Since I recently started writing again I decided to do a little research on the differences between masculine and feminine writing styles, so I googled it. I got a bunch of links to explore and read of course, but one link that stood out was an online application, "The GenderGenie" ( http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php (http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php) ).
The Gender Genie
Inspired by an article and a test in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more at BookBlog, The New York Times, and The Guardian.I entered some previously written text I've done and it came up masculine. The GenderGenie reported the following:
Words: 523
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)
Female Score: 677
Male Score: 724
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Sigh... something else to worry about while transitioning. :)
(//)
-Dora
Quote from: Dora on December 21, 2010, 03:06:48 PM
Since I recently started writing again I decided to do a little research on the differences between masculine and feminine writing styles, so I googled it. I got a bunch of links to explore and read of course, but one link that stood out was an online application, "The GenderGenie" ( http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php (http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php) ).
The Gender Genie
Inspired by an article and a test in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author. Read more at BookBlog, The New York Times, and The Guardian.
I entered some previously written text I've done and it came up masculine. The GenderGenie reported the following:
Words: 523
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)
Female Score: 677
Male Score: 724
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Sigh... something else to worry about while transitioning. :)
(//)
-Dora
I score very high male on these tests and online when playing MMORPG's no one thinks I am a female until they hear my voice. I think the way you write/talk is less telling than the way you look and sound as far as passability.
I wouldn't worry too much. My actual and perceived sex and gender identities have always been male, yet this is sure my writing is female. :)
On one thing I wrote:
Female Score: 1095
Male Score: 1007
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Another:
Female Score: 1968
Male Score: 1507
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Interesting. I used a passage from a novel I'm currently writing:
Female Score: 1180
Male Score: 1219
Then I tried a passage from my book that was just published:
Female Score: 1433
Male Score: 2591
And then a blog entry:
Female Score: 1210
Male Score: 915
So the more professional my writing, the manlier it gets. ;D
This thing is pretty LOL worthy; I put in some blog entries that I wrote recently and they came out 'male'. I put in some text from when I was trolling a transphobic radfem site, posing as a man, and it came up 'female'.
Conclusion: when I deliberately try to be male, I'm apparently coming across as more female.
Quote from: CaitJ on December 21, 2010, 03:35:20 PM
This thing is pretty LOL worthy; I put in some blog entries that I wrote recently and they came out 'male'. I put in some text from when I was trolling a transphobic radfem site, posing as a man, and it came up 'female'.
Conclusion: when I deliberately try to be male, I'm apparently coming across as more female.
Agreed, CaitJ! I tried entering the entire chapter, and it now GenderGenie says female:
Words: 2233
Female Score: 3186
Male Score: 2634
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Still, I think there is some merit to the differences between writing styles. There certainly are differences in how men and woman speak. (I'm referring to the content, not the tone, inflection, etc.) Why not writing style?
Female Score: 183
Male Score: 166
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fbookblog.net%2Fgender%2Ffemale1.gif&hash=1faad17d9082949b4dfbe3b08f141acd35ec265e)
I used part of a book that I wrote.
Quote from: Dora on December 21, 2010, 03:44:58 PM
Agreed, CaitJ! I tried entering the entire chapter, and it now GenderGenie says female:
Words: 2233
Female Score: 3186
Male Score: 2634
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Still, I think there is some merit to the differences between writing styles. There certainly are differences in how men and woman speak. (I'm referring to the content, not the tone, inflection, etc.) Why not writing style?
Whatever perceived difference there may or may not be, just be yourself, don't worry so much. No one it going to out you because of the way gender genie reads your writing.
Quote from: dustbunny on December 21, 2010, 03:56:51 PM
Whatever perceived difference there may or may not be, just be yourself, don't worry so much. No one it going to out you because of the way gender genie reads your writing.
Agreed. Although it is something I have thought about, I'm certainly not worried about it. More of a curiosity than anything else.
Quote from: Dora on December 21, 2010, 04:10:03 PM
Agreed. Although it is something I have thought about, I'm certainly not worried about it. More of a curiosity than anything else.
Ok, your first post said "one more thing to worry about" so it seemed like it was something that was bothering you. I have several TS friends, some worry about these things and some don't. I know how important it is to "pass" for some of them and anything that makes them feel like they are not is enough to really upset them.
Pulled a few different ones out of curiosity. First a blog post:
Female Score: 1766
Male Score: 2151
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
then a year old fanfiction scene:
Female Score: 3333
Male Score: 4617
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Then an RP entry:
Female Score: 1040
Male Score: 1153
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Then a c/p'd post from my intro post here:
Female Score: 1719
Male Score: 1581
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
------------
Kinda funny the intro post here is the only one that shows as female, but it's also the only one where I was talking about myself, but I noticed something. The more self or person specific words (I, myself, me, your) get a higher female rating, the more subject neutral words the higher the male rating. This page seems to base off more commonly used words than actual writing style in and of itself, mostly in regards to specific subject verses none specific subject though there are other key words in either list but those seem make the bulk of it. Basically if you're talking about yourself or someone else using more subject specific words you're going to get a higher female rating, at opposed to if you're talking about locations and actions. At least that's what I noticed with the entries I tested it out with. Hope I worded that right, just woke up not long ago.
My scores for essays tend to be seen as very male, but the test gives me back marginally female results when it's an informal blog post.
Blog Post:
Female Score: 2813
Male Score: 2702
Opinion Piece on the topic of "compassionate conservatism":
Female Score: 5119
Male Score: 5814
I've done this a few times just for fun on different things I've written. I seem to see a pattern.
On my blog where I discuss transgender topics in every post I put in it guesses "female". So then I copy and pasted some emails I've written to a friend of mine.
In emails where we're discussing philosophy or religion or those kinds of topics the gender genie returns "male", but in other emails (I only selected longer ones that were more than 500 words) where we are discussing her kids, or talking about life, or whatever I only get "female" as a result.
I suppose this makes sense. When I'm thinking about philosophy or religion I do feel like my writing style becomes a little more technical and "point" driven, like I want to work my way through an issue and come to resolution. Or sometimes to persuade someone to consider another point of view. But when I'm not thinking about those topics, I guess my writing style doesn't trigger the "male" in this algorithm.
I don't know for sure if I would put much faith in that tool, but it was fun as an exercise.
Edit: This post:
Female Score: 254
Male Score: 238
I don't really get how this thing works! :)
It took me some time to find samples of English text by my hand, so here it goes:
A blog entry:
Words: 873
Female Score: 2167
Male Score: 994
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
email:
Words: 235
Female Score: 279
Male Score: 274
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Application letter:
Words: 251
Female Score: 286
Male Score: 200
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Hrm, who should I doubt here. This program or myself? ;D
It is a nice little program, I wonder how it actually works. That being said, I think it is of little value.
Blog Entry:
Female Score: 844
Male Score: 1147
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Grad school paper:
Female Score: 276
Male Score: 856
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
A post here, earlier today:
Female Score: 231
Male Score: 127
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Fun to play with, I still think its crap though. For the grad school paper I used "the" and "and" most frequently. How does that possibly predict my gender?
I decided to try submitting a few different things.
Non-Fiction - Essay 1 on Sexual Orientation
Words: 452
Female Score: 427
Male Score: 844
Essay 2 - Social Policy Analysis
Words: 685
Female Score: 1127
Male Score: 1169
Forum reply 1 Whiney about feelings
Words: 406
Female Score: 789
Male Score: 357
Forum reply 2 Whiney about feelings
Words: 328
Female Score: 376
Male Score: 449
Email 1 - About Transitioning to some female friends - so lots of I's and such
Words: 404
Female Score: 579
Male Score: 444
Email 2 - About Transitioning and life to a male friend
Words: 157
Female Score: 95
Male Score: 315
seems like for me.. whiney blah blah blah I feel like crap posts are more feminine.. and talking to females = fem.
Just copy/pasted some well known books/plays:
MacBeth by William Shakespeare:
Words: 18529
Female Score: 24823
Male Score: 21534
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin:
Words: 129453
Female Score: 134605
Male Score: 181059
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
The Cosmic Connection by Carl Sagan:
Words: 70414
Female Score: 68119
Male Score: 107421
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden:
Words: 192283
Female Score: 279180
Male Score: 256562
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown:
Words: 154607
Female Score: 132345
Male Score: 195217
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
The score:
3 correct, 2 incorrect.
