So there's this Gender Genie that takes text you've written and applies some algorithm to it and decides if you're male or female.
You can set it for fiction, nonfiction, or blog entry, and that makes it differ somewhat. I tried putting in all sorts of stuff I had in my MSWord folders and only once did it tell me I was a girl. (Female Score: 1103, Male Score: 1087 - only sixteen points difference, you notice.) More typically, I was more than three times as masculine in my writing as I was feminine. I don't take any pride in that* (who wants to be a sucky girl?) so I'm wondering if it'll work as badly for the rest of you.
Oh yeah. Something else that has been making me smile at odd moments. I found a food company allegedly formed by a married couple, one Jewish, the other Chinese (I think, I was scanning it). They named the company Soy Vey. Um, yeah, anyway. Sorry.
*although I have to say that at some points in my life that kind of mistake would make me quite happy. Also being mistaken for a kid who wasn't homeschooled... yi yi yi. Reject one stereotype and you become another, fool! I don't care what proof is in what pudding. Eat the pudding. You'll be happier.
Posted by tuggy at 02.16.04 21:26All my good stuff, the stuff that I wasn't just vomiting on the page, turned me up as very male. 2078 to 800 for the latest one. Which is funny, because I suspect that if anyone actually read the narrative I submitted, they'd know it was girl wrote it.
Posted by: tabitha at 02.16.04 23:17It almost always worked for me (the first person on Covblogs to link to the Gender Genie, thank you very much).
Posted by: Evan Donovan at 02.16.04 23:28Sorry, Evan, didn't see that. I stumbled across it in a completely unrelated way. But gracious finder's rights must belong to you, then. However you may best use them, feel free. =) I love being meaninglessly magnanimous.
Posted by: tuggy at 02.17.04 00:49That's cool *said in a Mitch Hedburg voice*. I was taking mock-offense, if it wasn't bleedingly obvious.
Posted by: Evan Donovan at 02.17.04 02:32And then I bow politely, and then you bow politely, and then I bow politely, and then you bow politely, and we bleed all over the place.
Posted by: tuggy at 02.17.04 11:14If you look at the stats, it turns out that the thing is about as accurate as a coin toss. 51% and change right vs. 48% and change wrong.
Posted by: ryan at 02.18.04 12:53Odd. It used to be 60-40 (just like a more famous stat here at Covenant).
Posted by: Evan Donovan at 02.18.04 16:41Yeah, the email I got first about it bragged a success rate of something like 85%. I doubt it. But my uncle put in some nonfiction, turned out male, and then put in a part of a story he'd written as a woman narrator/protagonist, and it turned out decidedly female. So maybe there are reasons for the outcomes based on types, however inaccurate it might be in most real cases.
Posted by: tuggy at 02.18.04 18:45Wonderful to be reading people's blogs again! I just tried it and got a male reading. Has anyone yet gotten a female result, besides the uncle who writes fiction?
AND, has anyone tried inserting Bible passages in it? If it were accurate (which is certainly isn't), would it reflect the author's or translator's gender?
AND if a person has trouble accepting that any of Scripture might be written by a woman, ought that person also to have trouble with women translators? It's just that I've never heard of women translating the Bible.
AND good night.
Posted by: Bob at 02.19.04 00:13I always get a female reading when I try to read blogs. (ducking...)
Posted by: tuggy at 02.19.04 22:39