Bitchery reader Eggs sent me a link with the subject line, “You’re a man, baby!”
Seems there’s a Gender Genie online (of course there is) that uses an algorithm to identify words which betray gender. Developed by professors at Bar-Ilan U. and Illinois Institute of Technology, the Genie analyzes texts and scores them according to weights given to “Masculine keywords” and “Feminine keywords.”
Eggs was kind enough to score two pieces of my writing from SBTB, and sure enough, I’m a dude.
The Genie prefers a sample of over 500 words, so I’m going to plug in
Now, writing from my personal blog scores a significantly female verdict. But my writing on SBTB, which is more analytical and often much more cranky, is decidedly male. What’s up with that?
More curious is the sample of words used to develop the algorithm. “Not,” “where,” and “with” are high-scoring feminine keywords, along with “should” and “her,"while “around,” “are,” and “What” are more masculine. Since when did dudes co-opt the conjugations of the verb “to be?” Interesting that the algorithm thinks that men are more declarative in writing while women are more suggestive and hesitant.
The idea of forensic linguistics drives me into fits of wiki-googling, but some of the generalizations in the New York Times article don’t ring entirely true either.
I have to wonder, much like eggs asked in her email, what’s the “Gender Genie” gender of my favorite authors? And, more to the point, can one write something that’s 100% male or 100% female?
Here’s the kicker for me - I just fed this text into the Genie: by a score of 758 to 379, I’m so totally a dude.
Tags: This entry has not been tagged yet.
Apparently, I’m a dude when I write anything other than romance, and then I’m all awash with estrogen.
Blog score - 4:5 f:m even when writing about my girls!
Master’s thesis in history - 1:4 f:m
Fiction - 4:3 f:m
Sex scene - 5:3 f:m
Can we say “meeting readers’ expectations??” Although the blog part is interesting, because I write that just for myself.
I ran my last blog entry though the genie. It came out 384/647 female/male. And it’s a blog about dieting! I guess I’m manly even when I try to be girly.
My blog apparently marks me as female, but it thinks the author of Elizabeth Bear’s blog is a dude. So definitely not a perfect system.
My blog is very female. My fiction is very, very male. Who knew? Does that mean my books would appeal to men as well as women? (non-romance) I hope so!
According to the genie, I’m a chick. My words, apparently, score far from where they should be for a guy. I need to man up.
Wait...WHAT I mean is that many of my words words ARE WHAT you would expect from a girl.
There. Now I’m talking like a man. Maybe I could work “boobs” into all my sentences. That would help.
Well, I blog all girly, but then I write all dude.
Very interesting. When I’m just rambling to myself, I’m a girl. When I’m trying to write well and make a good impression, I’m writing guy.
Or is the algorithm biased toward what is “good” writing--writing in third person, avoiding purple prose, making your verbs active to promote plot motion--as male? I know I got a lot of
‘guy’ hits for my verbs, which I only chose to make the fiction feel active.
Hmmmm.
My last blog entry, a quick story about my young children surprising my husband and I in the kitchen with their discovery of our vibrators under the bed, scored as male.
830 to 326.
I’ve got dishes, a refrigerator, dialogue, and young children in that excerpt. Female, maybe?
I did notice that the male keyword which scored the highest, 266, is the word “the”, which carries a factor of 38.
Simply by using “the” seven times I pumped my male score to almost parity with my female score. I need to use “with” more to get a female rating. ("With" carries a factor of 52--pretty heavily weighted.)
Algorithms are bizarre anyway.
surprising my husband and *ME*
I freaking know my grammar.
(Besides, that “me” would have helped my female score.)
Apparently I’m a dude, too - seven-hundred and something to three-hundred and something.
This thing is idiotic.
Coming out of lurkdom…
Very interesting. When I’m just rambling to myself, I’m a girl. When I’m trying to write well and make a good impression, I’m writing guy.
Same here, mostly! The thing pegged me as female for the personal and real life entries, while by the angry rants and article-type posts it declared me a man.
