Using a set of algorithms, the gender of the author of a body of text can be determined via the Gender Genie. Just paste something that you’ve written in here, and see how it goes. I know, I know, it stereotypes people linguistically, but it seems to have a high success rate.
I conducted an experiment [this sentence sounds convincingly male], taking the last post of the blogs I visit regularly, as well as the spouses who blog. Kristen was determined to be ‘female’, while husband Mark was ‘male’ (hurrah!). Andrea was ‘female’. Stef too. Her husband Mike? ‘Male’. Maria was ‘female‘, as was Jean. Well done, Genie!
Hmm … actually it didn’t totally succeed with other blogs, but I’ll leave it at that 😉 Incidentally, my writing style was also ‘female’, but not for all posts.
Update: More tests! It appears that the author of the Singapore pledge was female (?!). Erm, and so was a draft of the Gettysburg Address. Winston Churchill’s ‘blood, toil, tears, and sweat’ speech was written by a male.
This is driving me nuts. I should sleep. Good night.
Comments
That was interesting Vanessa, I shall go do some pasting and clicking 🙂
Crossing the Line
Vanessa’s post about the gender genie (a website that uses algorithms to determine the genders of authors of chosen passages) has me intrigued. According to this highly scientific tool, I’m supposed to be female. And consistently so. I’ve pasted more t…
check this out :o)
Thanks for the link. Obviously someone needs to come up with version 2.0!