Dear Female Students: Stop Writing About Men

The author of this article, Lorraine Berry, has her college students write a 20 page piece of creative nonfiction at the end of every semester. She never knows what they're going to write about. People have written about deaths, suicide attempts, arrests, and many other unpredictable things. There is one thing that Berry can always predict though: The females in the class usually tend to write about a romantic relationship, and the males do not. Berry says that she's not trying to say the males in her class are not sensitive because many of them write about very deep subjects. But, "only once or twice in the nine years I’ve been teaching these courses has a guy expressed his need to understand why a relationship has fallen apart." But, females do it all the time. There are several themes that women usually write about when talking about men. Some examples are the one that got away, breakups, and cheating. Berry explains that she tries her hardest not to critique these relationships, and focus on the structure and the writing techniques of the student. Berry seems to have a problem with women talking about men all the time. She suggests that women are just afraid to be alone, and thats why they write about men and their problems. 

Berry is very opinionated on this subject. Although it annoys her that women are constantly writing about men, she admits that she did the same thing when she was their age. She focused on the men in her life when she was writing. She also says that its hard for her not to write a letter to the women's essays she reads, to help them with their problems. Berry uses lots of pathos to express the women's feelings in their essays. This helps the reader understand what the women are going through.