Good writing transcends gender or sexual orientation.
My stories are written from a women's pov, though within some of them (none on here though) are scenes written from a male pov. Just like the scenes describing sex between women, these male perspective scenes come from my imagination, as I have neither experienced lesbian sex, nor am I a male. I have had both types read by the appropriate people and have been told I have gotten it mostly correct. Not everyone is able to write well from the perspective of their own gender, let alone the opposite gender. Overall, I feel if a story is well written, the gender does not matter.
My response is coming very late as I am new to Lushstories, and I think most avenues has been persured fully. I can only add that it makes no difference where the genitalia of the author is located to me. A great story gets a 5, good story gets a 4. If I have to go below 3, I just won't because I'm not a critic and don't get paid to verbally destroy someones life. I try to always leave a comment if I give a score, I think that's fair.
I have noticed in my wandering tho that a guy can write a fantastic story with well developed characters and interesting situations that will attract only the most ardent erotic reader. A girl with naughty pictures of herself on her profile can write a shopping list and get massive traffic and rave reviews...ironically by men mostly (Face it , fella's, ya ain't gettin' none a that, just move on solider.).
Conclusion; men by far are mostly the one at fault, something I and others that truly enjoy erotica are just going to have to live with...because I don't want anyone to take down their naughty pictures. :-)
"I understand that 'Shit happens'! I don't under stand why I have to be under it when it does!!!"
RM
I never actually pay attention to a writer's gender when I start reading a story. I just care that it gets my attention
Like everything, fantastic things can come from both genders. Personally though I find I tend to prefer stories written by females, don't ask me why, because I couldn't really tell you. However it could be something to do with the fact that in the end these stories are just our fantasies put to writing, and I would rather read the fantasy of a girl than the fantasy of another guy.
Perhaps with erotica women might be better, but I was always under the impression that women read erotica more than men, so maybe that's why women are more prolific at writing it? As for other genres.... well, in historical fiction, both Steven Pressfield and Mary Rennault have ancient Greece market cornered. They're both in a class by theirselves in that arena. Both have written on Alexander the Great, but both also write in vastly different styles. I couldn't say I like one better more than the other, but I can't think of anyone as their equal, even Gene Wolfe's book Solider of the Mist. Barabara Tuchmann is my favorite historian (non-fiction), but most of the other writers I like are men. I don't think gender makes a difference in writing though.
The ability to string a decent sentence together is not gender-dependant. Men, Women, meh, it matters not.
I like story by woman better than men
I think women are better at addressing the sensitivities and feelings in stories, making their stories hotter.
No way. I read/rate stories regardless of gender.
I think if the story is hot and written by a women and is about their love for another women or her first time with a guy and she is the aggressor that is a real turn on.
No - It all depends on the way its written, good bad and indifferent comes from both sexes
A lot of writers use pen names, why should here be any different. As long as the story is well written then it makes no actual difference to the outcome of any vote i give.
Just another vote for how well a story is written, not the writers gender. I've written under a female pen name and gotten good feedback at another site.
Yes it makes a difference. Not saying a good or bad difference, but I can usually tell.
Hmm? I haven't noticed that I react differently? I'll try to pay attention in the future since this is an interesting question. I'm more concerned with the quality of the writing and the connection I get with the story. Generally I thought men were no good at writing and then I read Jaymal and Frank Lee and......oh.......I guess guys can write? Oh yeah, Hemingway was a guy wasn't he? Tolstoy was a guy too? But what about Jane Austen? Okay I counter Jane Austen with Lawrence Durrell. Oh you counter with Virginia Woolf. Okay I trump Virginia Woolf with Charles Dickens. Oh, you're playing the Mary Shelley card? Shit this is complicated?
I wonder if you should have made a poll to obtain a clear-cut answer, because you will only end up getting a mass of personal opions, including mine.
Mine is that I need a get an emotional charge from a story to rate it. If I'm not getting it, then the story's "not doing it for me". It has less to do with gender. Personally I do prefer reading emotionally charged erotica by male authors, but as you point out, I may be in the minority.
