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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34816
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Your question mixes two different perspectives.

The IMDB stats are aggregates, not only of a population but also of a movie. Two people can give the same movie the same score **for completely different reasons**. For example, one thought the story and characters were great, but the directing and visual effects were shitty. The other thinks the story was crap, the characters one-dimensional, but the humor was spot-on, the music was fantastic and the directing and camera work superb. Both give it a 7/10.

Your acquaintance points out that genders have different preferences regarding specific aspects of a story. And that may well be true. We know that male and female archetypes in storytelling are quite different (e.g. Heroe's Journey vs. Heroine's Journey) and some differences seem universal across cultures and thus are unlikely to be leftovers from some specific gender cultural background.

I would listen to **both** of these points. Yes, male and female readers may well have different preferences and expectations. And yet, despite those, they might enjoy the same story in more or less the same way.

Notice that especially in movies, which are double- and tripple-million dollar productions, conscious effort is made to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Even in typical male-audience movies, characters and subplots are injected to appeal to a female audience (and vice versa). The almost-identical ratings you see are not by accident of men and women being similar, but engineered and focus-group tested.

Original score: 1