Data scientist David Robinson tracked the proximity of verbs to gender across 100,000 stories. She screams, cries and rejects. He kidnaps, rescues and beats.
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.
The chart on which types of violence are associated with men and women is predictable stuff: poison from the ladies, beatings from the gentlemen.
It follows on from Julia Silge's look at gender roles and text mining. See also an attempt to do likewise with plot arcs.
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Clearly the ladies need to step up their game in the murder and kidnapping department. Kidnapping should be much easier, as people don't expect them to be kidnappers.
Meanwhile, I think us guys could work on the stabbing and kissing to start off with. Maybe not at the same time.
Men= murder, kill, kidnap. Women=thanks, forgives, kisses.
Come on, men. Didn't you guys watch Mr. Rogers when you were kids?
interesting how we think of things like rejecting, resisting, crying, and forgiving as "passive", and things like ownership as "active" - without gender expectations, forgiving would be just as much an action as defeating. passive and active are themselves gendered terms that determine value according to a "male" standard.
I don't mean this as a criticism of the chart of course, it's just an observation and a way of thinking of things
Hamlet: one act version.
Listen to your ghost dad, and stab uncle Claudius first thing the next morning. This leaves plenty of time for kissing Ophelia, which she will probably like much better than if you just stood there and shit your pants.
Ha! Haha! When I was a kid, Fred was still in Canada (and even after he moved to Philly, we didn't get a PBS station until I was 15). My early moral media compass was set by Captain Kangaroo. (Along with my impeccable fashion sense)