The Gender Genie

[franceslievens]

From lijability: copy & paste some blogposts in The Gender Genie and figure out whether they are written by a male or a female.

First try: I copy and paste my latest post.
Female score: 574
Male score: 570
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is female.

So far so good. But the entry I put in to genie was only 372 words long and the genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.

Second try: I add another longer post I've written recently. With 758 words The Gender Genie has something to work on.
Female score: 1017
Male score: 1174
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is male.

Checking out the keywords that let The Gender genie come to this conclusion, I learn one is more masculine when one doesn't talk about him- or herself. My instinct tells me this is terribly stereotypical and maybe even sexist.

Comments

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I said to Lynn! I put in two film reviews and was declared "male" both times.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

If you scroll down you can check the keywords it uses, you'll notice that for female these are "I", "myself", etc. Whereas it's more masculine to use "to". So whenever you don't talk about yourself, you'll end up masculine I guess.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

My wedding post is female and my Obama post is male.

While it might be true that more females use blogging to write about personal experiences, the whole premise of the test is (and I'm struggling to find the right expression here) stupid and perpetrating gender stereotypes. I've got other things to do than to investigate the 'science' behind it, but I find it rather questionable.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

perpetrating gender stereotypes

I had the same instinctive reaction towards it.