Quote from: Tad on December 22, 2010, 12:07:45 PM
seems like for me.. whiney blah blah blah I feel like crap posts are more feminine.. and talking to females = fem.
I tried several ... maybe 8-12 for fun so ... lost count and just got fed up keeping track of scores...
I have to agree.. I did notice that my post/writing where I have tried to give an honest opinion (related to an object or something abstract) or a post related to a topic on something eg: post on self defense ... it came up as male... ??? :P
Whereas when I entered my more emotional post/writing where I am well .. more emotionally involved in the discussion and especially if it in involves people or myself rather than something neutral, abstract or object it comes off as female ...
Words: 121
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)
Female Score: 199
Male Score: 217
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
That came from two poems I wrote.
I entered some homework assignments.
Words: 827
Female Score: 716
Male Score: 1330
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Words: 418
Female Score: 422
Male Score: 751
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Words: 137
Female Score: 187
Male Score: 230
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Words: 242
Female Score: 244
Male Score: 386
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Words: 262
Female Score: 599
Male Score: 298
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Oh, I studied literature and I did not plunge into this subject but we had a lecture about it. As far as I remember, it has been tried a lot to figure out which writing style is male and which is female, and how to recognize it. There seem to be some tendencies, but you cannot pin it down. And especially when it comes to professional writers, it gets very unreliable.
My handwriting style I cant even read!
Ran a couple of things through:
Female Score: 266
Male Score: 902
Female Score: 849
Male Score: 1683
Female Score: 511
Male Score: 1223
Female Score: 565
Male Score: 1047
At least I'm consistent. :laugh:
Now I'm curious who decided "a" is masculine....
However, my handwriting is frustratingly girly. It's really loopy, slanted cursive.
Well I decided to give this a shot. Put up an rp post I wrote.
Words: 1088
Female Score: 1260
Male Score: 1425
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
So. . . I guess I should be satisfied?
I posted a short story I wrote a little over a year ago. It's about zombies. :D :D
Anyway, I got this as a result.
Words: 4314
Female Score: 4745
Male Score: 6315
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Nonfiction:
Words: 799
Female Score: 865
Male Score: 1081
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Fiction:
Female Score: 493
Male Score: 590
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Quote from: Alex201 on December 22, 2010, 10:57:22 PM
My handwriting style I cant even read!
I hear that. I was illiterate until I bought my first typewriter. :laugh:
My thoughts on this are don't read to much into it. It's interesting but not conclusive. Also due to the way it works, you need to be putting in large chunks of text for it to analyise.
I did it for a lot of stuff I did recently, as well as a few years ago, and it said male for all of them. Correctamundo in my case, then again I've always been very direct in my writing thanks to a professor helping me with my essay writing skills, and my straightforward story telling.
Eh, I wouldn't get overly disappointed if it had said "female", though, because this is a bit interesting, but not a divisive "you must not be female if you scored male on this test" kind of thing.
To point out handwriting- mine's small, angular, and always perfect. Then again, I'm known for being a bit of a perfectionist.
What a load of nonsense. And they wonder why feminists frequently charge that our education system is riddled with male privilege...
It seems fairly obvious from the selection of words they describe as male v. female seem on the male side to heavily weighted toward words which indicate specifics and concretes (a, the, at, said, is, these, to), whereas the female side is weighed toward conditionals, feminine personals, and relationals (she, her, hers, with, should, if, and, we). I find it funny that they consider "me", "myself", "when", and "where" to be feminine, while considering "as", "what", "more", and "it" to be masculine.
In fact, the single largest hit on almost all of my writings seems to be the word "the". I simply don't see how this could have any basis in scientific fact, when the majority of the most basic words used in the English language all fall under the masculine side. I have a hypothesis that these two researchers (both men, by the way) have a large misogynistic bias in their assumptions.
Oddly enough, the only sample of my writing that turned up female in their test is a section of a work of fiction I'm writing that incidentally consists largely of a dialog between two men.
And just for ->-bleeped-<-s and giggles, Bev Jo's article for The Magazine Project, "Transwomen" Are Merely Castrated Men, turns up overwhelmingly "male", as does the excerpt of Germaine Greer's book, The Whole Woman reproduced on Lynn Conway's website at http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Rogue%20Theories/Greer/Exorcism%20of%20the%20mother.html (http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Rogue%20Theories/Greer/Exorcism%20of%20the%20mother.html)
I think we can assume that Bev Jo and Germaine Greer are both cis women, can't we?
