The Feminine Style

Despite needing to remain silent on this particular class day because I lost my voice, I couldn’t help but speak up a few Tuesdays ago when Daniel mentioned “feminine writing” and Suzanna inquired further into what exactly that meant. I was so pleased that Daniel and Suzanna corroborated my intuitions about Warren and Fassett’s feminine writing style and that, upon discussing features of feminine writing, the class largely agreed as well.

Our discussion got me thinking about my first experience with feminine writing. It was in the Puppets class I took in college (the one I’ve mentioned multiple times). We were reading a book by Victoria Nelson titled The Secret Life of Puppets, and I couldn’t get enough. Upon finishing the book, I burst into my late professor John’s office, telling him how Nelson’s writing style was unlike anything I’d experienced in academic writing—or writing in general, to be honest. I described how she offered her ideas, never forcefully or dogmatically, holding them up for scrutiny, criticism, and contemplation. I told John that Nelson’s writing felt so feminine to me. A mischievous grin stretched across his face as he thrust his fist into the air and said, “A-ha! I’ve finally corrupted you!” I laughed, responding, “I didn’t know you were trying!” I told him that I didn’t think I’d ever write in the same way again; he said, “Perhaps you shouldn’t.”

This is one of my fondest memories of John and a formative moment in my scholarship.

Reading Warren and Fassett’s (2007) book was a sweet reminder of both John and the impetus to write in a feminine way. Since, it appears, that some of us are not entirely familiar with this style and since I am our #femagogy blogger, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share with you all a bit about the feminist writing style.

First, I want to offer some clarity on why an understanding of the existence of feminine writing is important. In her book The Way Women Write, Hiatt (1977) holds that women have received bias in criticism because male critics have judged their writing according to masculine standards. So, as we can see, writing in a feminine style has not and is not an inconsequential act. This evidences the value in understanding what feminine writing looks like and sounds like so we ourselves don’t fall into the trap of biased criticism when scrutinizing a text based on masculine writing standards—arguably the only standards any of us were taught.

Feminine writing is often viewed as verbose, illogical, hyperemotional, and lacking in complexity. Hiatt (1977; 1978) set out to show that these stereotypical generalizations were not true. In regard to the first generalization, that women are verbose and, in contrast, men are terse, Hiatt (1978) found this claim to be unsupported. In feminine writing, Hiatt (1978) said, shorter sentences are actually more common.

In terms of complexity, Hiatt (1978) observed that feminine writing does differ in complexity from masculine writing, but not because women are less intelligent, as is often the colloquial belief. Feminine writing, according to Hiatt (1978), differs in that it doesn’t “display the subordinate constructions that are the hallmark of complexity” (p. 224). (It is not lost on me that masculine writing is characterized by subordination.) Instead, feminine writing is “carefully organized syntactically” and covers “a range of types of complexity” (p. 224).

Also, Hiatt (1978) found that feminine writers typically employ more logical-sequence indicators. Notably, in the feminine style, writers focus on providing reasons and extra information, whereas the masculine style emphasizes exemplifications and conclusions. (Side note: this observation rings especially true with my experience with feminine writing.)

Lastly, Hiatt (1978) found that in fiction, feminine writers employ substantially more adverbs of emotion than do masculine writers. In contrast, masculine writers utilize adverbs of pace most frequently. Taken together, feminine writers employ approximately the same amount of adverbs of pace and emotion, suggesting “the feminine style balances pace of action and expression of emotionality” (Hiatt, 1978, 226). Thus, the feminine style only appears hyperemotional when scrutinized using masculine standards. Importantly, Hiatt (1978) notes that there is very little difference of emotionality in either writing style in non-fiction. I would hypothesize that this is due to the overwhelming erasure of the “self” that writes in non-fiction writing. Warren and Fassett (2007) mention this in their discussion of the letter of justification they must include on any thesis that utilizes the author’s first-person voice (p. 44).

I hope this post has been insightful to those of you who were unfamiliar with the notion of a feminine writing style. Before closing, I would like to make one note of caution: in Hiatt’s book and article discussed here, she links feminine writing exclusively to women and masculine writing exclusively to men. I, however, do not agree with this distinction. Women have, for most of history, had no other choice but to write in a masculine style if they wanted readers to take their writing seriously. Likewise, young women are not typically taught any other way since our culture and schools privilege the masculine style. Therefore, we know women are capable of writing in a masculine style and for some women it may be their preference (that’s okay!). Similarly, I think men are capable of writing in a feminine style and may also prefer it to the masculine style. The notion that masculinity belongs only to men and femininity only to women re-inscribes the widely held belief that gender is a binary, a belief to which I do not subscribe. Following this logic, feminine writing cannot belong only to women and masculine writing cannot belong only to men. The take-away, then, is that when critiquing the work of others, we should be cognizant of and reflexive about how we culturally and individually privilege a masculine standard of writing, whether the author is a man, woman, or somewhere in between.

Hiatt, M. (1977). The way women write. Teachers College Press: New York, NY.

Hiatt, M. P. (1978). The feminine style: Theory and fact. College Composition and Communication, 222-226.

Fassett, D. L., & Warren, J. T. (2007). Critical communication pedagogy. Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA.