Apparently, some team got together to discover if we could tell the difference in genders of writers based solely on their writing style (ignoring obvious qualifiers like talking about ballgowns and kegs). They put together an algorythm that is supposedly pretty accurate. The conclusion they came to was that women tend to write about relationships, while men tend to write about things.
Back in the old IRC days, when chatrooms didn't use profile pics and such, I was frequently kicked out by moderators who accused me of being male and creating false female profiles. I was even permanently banned by a few, and I wasn't even getting into cussing matches like I do now on OKC. People just thought I "talked like a guy", so my profile info must be a fake (I think it was actually a homophobic issue - guys afraid of hitting on a "girl" only to find out she's really a guy, because that's what IRC was really for, right? Hitting on girls?). When I take "personality tests", both the silly, nonsense, online quizzes and actual psychological tests, I very often test as male. My MBTI type is INTJ, which is the most rare type for females. Even the last silly quiz I posted (which based its conclusions on journal entries) couldn't tell if I was male or female.
So in the last couple of years, I've noticed that I've been writing and talking more and more about what it's like to be a woman - a concept pretty damn foreign to me, for the most part. I never really thought about being a woman until it started getting thrown in my face that other people think of me as a woman. Dating as a teenager didn't really have strong gender role preferences since both genders played video games and sports, but dating as an adult, I get a lot of resistance to the idea that I might be better at the breadwinning/household maintenance/not care about apperances role than my male partners. When it comes to debates about which person is "right" in relationship arguments, I overwhelmingly end up on the side of the male, since the things females do just confuse the fuck out of me. I even identify as male in my head, for the most part, when I'm forced to give an answer of gender (although I'd really rather prefer to ignore gender entirely except for the express purpose of determining sexual orientation compatibility).
So, when I found this online test that will take a sample of your writing and tell you what gender the algorythm thinks you are, I decided to see what it said.
And, to my surprise, the bulk of my journal entries tag me as female.
So I started looking into how it figured this out. That's when I discovered that it was based on the study I mentioned above that concluded that women talk about relationships and men talk about things. I noticed that my journal has a whole lot of entries discussing polyamory and relationships, so yeah, the keywords the algorythms look for that tag as female are going to show up more often in posts where the topic is about relationships.
But ... when I talk about personal topics, stuff about who I am but not about how people relate to each other, every journal entry there comes up as male. The entry that really tied these all together for me was the entry about being broken. I thought, surely, a post about my feelings and personal introspection would have all the female keywords, right? Apparently not. The post about the LASIK surgey also showed up as male, as did the post about Percivalians, which also surprised me. Every post about polyamory, however, showed up as female.
As a test, I tried out![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tacit's journal. It tested as overwhelmingly male ... except for his entries about polyamory, sex, and cats, which scored quite decisively female (whereas even my female-scored posts were only barely scored "female", based on a numerical value). Next I tried zen_shooter's journal, as he's probably one of the most masculine people I know. The majority of his entries tested as male, as I expected since he doesn't write about relationships, but a surprising number showed up as female.
What this showed me is that, even taking out the obvious qualifiers like "dresses" and "power tools", people still assume there are some topics that are preferred by men and others by women. If someone is talking about relationships, that person must be female. If someone is talking about objects, that person must be male. It's not really any different than assuming that women talk about shopping and men talk about sports, it's just a different set of topics.
I'm sure someone will point out that these are "trends", and that the "majority" of women talk about relationships more often and the "majority" of men don't talk about relationships as often, but I don't really think that's true. I think somewhere, we as a society decided that there are male topics and female topics so that when we test for gender differences, we corrolate the results according to our own biases AND we start training children to fall into those biases at a very early age so there's a great deal of difficulty in proving whether men and women "naturally" think differently or are taught to do so. My personal observation teaches me that men do, in fact, think about relationships often and actually want to talk about them ... much to my annoyance. I can't tell you how many times I've thrown my hands up and shouted in exasperation "can we PLEASE talk about something else! I'm so sick of relationship processing! Get the fuck over it already!", so it must not be that I, as the female, am influencing the conversation towards relationship discussions. But since society has taught everyone that men don't think or talk about relationships, I believe that men think that when they *do* want to talk about relationships, they have to turn to a woman because, after all, women are the only ones who want to talk about it, which is how come I hear all the stuff I hear.
