Gender and Textual Analysis

Posted by figleaf | Tags:

Wed, 2008-11-26 08:47

Man or woman – who is writing that blog?

We guess http://www.realadultsex.com is written by a man (59%), however it’s quite gender neutral.

You can rate your own website here.

My take? What. Ever. I mean, what does it even mean to be “59% man?” Or “41% woman?” I mean, genetically I’m 98% plus chimpanzee! Or (if I remember correctly) 43% ear of corn, just like everyone else! Chemically I’m 85% (or is it 95%?) water. Chromosomally I’m 50% X chromosomes… nah, not even that since with very, very few exceptions only one out of 23 chromosome pairs are gendered at all.

What they mean, I guess, is that my writing is 59% typical of constructed masculinity and/or 41% typical of constructed femininity.

(Via Blue Gal.)

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Submitted by 2537 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-11-26 11:19.

Figleaf,

I may not be as prolific as you, but the few posts I've published here must contain such potent femininity that they lifted the scales up to 59%. ;-)

What criteria does Genderanalyzer uses to make this determination: word choice, topics, graphics, comments, responses to comments?

However, I think you should take the results as a compliment. Isn't gender neutral the ultimate goal here? You've written approximately 2,500 posts that demonstrate that there are more similarities between men and women than there are differences.

Write on, fl.

[Thank you, Kochanie. I'm writing this Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, and I'd like to take a moment to wish you and yours a very happy one. --fl]

Submitted by 2537 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-11-26 16:50.

I am 64% female. Better than the 100% whiny twit it could have given me. :)

[Hey, how come you never whine about how hard you are on yourself? :-) Thanks, Biscuit. --fl]

Submitted by 2537 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-11-26 20:53.

If gender neutral is the goal, I must be the winner! I am 100% female in reality, but apparently my blog ... isn't. "We guess http://www.bounceswoosh.org/ is written by a man (54%), however it's quite gender neutral."

According to the poll results on the site, almost half the people who responded to the poll said the site got it wrong.

Anyway, I guess I'm kind of happy that my blog isn't strongly gendered either way ...

[Funny, I'd have guessed you were a woman from actually *reading* your posts instead of textually analyzing them. Wonder how that works anyway? Thanks, Monique. --fl]

Submitted by 2537 (not verified) on Wed, 2008-11-26 22:20.

Fig, I am 66% female (and counting...)

[Fun, huh? Thanks, Sucre Bebe. --fl]

Submitted by 2537 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-11-27 03:33.

Well, pedantically it means you have a 59% chance of being male based on statistics of known male and female writing, not that you're partly one or the other.

Anyway, I'm 75% girl, which is probably because I use too many damn qualifiers. I have a sneaking suspicion that actually, probably, sort of, practically, in a way, self-undercutting qualifiers are a common female writing trait.

[Interesting. It took me the first three years of college to get over overqualif-itis. Thanks, Holly. --fl]

Submitted by 2537 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-11-27 03:34.

Well, either that or their analyzer knows that the phrase "my vagina" appears very rarely in male writing.

[I suspect if it filtered that specifically it would have given you a 100%. Thanks, Holly. --fl]

Submitted by 2537 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-11-27 09:31.

the phrase "my vagina" appears very rarely in male writing

(stops laughing long enough to write comment) I agree, Holly. That's a pretty reliable indicator. (resumes laughing)

Submitted by 2537 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-11-27 10:39.

We have strong indicators that http://afemanistview.blogspot.com/ is written by a woman (95%).

heheheh.

I think the true value of such analyses is given by the fact that when I told it it had got it wrong, it told me that 120 folks had said "correct" and 97 had said "not correct" - that means it only got it right about 55% of the time!

I've run my writings through a couple of other gender guessing routines, and so far it's a 2:1 split in favour of me being a girl.

[I'd forgotten there were more of those things out there. Interesting. Thanks, SE. --fl]

Submitted by 2537 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-11-28 11:46.

Thanks for the linky love and the excuse to come peruse your blogroll...xo

[Any time, BlueGal. Thanks! --fl]