The Gender Genie

[Lauren Hynde]

I'm off to check out that story, before I go to bed.

Lou

Ps Cheers Lorri

As of today, you can also check it out on my website.

 

[pop_54]

Re: hay you

hay perdita love, don't take any notice of old pops, i'll be your slut anytime honey

hay pops you old git, where you been lately hiding from lorri hay, can't have that i can see i'm going to have to take you in hand

hay tatelou honey i'll look out for your story, i hope it aint too tame, i need a nice hot something to wind me up

Oi you, less of the old

Something hot to wind you up, Christ woman you need a freekin cold shower to cool you down

 

[LorriLove]

Re: Re: hay you

Oi you, less of the old

Something hot to wind you up, Christ woman you need a freekin cold shower to cool you down

up your's git, see i dropped the old, giggle

 

[pop_54]

Night love

I'm off to check out that story, before I go to bed.

Lou

Ps Cheers Lorri

Night Lou, sweet dreams

 

[LorriLove]

giggle

anyway, i'm off to play elsewhere, see yu all later

 

[pop_54]

Re: giggle

anyway, i'm off to play elsewhere, see yu all later

Night Lorri, don't be late home, don't want your hubby round here looking for you again

 

[Madame Manga]

My results

I tried a slash story. Female. I tried another slash story. Female again. I tried a nonfiction column that describes an experience of mine. Female. I tried a long excerpt from a guns-and-car-chases story. Female.

Then I tried a shorter excerpt from the same story, putting in nothing but a running gun battle with a lot of equipment and choreography. Male. But I admit I stacked the deck with that one. ;-)

MM

 

[Netzach]

My academic paper on Hopi art is female, but my ad copy and an application letter are male.

 

[Gabriel_Lee]

Interestingly, after trying some of my ordinary stuff and being categorised consistently as female, I tried a couple of bits of flash fiction I had done. These were evaluated as male, at last. But I would never have described those as typical of me, or my style, being constrained by the word limit.

But it looks like I chose to omit the female type detail. I wonder if it would have been possible to do otherwise and still retain the story?

GL

 

[Pure]

I got mixed results on some of my and other's stories. Also variation in point of view, male or female.

Interesting, the American Demon story much attacked by females as male brutality came out [in excerpt] 'female.'

The algorithm looks at 'personalization' I think.

J.

 

[Quasimodem]

Looks like ”The Gender Genie” is not destined to become that amazing piece of software to divine which authors are really male, and which authors are really female.

Last Chance on this Post

Score: -4
Words: 28

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: Female!

Back in your Bottle Genie!

 

[Guest]

+or-

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Shut up, woman.

 

[Guest]

amusements

 

[Lauren Hynde]

I'm wondering if any of us can produce an enjoyable, coherent story of say 750 words without using the, a, some, it, with, 's, for, not, *n't, numbers or possessive pronouns...

Do I need to take off my gloves and slap anyone?

 

[Guest]

 

[Pure]

A small note,

I presonally find the exercize and use of 'gender genie' useful, in that it focusses on things we writers don't look at that much.

This is relevant in trying to capture 'female voice' as ordinarily conceived by the unreconstructed masses.

The issue of 'fooling' the genie is a rather trivial amusement.

If I may use an analogy to genie. There are typical male and female ways of walking. Those who cross gender have written of it. Suppose some researcher listed the top ten markers, like sway of hips, distance between steps, distance between legs etc.

Well, it would be hard to apply this to oneself, since one would be too self conscious. And any joker could take the markers, walk across the room in the other gender's manner and say, "I fooled that silly researcher; what bosh.' Some other sage opines, "It's all just how the genders are conditioned; the markers are not biologically based."

Just some thoughts, don't mean to interrupt the fun.

J.

PS For Lauren. A book was once written avoiding the letter "a"-- everywhere**. It's quite a challenge in itself.
Further, besides your suggestion to elimate markers of both genders, a useful exercise would be to consciously eliminate or reduce most markers of one gender, while amping up those of the other.

{Added: As Lauren says, the letter involved was 'e'.}

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Well, it would be hard to apply this to oneself, since one would be too self conscious. And any joker could take the markers, walk across the room in the other gender's manner and say, "I fooled that silly researcher; what bosh.' Some other sage opines, "It's all just how the genders are conditioned; the markers are not biologically based."

Which means it's a bullshit method of discerning between genders.

Actually, that's a very bad analogy (and you used it before), because the way people walk is directly connected with anatomy and physiology and there are differences between men and women in those aspects.

