Do you blog like a girl?

Israeli researchers have developed an algorithm to guess a writer's gender based on a sample of their prose.

Try the Gender Genie.

No warranties expressed or implied.

[HT: Loren]

Comments

[Andrew Myers]

I've tried many different samples of my writing and there doesn't seem to be any way to escape the conclusion that I write like a great big girl. Also, I'm bad at throwing things accurately. *sigh*

[greensmile]

Eszter has been over some of this territory before:

http://eszter.com/research/a17-genderskills.html

[Count Zero]

I've tried many different samples of my writing and there doesn't seem to be any way to escape the conclusion that I write like a great big girl. Also, I'm bad at throwing things accurately. *sigh*

I was very close to gender neutral, which is perfectly fine to me.

[Fred Vincy]

It correctly called my most recent blog post as male. However, almost the entire margin (which was pretty large) was attributed to my use of the words "the" and "a". Call me crazy, but I'd bet that female writers find those words pretty darn useful as well.

[greensmile]

interesting to think all the "insignificant" words in the writing samples have such significance. I pulled three samples from my posts on feminist topics and my gender still stuck out like, uh, um, well, its not a roll of life savers in my pocket.

Words: 491
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 404
Male Score: 933
Words: 570
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 346
Male Score: 690
Words: 658
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 522
Male Score: 1033

[greensmile]

Thats actually funny/wierd: since my nom de blog is of no obvious gender, I sometimes get comments or replies to comments that refer to me as "she".

Is like pheromones: very gender specific but we have lost the ability to sense it.

[greensmile]

A bunch of other paramters come to mind:
sexual orientation,
UK english vs US English
Regional dialect

I'd bet they all profile a bit differently

[johanna202]

It got me wrong. My sample was read as male. Of course I've always felt my socialization as a girl never really "took".

[dejah]

It blew chunks on every one of my samples; missed the gender every time. Silly program.

[Gian dei Brughi]

I'm male if I give it my academic papers, but if I give it my abortive attempts at fiction writing, I'm female. . .

[Temple Stark]

Being one who wants his writing to appeal to as broad an audience as possible I jumped for joy (well, Ok, I pumped my fist. Once.) when it first classified a blog entry as "I'm female."

Longer pieces identified as male, though they were all fairly evenly matched (hooray). I included one about hip hop and left in the lyrics from a few. Then I took out all the lyrics, since they weren't my writing. When I took OUT the lyrics I was more of a man. ???

Yeah, the word choice is odd, as well. "Around" is a male word??????. O-kaaaaay.

Gian's observation is interesting.

[Joe S.]

I tried the first 400 words of Pride and Prejudice. How much more estogen-soaked can you get? It came out "male."

[Michael HUssey]

I used different blog posts and either scored as a guy or a girl.

[Summerisle]

Interesting. I put in some text from an online version of "Might is Right", which celebrates social darwinism and is in the vein of condemning the "weak" and "feminine", and I got this result:

Words: 885

Female Score: 725
Male Score: 1194

"In this arid wilderness of steel and stone, I raise up my voice that you may hear! To
the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign, proclaiming "Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong".

[Ginger Yellow]

Well that settles it: Digby is a man.

[Bruce/Crablaw]

Words: 397
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 728
Male Score: 424

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!!

Hmmm.

Then again, I was cussing out Kos for his sexist indifference and refusal to apologize for recent damage done in the test sample I submitted....

[shrimplate]

It turns out that my writing resembles that of a crustacean.

[konagod]

I was quite surprised. This worked very well!

[Cara-he]

Apparently I'm all man. MAN MAN MAN! Never would have guessed it - but I have a theory:

for those of us trained in academic writing styles, perhaps since we are (theoretically) writing to an all-"male" audience, we have actually been trained to write like "men".

(I like my theory, and it fits in with socialization patterns).

Alternatively, as a queer woman maybe I am just inherently more butch.