Apparently I’m a guy, in both blog and fiction form. No matter that both are written from first-person female P.O.V.
The Gender Genie has spoken! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel the urge to scratch my nether regions.
Hmmm. Maybe writing opposite of one’s actual gender is a characteristic of people who post here?
I checked multiple posts from my blog, spanning the last three months, all of which met their criteria (over 500 words per entry). All of them scored very ‘male’ no matter the actual topic. Go figure.
Blog: male
Current Luna WIP: female (less so for the scenes written from male POVs--whew!)
Vampire book: male, so I guess instead of chick lit, it’s actually--no, I won’t say it.
My semi-recent blog posts about shopping with two of my best friends, and an ode to autumn combined with a whine about Seasonal Affective Disorder are apparently both male.
How strange! I mean, shopping! For candles, and lotions, etc. It doesn’t get girlier than that!
The lumps of fictionlike material that I pollute my blog with when I’m actually inspired—unfortunately not very much recently, my muse has gone awol—seem to have no pattern. For some of them it guesses male, for others it guesses female, pretty much with a 50/50 chance. Whichever one it does decide on it does, however, come down fairly heavily on one side or the other. One sex usually outweighing the other sex by about 2 to 1.
Of the non-fiction bits, the political rant came back female, whilst the long musing about why I’m not reading much science-fiction these days but am still reading romance came back male.
Obviously, my dastardly plans for fooling random web gender analysers need further refinement if this little program is merely completely confused rather than properly consistently incorrect :P
I ran some long passages from my adult romance novel. The female POV scored female. The male POV scored male. Boo-yah (whatever that means).
Snippet from a technical paper:
male (expected)
Snippet from a WIP story:
male (considering the characters are male, not TOO surprising)
Blog:
male (surprising)
Interestingly enough, I fed it a second snippet from the same story where there’s a female character, and that (predictably) swung me back towards female. But if I subtracted the scores attributed to uses of the words “she” and “her”, it swings back to male again.
Weird. This thing is interesting though.
It hurts to laugh at how one day I’m 936 to 278 female, and the next, 718 to 245 male.
My hormones must be all out of wack.
I fed it two fiction excerpts, and three blog entries, including an angry rant. Verdict: female, every time. Apparently I even rant like a girl. Huh, who knew?
Now, writing from my personal blog scores a significantly female verdict. But my writing on SBTB, which is more analytical and often much more cranky, is decidedly male. What’s up with that?
-->’Cuz boys are analytical and girls are never cranky. It’s all the cooties we’re infested with. They soothe us and make us want to be all concilliatory to everyone else. Also, they kill our logic circuits.
Damn cooties.
AnimeJune, Elizabeth Bear is a guy.
(No! No! Totally a joke. Bear’s a friend of mine, and we’ve had many a conversation about this very topic. I was amused that you happened to test her blog.)
--------
My problem with this division is the characterization as “masculine” and “feminine.” How about just calling the comparison “analytical” and...er...some other word that doesn’t imply “Gee, it’s bad to talk about how you feel”?
I tried a about 5 different blog entries. 4/5 times I’m a girl.
I’m like most of you: i feed in my straught fiction i grow dangle things in my gentile area, i feed in my blog and romance stories and they shrivel and drop off.
Maybe that this just shows that sexulity really is a social construct and isn’t inherent in our thought processes.
either that or it proves that the alogirms used are complete and utter crap!!!!!
Funny thing--my posts about romance novels turned out male, and my post about The Guardian (action flick) turned out female. Go figure.
I write in my blog like a man, apparently. And in my personal emails. And in my work related stuff. Who knew? I’ve been a man all these years and didn’t realize it! That explains a lot! %-P
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This is so not cool. eBay needs to grow a backbone and do something.
And what does the person get from stealing the reviews? How does it profit them in any way?
Sweetie, what makes you think there will be any dragging involved? Bring it on! ;)
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10.23.06 at 06:40 AM |