Gender Genie!

[Ralf Maximus]

Using text snippets, the Gender Genie uses complicated scientifical text analysis to guess the gender of an author:



I'm a boy!  My gender confusion is finally over.  *sob*

If I were writing such a thing, I'd just flip a random number.  Leaving out transsexuals and folks who are unsure, there'd be a 50% shot at getting it right.

Links to a paper describing the algorithm are included at the site, but I gotta wonder... what real application does this have?  Extra-better spam target profiling?  Fewer ENHANC3 YR PEN!S!!! emails sent to my sister?

[app103]

I ran a lot of my longer blog posts through this just to see what it would say. It seems to think I am male, most of the time. 

[momonan]

I got male on one and female on the other.  Am I in trouble?

Seems like the more "educated" I write, the more likely I am to be identified as male, whereas a more conversational tone marks me as a female.

Okay, I understand that they are different styles of writing, but doncha see me changin my lil' self before yer I's?

[Ralf Maximus]

I ran a lot of my longer blog posts through this just to see what it would say. It seems to think I am male, most of the time. 

-app103 (November 20, 2007, 10:10 AM)

Well, that's obvious, right?  You're a dude.  I mean, everyone knows chicks can't program.

:-)

[app103]

What it is doing is counting the instances of certain keywords it considers 'masculine' and 'feminine'. It is ignoring the rest of the text.

I fail to see how any writing that contains a high amount of a word like 'the' is more likely to be written by a man, than some writing that has a higher amount of a word like 'and'.

This is how they break down the word usage:

Feminine Keywords	Masculine Keywords
with	around
if	what
not	more
where	are
be	as
when	who
your	below
her	is
we	these
should	the
she	a
and	at
me	it
myself	many
hers	said
was	above
	to

Note that almost half of the words they consider feminine, are used when referring to people.

To me, their list seems to imply that they think women tend to write more about people, and men tend to write more about objects, how many of them, and where they are. 

Well, that's obvious, right?  You're a dude.  I mean, everyone knows chicks can't program.

:-)

-Ralf Maximus (November 20, 2007, 11:44 AM)

Who said I can program? 

[app103]

After reading the pdf and another article about it, I see that I was right about the 'people vs things' idea.

^{I should have read both before posting.} 

[iphigenie]

About a sophisticated then as the swedish chef translator or all the 2 minute personality quizzes.

[iphigenie]

About a sophisticated then as the swedish chef translator or all the 2 minute personality quizzes.

-iphigenie (November 22, 2007, 04:17 AM)

That sentence has a female score of 0, by the way...

I took many of my blog posts, but because the blogs are mostly about things - games, books, art - they are all male. 80% or more so... I'm off to the hospital to order the gender change right now 

And I guess many blogs by men which I read and which regularly mention people (their kids, colleagues, whatever) would be considered female.

Totally silly, and in a way rather unfair to both genders...

[app103]

It's not so much the actual content of the passage and whether it is about people or things that makes the results male or female, but how you reference them.

This blog post is a good example, and is about people, but the results say that my writing is definitely male:

Female Score: 520
Male Score: 822

I entered only my text in the Gender Genie, and didn't include the quote in the beginning of the post (made by a male).

This isn't the first time my writing has been labeled as 'male'...even Microsoft's demographics predictor has labeled my blog as being male oriented:



But this whole idea that males use certain words more than females, and the fact that I tend think, speak & write with a more male style, myself (according to this Gender Genie), might explain why I have a 'femininity radar' that goes off when talking to women and why I find the most woman quite 'irritating' to listen to.

And it is a 'gift' I have of detecting the gender of people in chatrooms, even when they have a gender neutral username, having said nothing that would give away their gender.

Often times I am the only one that can correctly identify the gender of someone, and quite quickly. For example, there was someone that was a regular in my chatroom that everyone thought and assumed was a guy (this person may have even told people this), with me being the only one that was picking up feminine 'vibes'. We eventually found out (after 2 years) it was a woman, and I was right all along. I pegged her for a woman within about the first 10 minutes of talking to her...something irritated me.

I am thinking that I may have a 'Gender Genie' built into my brain on some unconscious level that may be based on a similar keywords list, that I am unaware of.

^{The Gender Genie thinks the author of this post is: male!}

[Ralf Maximus]

I am thinking that I may have a 'Gender Genie' built into my brain on some unconscious level that may be based on a similar keywords list, that I am unaware of.

Ah!  GenDar.

[iphigenie]

It might work better onr people from a particular country/subculture?

[Deozaan]

I just put all of my blog posts through it. It says it thinks the author of my blogs is female.

Do I irritate you, app? 

[Carol Haynes]

well I seem to be fairly well in the male camp!

Having said that I only submitted text that was factual (uni essay type) which by definition has to be written in a non-personal style.

I also fail to see how words like "it", "are", "the", "a", "at" can possibly be gender specific - especially in factual writing that aims to be concise and precise.

[Xenonym]

Ultimate test: paste in a Wikipedia entry.

Results: Over 5 articles (I am VERY lazy), 5 were male, none were female.
Methods: Random article function, copying of text into a single paragraph.

Major conspiracy uncovered here.

[Ralf Maximus]

What?  All you chicks posting here are really dudes?

[app103]

What?  All you chicks posting here are really dudes?

-Ralf Maximus (December 08, 2007, 11:37 AM)

I heard something somewhere once that said 'there are no girls on the internet'. 

Probably no dudes either. 

[Carol Haynes]

LOL - too true ... I have met some of those who think they are 

By the way April - only just noticed your new avatar ... did Mouser for the design stage? Love it

[app103]

By the way April - only just noticed your new avatar ... did Mouser for the design stage? Love it

-Carol Haynes (December 08, 2007, 03:12 PM)

it's a live cam from my bathroom...that crazy cat of mine just won't quit 

[Renegade]

It seems to work... I tried it on a half dozen CNet articles written by men & women, and it got it right every time... Just an observation...