This study, adopting a discourse-oriented approach, asks how feminine and masculine voices in four selected short stories by Moniro Ravanipour and Shahriar Mandanipour employ linguistic and narrative strategies to claim narrative authority and legitimacy. To this end, two stories by Ravanipour (“Sang-hā-ye Sheytān” and “Qesse-ye Ghamangiz-e Eshq”) and two by Mandanipour (“Rang-e Ātash-e Nimruzi” and “Meh-e Jangalhā-ye Balut”) are analyzed qualitatively and comparatively, drawing on a synthesis of Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. The findings indicate that Ravanipour, by foregrounding women’s lived experience, the female body, and symbols such as stone and superstition, brings the feminine voice from the margins to the center and uses it to critique patriarchal discourse and redefine female subjectivity. By contrast, Mandanipour organizes the masculine voice around violence, war, death, and the repression of emotion; a voice that is initially endowed with authority but, when confronted with loss, guilt, and an inability to form or sustain relationships, gradually loses its legitimacy and retreats into silence and isolation. Overall, the analysis suggests that in both authors the “gendered voice” is not merely a reflection of the writers’ biological identities, but a discursive mechanism for legitimizing or challenging the narrative and the characters’ positions within the socio-cultural context of contemporary Iran.