Libertarian Man of Mystery: Gender Genie and blogs

February 22, 2005

Gender Genie and blogs

Eager to learn whether Gender Genie might have helped uncover the blogosphere's latest marketing scheme, I ran a few randomly selected 'graphs from the old Libertarian Girl blog through Gender Genie. Two out of three came up as "male."

Actually, I don't think that TigerHawk used it correctly, because I wrote my "Libertarian Girl" posts aware of the Gender Genie's existence, and I purposely made sure that the posts used the gender-correct keywords.

The Gender Genie has three settings: fiction, nonfiction, and blog entry. The proper setting to use is, strangely enough, non-fiction. The blog setting was cleary based on a statistical analysis of non-political blogs. Imagine a teenage girl writing about her boyfriend; the type of words found in that post would show up heavily female. It's impossible for a serious blogger to ever show up female using that setting.

By using the words "if", "with" and "not" as often as I could, I made sure the majority of posts scored female on the nonfiction setting.

Most female political blogs are male authored according to the Gender Genie. I tested Michelle Malkin once, very male. Writing about politics obviously requires the use of male keywords.

Cassandra put her own posts through the Gender Genie and determined that she was male too. Julie B also reports that she is male.

Of course it's possible that there are actual zero female political bloggers, they are all men pretending to be women, and I was the one caught because only I was dumb enough to use a photo of a Russian bride.

UPDATE

Karen also reports being a male according to the Gender Genie.

February 22, 2005 at 03:17 PM | Permalink

Comments

I assure you, I'm 100% female... at least last time I checked (only 15 seconds ago - this Genie thing has me feeling a tad bit insecure... :)

Posted by: Cassandra | February 22, 2005 at 03:22 PM

I ran some of my non-political blog entries through... I come up mostly "male", as well (even under non-fiction. Even when the text was all about my boyfriend and commitment and feelings).

So, um... (No, I'm not male.)

Posted by: Karen | February 22, 2005 at 04:10 PM

I thought the whole thing funny. Let me know if you open another one under your 'real' name (as if the one above is mine) and I will be just as happy to link to it. Quality, not quantity.

Posted by: Wildhair | February 22, 2005 at 08:47 PM

Karen, I did that too, with the same results though not so heavily imbalanced. I continue to find it amusing that the only piece that had me registering as 'female' was the one on Richard Clarke (who annoys me). Was that because I was being b*tchy?

My funnier pieces tended to come out female but they were all shorter than 500 words so I discounted them. But this raises an interesting point: could the National Review be wrong - could women possibly be capable of some primitive form of humor? :)

Posted by: Cassandra | February 23, 2005 at 05:48 AM

Amazing. I come out as very clearly male. I never thought my use of "some" and "the" would give me away!

Even this comment, including these very words, come out male. Creepy.

Posted by: Max Goss | February 23, 2005 at 03:04 PM

I'm also certifiably female, yet back in September the all-knowing Gender Genie decided I had twice as much testosterone as estrogen.

Posted by: Kris | February 23, 2005 at 05:13 PM

My super-girly, pink-wearing wife just put in some of her blog material. She came out strongly male. This delighted her, since she can't stand the way women write.

Posted by: Max Goss | February 24, 2005 at 06:12 PM