And the tests that force people of one gender into the "role" typically assumed by the other gender quite clearly indicate that the human being is capable of taking on whatever traits the individual deems necessary for survival, including behaving like he thinks he is supposed to for social acceptance. I know that I certainly didn't start talking about relationships to this extent until I found myself in the position of trying to explain things to people who thought I was wierd. It's not so much that thinking and talking about relationships *interests* me, it's that people seem to want to understand me and explaining who I am is how I smooth the path, socially. My goal is not to talk about relationships for relationships' sake, it's so that people will eventually understand who I am and I can finally *stop* talking about relationships because it will no longer be a big deal. Just as I didn't think of myself as a female (I didn't really think of my gender at all, except for sexual issues) until people insisted on reminding me that I am female, I didn't really think about relationships much until people started reminding me that what I do is different.
And this entry, by the way, comes up in the test as written by a male.
Back in the old IRC days, when chatrooms didn't use profile pics and such, I was frequently kicked out by moderators who accused me of being male and creating false female profiles. I was even permanently banned by a few, and I wasn't even getting into cussing matches like I do now on OKC. People just thought I "talked like a guy", so my profile info must be a fake (I think it was actually a homophobic issue - guys afraid of hitting on a "girl" only to find out she's really a guy, because that's what IRC was really for, right? Hitting on girls?). When I take "personality tests", both the silly, nonsense, online quizzes and actual psychological tests, I very often test as male. My MBTI type is INTJ, which is the most rare type for females. Even the last silly quiz I posted (which based its conclusions on journal entries) couldn't tell if I was male or female.
So in the last couple of years, I've noticed that I've been writing and talking more and more about what it's like to be a woman - a concept pretty damn foreign to me, for the most part. I never really thought about being a woman until it started getting thrown in my face that other people think of me as a woman. Dating as a teenager didn't really have strong gender role preferences since both genders played video games and sports, but dating as an adult, I get a lot of resistance to the idea that I might be better at the breadwinning/household maintenance/not care about apperances role than my male partners. When it comes to debates about which person is "right" in relationship arguments, I overwhelmingly end up on the side of the male, since the things females do just confuse the fuck out of me. I even identify as male in my head, for the most part, when I'm forced to give an answer of gender (although I'd really rather prefer to ignore gender entirely except for the express purpose of determining sexual orientation compatibility).
So, when I found this online test that will take a sample of your writing and tell you what gender the algorythm thinks you are, I decided to see what it said.
And, to my surprise, the bulk of my journal entries tag me as female.
So I started looking into how it figured this out. That's when I discovered that it was based on the study I mentioned above that concluded that women talk about relationships and men talk about things. I noticed that my journal has a whole lot of entries discussing polyamory and relationships, so yeah, the keywords the algorythms look for that tag as female are going to show up more often in posts where the topic is about relationships.
But ... when I talk about personal topics, stuff about who I am but not about how people relate to each other, every journal entry there comes up as male. The entry that really tied these all together for me was the entry about being broken. I thought, surely, a post about my feelings and personal introspection would have all the female keywords, right? Apparently not. The post about the LASIK surgey also showed up as male, as did the post about Percivalians, which also surprised me. Every post about polyamory, however, showed up as female.
As a test, I tried out
tacit's journal. It tested as overwhelmingly male ... except for his entries about polyamory, sex, and cats, which scored quite decisively female (whereas even my female-scored posts were only barely scored "female", based on a numerical value). Next I tried zen_shooter's journal, as he's probably one of the most masculine people I know. The majority of his entries tested as male, as I expected since he doesn't write about relationships, but a surprising number showed up as female. What this showed me is that, even taking out the obvious qualifiers like "dresses" and "power tools", people still assume there are some topics that are preferred by men and others by women. If someone is talking about relationships, that person must be female. If someone is talking about objects, that person must be male. It's not really any different than assuming that women talk about shopping and men talk about sports, it's just a different set of topics.
I'm sure someone will point out that these are "trends", and that the "majority" of women talk about relationships more often and the "majority" of men don't talk about relationships as often, but I don't really think that's true. I think somewhere, we as a society decided that there are male topics and female topics so that when we test for gender differences, we corrolate the results according to our own biases AND we start training children to fall into those biases at a very early age so there's a great deal of difficulty in proving whether men and women "naturally" think differently or are taught to do so. My personal observation teaches me that men do, in fact, think about relationships often and actually want to talk about them ... much to my annoyance. I can't tell you how many times I've thrown my hands up and shouted in exasperation "can we PLEASE talk about something else! I'm so sick of relationship processing! Get the fuck over it already!", so it must not be that I, as the female, am influencing the conversation towards relationship discussions. But since society has taught everyone that men don't think or talk about relationships, I believe that men think that when they *do* want to talk about relationships, they have to turn to a woman because, after all, women are the only ones who want to talk about it, which is how come I hear all the stuff I hear.
