I went back and forth about whether this Gender Genie really works. Supposedly,
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.
I finally decided it’s bunk.
I tested several of my own posts and despite my feeling of gender-ambiguity both inside and out I did expect that writing, of any aspect of my personality, might indeed be rather feminine. I was wrong. Almost all my posts identified me as male. But I am genderqueer so I might not make such a good test subject.
So I tested the blog entries of many of my coworkers. Not only are they all male but they’re sports dudes. Blogging sports dudes. They write a lot and they write about manly things. And their posts did often come up male. But half the time they came up female too.
Perhaps the days of masculine Hemingway-esque tomes are over but perhaps this isn’t such a scientifically valid theory after all…despite its credentials. Either way it’s kinda fun to sex a blog full of previously gender neutral rants.