From some short stories and crap I have written-
Words: 151
Female Score: 145
Male Score: 279
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
Words: 107
Female Score: 64
Male Score: 135
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
I think it is just a silly thing, who knows how acurate it is. The only basis for it being plausible in any way is the fact that some of the male words are descirbing words, which males are usualy more visual. Also a lot of the words that were used for the ladies were words used when talking about events, which seems logical because women tend to talk about people and details of things they do.
Words: 371
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)
Female Score: 192
Male Score: 538
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
it's almost scary how good this thing is, huh? :P
i agree with Mr.Rainy though. looking back at the words, that makes sense.
Words: 1811
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)
Female Score: 2414
Male Score: 1688
I was somewhat surprised to learn the Genie identified my writing as Female, as I had always thought of my writing as the one masculine trait I possessed.
I'm not sure how valid this is but it is entertaining.
I'm doing a continuing story on my blog of a girl on a romantic night. It's in the first person,
and I'm deliberately making it as "girly" as I possibly can. I'm a pretty good writer - I've written a
couple plays now. So this is stacking deck about as much as you can, and I came up female
2 out of 3 times, and the one I missed on, I missed by a lot:
#1 - A Cabin North of Duluth: F:528 M: 426 - Female
#2 - Bailey's on Ice: F:505 M:1300 - Male (Ouch!)
#3-A Little Thing, Like a Kiss: F:754 M:501 - Female
I'm not worrying about it, because the third one is very girly, but
the second one is not manly, it's just not as feminine.
When I write with the objective of appearing girly,
I think I will incorporate some of these hints on word choice.
Otherwise, eh.
PS, this entry F162 M270 -Male
Oh yeah! who's the man!
well, I submitted fiction I have written long ago and here is the score:
Female Score: 271
Male Score: 79
168 words
Feels good, but the significance of such test is disputable ???
I just submitted another and here it is:
Words: 217
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)
Female Score: 228
Male Score: 189
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Well, my conclusion is this; if I will go full time I will stop talking and every time I will need to speak to a stranger I will write a lengthy note, then for sure they will see me as I truly am, female!
I took a whole bunch of my posts from various forums and mashed them together under the 'blog' category.
Words: 646
Female Score: 1323
Male Score: 881
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female!
Gender Genie thinks I am female?! All my worries have been lifted and I feel completely at ease with myself........NOT! These things are hardly accurate. But c'mon peoples, deep down you were hoping it would be what you wanted it to! I know I did! ;D
Oh wow, I can see myself wasting entirely too much time posting excerpts from my stuff into that thing haha...
I scored male on just about everything except, ironically, the goriest thing I've written thus far. That's...funny to me for some reason.
I find male/ female writing styles very interesting ie words that men and women seem to use differently in conversation etc. However I find this thing a little bogus. Especially considering words like the "and" "at" "and" "who" are considered masculine and words like "when" "should" "and" and "was" are considered feminine. I think according to this system it would be very easy to write something that sounds very much like it was written by a girl and come up male or vice versa. However at the same time there are a lot of differences between how men and women form sentences. For me I do notice certain words and speach patterns that men and women seem to display differently. For instance I find that men are usually more get to the point and tend to write about the specifics of the topic for instance in a journal they will write what happened that and what they did whereas a more feminine way to write is to explain the feelings and emotions of your day, and who you did it with, what you felt, and the connections between the activities. When I write I usually write more feminine and use more feminine speach patterns etc. However when I analyzed some of my journal entries and forum postings in the gender genie I got a good mix of masculine and feminine traits which I will not complain about. However I did notice a certain pattern in that whenever I talked about my experiences with other people or what I did Christmas day it would come back feminine whereas if I was bantering on about something that drove me nuts, or something more technical like the wording on my homepage. It came back male. I don't know what to think about this, but it is interesting. I remember seeing an info-graphic before of the 50 most common words used by men and women, and it did seem to make sense.
ahhh... my last forum posting came back.
Female Score: 384
Male Score: 704
oh well. no biggie, It just shows how variable this all is.