What I don't like is reading stories which emphasize the "fuck" more than the emotional exchange between the characters - and yes, there are many male authors who write more about the "fuck" than the story. In that case - it's not erotica; it's porn - just like a porn film is porn, and not a particular movie you'll never forget.
There is another site (I won't name here) which allows posting of all kinds of stories and novels - not just erotica, but all genres - is mostly occupied by teenage girls scribbling their (incoherent, disorganised) YA erotic fantasies. Of course, they get wonderful ratings from each other, because the majority of the sight is full of other teenage girls scribbling their YA erotic fantasies, too - but that has nothing to do with quality content.
Unlike Lush, the stories are never edited or reviewd before they are uploaded. Like the saying goes in the country where I live, "Paper is patient when it comes to the amount of shit you can pile on it". That un-named site exercises little control over content or quality. But those young teenage "authors" get lots of high ratings from their girlfriends. Most of them are re-writing their fan-fiction which will always be popular. Originality is punished because it's not hip in highschool. And the secret there appears to be winning the popularity contest - not how well you can write, but rather, how loud you can toot your horn.
Si vos postulo me, sed non vis me, oportet me manere.
Sed si vis me, sed non vos postulo me, oportet me abire.
I'm not sure that the author's gender matters at all in theory. Certainly it doesn't when the author writes from the his or her own gender POV.
However, I do think that writing compelling fiction from the opposite sex's POV in any genre is deceptively difficult, and it takes a fair amount of both skill and empathy to pull off. A lot of writers (even best selling ones) just push ahead with their own thoughts, wishes and desires and simply attach an opposite-sex name to it; this can make the work feel stilted.
We erotica dabblers are the worst at this. I find it jarring if I'm reading an exciting and promising plot setup that, for example, has a nineteen year old college freshman who talks about her "boobies" and how all the pledges in the sorority she wants to join take their shirts off the night they meet to feel one another's "boobies." It's hard to be the reader and not immediately go from a place of "oh, we're looking at things from a young college-age woman's POV" to "we're looking at things from the POV of a man who's not spent much time in actual sororities."
It can be done, of course; many writers (including some that I am discovering here at Lush) write from the other gender's POV and create inspiring things of beauty; but it is really, really hard to pull off.
This is an interesting question. As a writer and as someone who doesn't read erotica very much, I don't care.
I think to answer this properly, you would have to collect data on who's voting for who and maybe have a poll or something. Anecdotal stuff is unreliable.
Danielle
Yeah it does. For example, I just posted a story "The Stranger on Top of Me." One of the readers said it was too mechanical. Funny thing is I've never seen any story teller have there stoies flow as well as mine. I think women don't want to post a comment because they don't want people to know that they are reading it.
Gender doesn't really affect how I like a story, partly because the nature of this site makes it impossible to determine someone's actual gender. I am a man, and my profile lists me as such, but there's nothing stopping me from going in and creating a female account with a different email address. (At least, nothing I've seen; Lush probably has some method of tracking IP addresses, or something.)
From a writing perspective, it does make a difference. I don't really write female characters because I am worried that I won't capture the emotions and experiences of my ladies the same way I can with my gentlemen. This is especially true in erotic fiction; how do I know how a woman feels arousal? I could have it described to me, but then my perception is skewed by the person who described it.
Well, it shouldn't matter the gender so long as the story is good. Personally, it doesn't matter to me what gender the writer is. I've read crappy stories written by both female and male writers and I've read really amazing stories from writers of both genders. I think the reason why a female writer gets so many good reviews on writing a 'dirty' story is because it's not expected. I mean, women have been writing erotic stories for decades now and still it's sort of a thing when they get in depth and really dirty. With men it's expected and it's not that the stories that men write aren't good it's just that we know that for the most part they have no problem getting raunchy with their words. So.. yea, that's the way I see it. I still think it shouldn't matter though. 
