story as the protagonist being vulnerable, insecure, and a bit unhinged: > For one horrible second I contemplated killing her but that was wildly out of proportion and then I tried to pretend that I had only wished she was dead and then I just tried to forget about it. The other (female, no less) characters in the story seem to agree: > “Revenge?” She looked surprised. “I get something like… I don’t know, but revenge is a leap.” Whereas you explained those same character traits by the author being a man, and thus sexist, and not knowing how women think. That line of thinking already contains two invalid generalizations, ie "this isn't how women think" and "therefore a man wrote this, because only men don't know how women think". I guess this bothers me because it takes something I read as just about people being people and turns it into a gender/sexism issue, but the mere existence of the complaint itself reveals so much fractal sexism in the eye of the beholder that I wish I could go back and unread it, then I wouldn't have spent ten minutes writing this inelegant rebuttal.
- charred_patina 3y ago
  > because here I was, reading this story, not generalizing about what gender does what, just seeing a character with flaws, and then your comment comes along and makes it not just about the gender of the character, but the gender of the author as well Have you considered that your POV is limited, and that a woman reading this story (and every other story) might have a different perspective than you? > I wish I could go back and unread it, then I wouldn't have spent ten minutes writing this inelegant rebuttal. You seem to be upset that someone had a different perspective. You might want to learn some emotional control techniques if you are this upset over an observation someone made.
  - 3y ago
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]

I liked this, but you could tell a guy wrote it, the tip off was when the women (briefly) contemplates killing her girlfriend for for embarrassing her.

by cwmma 3y ago

I liked this, but you could tell a guy wrote it, the tip off was when the women (briefly) contemplates killing her girlfriend for for embarrassing her.

ReactiveJelly 3y ago

ok that explains why the author is "Conor". I've met women with traditionally-masc names, but never a female "Conor".

frereubu 3y ago

Surely the tipoff is the name in the domain name, ConorBarnes.com

bruce343434 3y ago

Women don't contemplate murder? Even fleetingly?

flkenosad 3y ago
Not unless their hormones are way off.
- bruce343434 3y ago
  And where did you get this idea from?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
striking 3y ago
In response to being listed in a spreadsheet? It's not a great thing to experience but women are pretty much constantly objectified in our society so it does seem a little out of left field that this particular incident sets our main character (briefly) on the path to murder. A male author might find this premise to be novel simply for not having had the same life experiences as a female author might have had (i.e. not being regularly objectified). I too found this work to feel a little weird, for the same reason as GP. It feels like a story told the way a man might experience it, but with a woman's voice and tone. Less believable still is the way it goes on and on, with the protagonist trying to turn herself into a perfectly scoring example. I get that sometimes it's okay because otherwise there would be no story, but I don't buy the motivation or the end result in combination and that really makes it hard for me to read. I've actually heard of this particular thing (spreadsheets of dating partners) already and the way it was presented to me it seemed pretty reasonable. It's hard to know what you value in a person, so for your own benefit you might try listing a few scores and see which ones match up most strongly with how you feel about someone. Maybe you care deeply that someone knows how to cook, or maybe you think their music taste matching yours is of the utmost importance. It's kind of hard to figure out otherwise. I don't really feel it's quite like an attempt at a linear ordering / sorting of people as much as it is for one's own benefit. All in all, I kind of wish the author had spent more time consulting women on how their relationships actually work, even if it means the story might never have been written.
- jojobas 3y ago
  >In response to being listed in a spreadsheet? Women sometimes viciously attack each other over petty things like wearing the same dress. Just because women in your circle have restraint doesn't mean they don't have urges.
  - striking 3y ago
    Even if you accept that premise, why did this character snap at this moment? Usually people who engage in that sort of behavior do so as part of a pattern, sometimes as part of dealing with something that happened to them and other times because it is part of their personality. Meanwhile this character, with whom we are intended by the author to empathize with and who otherwise is portrayed as a normal (though exceedingly neurotic) human being, briefly has the urge to murder. It just kind of feels like it doesn't follow, is all. Anyone can have urges but I'm not quite buying this character having that urge without a little more explanation. (and to be clear: I reject this premise, because without the work making it clear that this specific woman feels this specific way, it feels like the work suggests that we should just accept that any woman might feel this way without serious provocation or a serious backstory and I don't)
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > In response to being listed in a spreadsheet? There's a whole YouTube genre of documentaries and true-crime-vlogs dedicated to the topic of "women who kill". A woman I know likes watching these, which is how I got to overhear some of the things talked about, so believe me, women can kill for whole host of reasons, many of them far more absurd on the surface than being listed in a spreadsheet. And so do men, by the way. It's not a gender thing. And if you don't believe me, feel free to watch some of those videos, or read up on the investigations they cover on your own.
  - striking 3y ago
    I understand that. I invite you to read the reply I wrote to the sibling comment that roughly says what yours does: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38512845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38512845

layer8 3y ago

Also the lovemaking training with a random male acquaintance.

stavros 3y ago
What sort of lovemaking do women authors write?
- striking 3y ago
  If you wanted to get better at making love with women, would you practice making love with men?
  - stavros 3y ago
    Is this a kind of mistake only male writers make?
    - lmm 3y ago
      Depends what level of meta you're thinking about it on. Female writers make converse mistakes and write e.g. a male character who doesn't care whether he's good in bed, or doesn't even conceptualise that as a metric that one ranks people on.
    - striking 3y ago
      If you end up asking a woman that, please let me know what she says.
  - cwmma 3y ago
    You know I almost mentioned that in my original comment but the more I think about it, the more I don't think it's actually bad. I think a lot of what men might consider "soft skills" in the bedroom (pun intended) would not only transfer to a lesbian context but have more salience there.
    - striking 3y ago

qaisjp 3y ago

Knowing that a guy wrote this ruined the post for me.

stavros 3y ago

This comment bothers me, because here I was, reading this story, not generalizing about what gender does what, just seeing a character with flaws, and then your comment comes along and makes it not just about the gender of the character, but the gender of the author as well. Your comment alleges that it's obvious that a man wrote this character (this sounds sexist to me), because only a man can write a bad female character (this also sounds sexist to me), and the character is bad because no woman thinks like this (I don't know what generalizing something over three and a half billion people sounds to me). I read the story as the protagonist being vulnerable, insecure, and a bit unhinged: > For one horrible second I contemplated killing her but that was wildly out of proportion and then I tried to pretend that I had only wished she was dead and then I just tried to forget about it. The other (female, no less) characters in the story seem to agree: > “Revenge?” She looked surprised. “I get something like… I don’t know, but revenge is a leap.” Whereas you explained those same character traits by the author being a man, and thus sexist, and not knowing how women think. That line of thinking already contains two invalid generalizations, ie "this isn't how women think" and "therefore a man wrote this, because only men don't know how women think". I guess this bothers me because it takes something I read as just about people being people and turns it into a gender/sexism issue, but the mere existence of the complaint itself reveals so much fractal sexism in the eye of the beholder that I wish I could go back and unread it, then I wouldn't have spent ten minutes writing this inelegant rebuttal.

charred_patina 3y ago
> because here I was, reading this story, not generalizing about what gender does what, just seeing a character with flaws, and then your comment comes along and makes it not just about the gender of the character, but the gender of the author as well Have you considered that your POV is limited, and that a woman reading this story (and every other story) might have a different perspective than you? > I wish I could go back and unread it, then I wouldn't have spent ten minutes writing this inelegant rebuttal. You seem to be upset that someone had a different perspective. You might want to learn some emotional control techniques if you are this upset over an observation someone made.
- 3y ago

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]