A better analogy would be to try to determine someone's gender based on the length of his/her hair. There is a trend, but as gender markers go, it's not much better than an educated guess. If you want to publish a paper about it, be my guest, but don't expect it to be taken seriously.

PS For Lauren. A book was once written avoiding the letter "a"-- everywhere. It's quite a challenge in itself.
Further, besides your suggestion to elimate markers of both genders, a useful exercise would be to consciously eliminate or reduce most markers of one gender, while amping up those of the other.

Lipograms are not uncommon. I can remember George Perec's La Disparation, a whole novel written in French without once using the letter E. Gilbert Adair's English translation, A void, also eschews the letter E. (Perec also wrote a 500-word palindrome, which I think is just showing off)

I found this is one of my notebooks, can't tell you who wrote it, though. I'll post the author's name if I come across it:


Iris

In his digs, I kiss his lips. Lifting his shirt, impish, I sink.
First, I pinch his midriff. Blinking in his hindsight, I kiss
his thighs, lick his dick till it's stiff. I grip his fist, sliding it
till his mid-digit's clit-twiddling. I find his timing middling.
If I'm this mild Irish virgin's first?

Still frigging him, instinct insists I slip him right in.
His prick's big, thick, firm. It's sliding. It's riding. It's jiving.
It's writhing. It's hiring. It's firing. It's siring.
Bliss! I think this is it. His first innings! His brink!


Canadian author Christian Bok has written an entire book using only one vowel for each chapter. Coherent and clever. You can find chapter E here.


The exercise you propose could be interesting too (although I fail to see how it can be useful), but only if you stop calling them gender markers. It's pissing me off.

 

[Wrong Element]

Hmmm. I ran something I've published through the Genie and it said I was a woman, which came as something of a surprise.

I tried it again with one of my longer posts, and I'm still a woman. I don't know if the Genie is "learning" from its mistakes as it goes, but it appears not since it's getting even farther away from being %50 correct--as good as a scientific wild-ass guess, in other words.

Anything gender-related attracts attention, especially if it seems to reinforce stereotypes, but this looks pretty bogus.

 

[The_Fool]

I'm wondering if any of us can produce an enjoyable, coherent story of say 750 words without using the, a, some, it, with, 's, for, not, *n't, numbers or possessive pronouns...

Do I need to take off my gloves and slap anyone?

Hmmm....I'm tempted to take that almost slap. Although there is a certain amount of hubris associated with the enjoyable, coherent part.

I used to write operations and maintenance manuals. It's amazing how terse we could get. Some of us to the point of uselessness. But it was a fellow tech writer that taught his daughter the correct first step to assembling anything. You take the instruction book and through it over your shoulder...

 

[The_Fool]

The prose I tried was female but the poetry was male.

I'm sure Math Girl could quote chapter and verse, but 50% accuracy says nothing better than pure chance. Use a coin, just as accurate.

 

[Pure]

She would also say, I think, that 50% or any percent calculated on 'volunteers' who select their stuff for various reasons, is meaningless; is not a test of anything. It might further be relevant that most are NOT professional writers.

The 80% of Koppel was achieved on a rather large, reasonably well (properly) selected database of mainly published pros.

J.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Which only further demonstrates the complete idiocy of trying to pass the algorith Koppel created for a way of discerning the gender of an author.

 

[Pure]

On "Idiocy":

My goodness Lauren, such an ax to grind.

Did Koppel seduce and abandon your sister or something? It's an algorithm based on statistics about many syntactic features of nonfiction and fiction, and common 'male' and 'female' writing characteristics, which worked on the database of published material.

It's not a handbook for enslaving women, and using it won't make you bear an unwanted child.

As to my analogy of walking and yours of hair length. Indeed i was aware of a biological base for the 'male walk', but it's also one that can be learned, 'unlearned' or shammed, etc.. The hair length analogy begs the question of gender diffs.

It's entirely possible that women's empathy and abilitiy to listen and keep relationship with conversants (sociality) has some biological substratum. That, together with culture, which doesn't always oppose biology, but sometimes reinforces it, may be possibly linked with this fact I would can "personalization" of writing-- the characteristic common in many women's writing, according to Koppels study.

If you want to get into a tizzy, read Phillipe Rushton, or some real bogeyman.

 

[Purple Haze]

I guess I write like a girl.

Must be all the contractions.

That's okay with me, my favorite authors are female...I think...