And the tests that force people of one gender into the "role" typically assumed by the other gender quite clearly indicate that the human being is capable of taking on whatever traits the individual deems necessary for survival, including behaving like he thinks he is supposed to for social acceptance. I know that I certainly didn't start talking about relationships to this extent until I found myself in the position of trying to explain things to people who thought I was wierd. It's not so much that thinking and talking about relationships *interests* me, it's that people seem to want to understand me and explaining who I am is how I smooth the path, socially. My goal is not to talk about relationships for relationships' sake, it's so that people will eventually understand who I am and I can finally *stop* talking about relationships because it will no longer be a big deal. Just as I didn't think of myself as a female (I didn't really think of my gender at all, except for sexual issues) until people insisted on reminding me that I am female, I didn't really think about relationships much until people started reminding me that what I do is different.
And this entry, by the way, comes up in the test as written by a male.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 8/23/08 01:32 pm (UTC)From:So where is this gender software? I'm trainwreck curious.
no subject
Date: 8/24/08 04:14 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 8/23/08 03:17 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 8/24/08 04:16 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 8/24/08 01:16 am (UTC)From:An aside on MBTI stuff: I can definitely buy that INTJ is rarer for women than for men, which is another one of those things that I bet has a lot to do with socialization. Is that definitely rarest type for women though? I'm INFJ, which I've read and been told is the rarest type overall, something like 1% of the population. I don't know much about MBTI though, and I don't want to sound like I'm talking out of my ass when I tell people that INFJ is the rarest one.
no subject
Date: 8/24/08 04:28 pm (UTC)From:And yes, you're correct that these type of quizzes test for gender stereotypes, which is a much shorter and more eloquent way of saying what I was ranting about :-) We've all been trained to behave a certain way, so yes, a large portion of the population will fall into expected roles when the "test" is already biased to prove those roles.
But, as you said, no one is 100% capable of fulfilling their assigned role (having differing definitions of said role doesn't help), so my general conclusion is that those roles are not useful also. Which is why I get so pissed at being put into a role I didn't choose for myself and why I identify as "gay male in a female body who doesn't want surgery" but would drop that identity in a heartbeat once they redefined "male" and "female", because that identity is based on gender stereotypes.
no subject
Date: 8/24/08 05:08 pm (UTC)From:Oh well. Clearly we're both rare and stunning examples of our kind, and that's all that matters.
Brief eloquence is what poets are for. But a short rant would totally defeat the purpose. I don't understand how people's heads didn't just explode before they could vent on the internet.
Like Eddie Izzard describing himself as a male lesbian. I like your designation, because that means
no subject
Date: 8/24/08 10:37 pm (UTC)From:He was quite uncomfortable the first time we discussed that designation in depth, and that amuses me. I enjoy challenging people to learn to accept a wider variety of possibilities within themselves and other people.
no subject
Date: 8/24/08 10:06 pm (UTC)From:Gender is such a fluid thing, really. 'Masculine' and 'feminine' seem to deny how complex identity, sexuality and their intersection really is. I was really annoyed and ranty about a common stereotype that all lesbians were either butches or femmes (they aren't!) before I actually knew a number of rather butch women. The stereotype still annoys the heck out of me, but I have to admit now that the terms themselves reference something deeper than I thought they did. Still, I don't find 'butch' to be 'masculine' at all...they feel very female to me, just in a totally different way than the traditional feminine.
This quiz is fun to play with.
no subject
Date: 8/24/08 10:30 pm (UTC)From:I find this to be a very important statement, and it relates to why "gay male in female body" fits better than simply "straight female".
For me, what makes someone "masculine" or "feminine" is only partially related to their physical appearance, but a much higher emphasis is put on how their mind works. I really sort of revel in the androgyny of looking "feminine" but dressing and thinking "masculine", which is why I use the "gay male" part. I sort of equate it not just to my sexual orientation, but the stereotype that gay men are allowed to have a few "feminine" quirks, such as good taste in clothing or delicate hand gestures (not to say that *I* have "good taste in clothing", the point is there are some "girl" traits that gay men are allowed to claim as their own without renouncing their being male).
I agree that a person's gender is a very fluid thing, and it's only our human tendancy to categorize things and a society's tendency to put "those items" in the female category and "these items" in the male category that make us stick to the male/female dichotomy.
I would be so much happier if male/female were stripped down and used to define chromosomes and plumbing only, not personality or tendencies. Because even within the bare-bones chromosome & plumbing questions, there is still a huge amount of variety. To throw in the infinate number of personality traits and combinations only broadens the categories to such an extent (and, consequently increases the numbers of "exceptions) that the categories become, essentially, useless for categorization purposes.