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Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

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Re: Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

#81

Post by jayd16 »

hasenj wrote: post #68

People who have poor understanding of human nature will consider this an evidence of sexism. Think for a minute about why "Fifty shades of grey" is popular among female readers. If there are many stories are filled with males competing over resources and women (in the form of violent criminals kidnapping women and brave heroes rescuing them) then might it be that these kinds of stories are what people are looking for…

"Female hero? How boring!"

How can you consider your views as non-sexist? You're clearly defining roles based on gender.

Edit: First story off my head is the first Resident Evil movie. She wakes up in chaos without memory. From what she can discern her would be lover and she are accosted by zombies. She fights her way through as the hero. Ultimately I think she remembers her lover betrayed her and started the outbreak or some such thing. Point is, it wasn't boring.

Re: Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

#83

Post by shouldbworking »

LunaSea wrote: post #69
shouldbworking wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shhhhhh! Theres no room for reality in here, were pretending that gender is a made up sociological concept

We're waiting for your constructive rebuttal instead of snide remarks.

There's biologically driven behavioral differences between male and female due to genetics. These differences are on a spectrum that varies between individuals but they are clearly visible in aggregate. A lot of recent political rhetoric bulldozes over the obvious differences between male and female to the detriment of our species. For example, the push to have the same physical standards for male and female in the army and elsewhere will inevitably drive the standards down. Males are mentally and physically tougher by design. And before anyone calls me sexist, they also die younger. Everything is a trade-off.

I believe that denying these differences is sexist, as it results in laws that affect males and females unequally. Should sentences for violent crimes be shorter for men because higher testosterone levels make them more biologically prone to violence? This is dangerous political territory bordering on eugenics but an interesting question nonetheless.

Re: Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

#84

Post by [deleted] »

jayd16 wrote: post #81
hasenj wrote: post #68

People who have poor understanding of human nature will consider this an evidence of sexism. Think for a minute about why "Fifty shades of grey" is popular among female readers. If there are many stories are filled with males competing over resources and women (in the form of violent criminals kidnapping women and brave heroes rescuing them) then might it be that these kinds of stories are what people are looking for…

"Female hero? How boring!" How can you consider your views as non-sexist? You're clearly defining roles based on gender. Edit: First story off my head is the first Resident Evil movie. She wakes up in chaos without memory. From what she can discern her would be lover and she are accosted by zombies. She fights her way through as the hero. Ultimately I think she remembers her lover betrayed her and started the outbrea…

[deleted]

Re: Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

#85

Post by tomp »

dahart wrote: post #56
tomp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you took 100,000 historical books describing the periods of US slavery, you'd have a strong correlation between "black" and "slave", but concluding that the books are therefore racist would be extremely illogical.

You have a valid point of logic. The only problem is that in reality, many many of those books actually were racist. Slavery and racism were in fact culturally acceptable in the United States for a period of time, it is not at all a stretch to hypothesize that the writing of the time reflected that fact. One might even argue that to assume otherwise would be extremely illogical.

  racist ==> "black" correlates with "slave"

  "black" correlates with "slave" =/=> racist

Re: Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

#86

Post by chongli »

belorn wrote: post #49
tomp wrote: post #39

> I think this paints a somewhat dark picture of gender roles within typical story plots. Women are more likely to be in the role of victims- “she screams”, “she cries”, or “she pleads.” Men tend to be the aggressor: “he kidnaps” or “he beats”. Not all male-oriented terms are negative- many, like “he saves”/”he rescues” are distinctly positive- but almost all are active rather than receptive. Got mathematical analysi…

The term aggressor is misplaced. The data shows how men as a general rule always play the antagonist and the disposable henchmen. The mustache-twirling, eye-rolling, leering, cackling, and hand-rubbing villain is by definition male, and in the rare occasion a plot is different and switches the gender of the antagonist it also adds additional changes like poison and stabbing instead of guns and punching.

mustache-twirling, eye-rolling, leering, cackling, and hand-rubbing villain is by definition male

Apart from the mustache (or maybe not) this is an apt description of the wicked witch trope of female villains. So I'm going to say, no?

Re: Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

#87

Post by tomp »

appetizer wrote: post #66
tomp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you took 100,000 historical books describing the periods of US slavery, you'd have a strong correlation between "black" and "slave", but concluding that the books are therefore racist would be extremely illogical.

Brave New World describes an inferior negroid class whose female zygotes furiously accept sperm zygotes with great vigor. Its not just about slavery, and I'm not sure how this analysis would even begin to comprehensively find these currently unfavorable descriptions of people.

Brave New World is meant to portray a distopia.

Re: Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

#88

Post by [deleted] »

hasenj wrote: post #78
yannyu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it were true that "these kinds of stories are what people are looking for", that doesn't mean it's not "evidence of sexism".

Depends on what you mean by sexism. If you mean unfair discrimination against women, then that's not an evidence for it. If you mean natural difference between men and women that are implicitly understood by people, then yea you can call it sexism but it's not necessarily a bad thing.

[deleted]

Re: Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

#89

Post by OJFord »

ghaff wrote: post #52
OJFord wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, rob vs. steal, would change depending on the century the work was created. Eh? Both come so naturally to me that I honestly have no idea which centuries you're talking about, or which you think is obsolete.

Steal has become relatively more popular over time although the difference is probably not large enough to attach a lot of significance to it. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=rob%2C+steal&y... If I had to guess why (other than reasons...) I'd probably speculate that steal tends to have a broader meaning while rob is more likely to be applied to physically robbing someone.

Interesting, playing around with that shows it's a lot tighter in Britain - where it's also the other way around in the past tense by quite a margin. (Likewise in the USA until recently.)

I'm British, so maybe that explains my initial confusion.

Re: Gender and verbs across 100K stories: a tidy analysis

#90

Post by paulddraper »

hasenj wrote: post #68

People who have poor understanding of human nature will consider this an evidence of sexism. Think for a minute about why "Fifty shades of grey" is popular among female readers. If there are many stories are filled with males competing over resources and women (in the form of violent criminals kidnapping women and brave heroes rescuing them) then might it be that these kinds of stories are what people are looking for…

Unfortunately, every single difference of any significance is often took to be sexist and (of course) wrong sexist.

Why are the top 100 chess players men? Sexism. Why are there more male than female programmers? Sexism. In non-romance movies, why are there more male leads? Sexism.

There is legitimate wrongful sexism, but they aren't usually found in first world countries.

It's as if we ever agreed there was a significant innate difference between the sexes (or races for that matter), the world would come crashing down and put us in the Stone Age.

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