I remember back in my days as a student, during a lecture on gender, my lecturer saying ‘people have said that you can tell when a woman has written something and that I write like a woman, but I have no idea what that means’.
As she said this, I looked up from my pukka pad and said, without thinking or raising my hand, ‘of course you can tell if a woman’s written something’.
And the whole room exploded, everyone started talking over me, and I was really confused as to what I’d said. The lecturer managed to calm everyone down, and asked me what I meant.
To which I replied, again, really confused, ‘well their writing’s usually really pretty and nice isn’t it’ and everyone was like what the fuck you sexist, and I was still really confused, until something seemed to click in the mind of the person sat next to me, and she turned and said ‘are you referring to handwriting or the language used in their writing style?’ and I was like ‘handwriting obviously???
Isn’t that what you’re talking about?’.
The whole room then burst into laughter, as we all realized what the source of confusion was, and everything was OK!