[extropy-chat] The Gender Genie - analyzing writing styles

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Amara Graps <amara at amara.com> wrote:
> I ran across this online program that tries to
> analyze the gender
> of the writer of a writing selection. I am writing
> quite a lot these
> days, and I was curious about what the "gender
> genie" would
> calculate for my gender.
> 
> http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html
> 
> "According to Koppel and Argamon, the algorithm
> should predict the
> gender of the author approximately 80% of the time."
> 
> However, in my case, it was wrong, 100% of the time.

Same here.  Perhaps it can distinguish
"classic-masculine" from "classic-feminine", but it's
probable that most people on this list are neither.
As per the recent posts on Scale 5, perhaps there are
actually three mental "genders" in modern society:
masculine, feminine, and educated (which incorporates
some traits from the classic pair - like sensitivity
to others from feminine and assertiveness from
masculine - but also has traits all its own).

I'm not sure if "educated" is quite the most accurate
word for it, but from the reports, it does seem to be
what highly-educated men and women tend towards.

...I wonder.  If I am correct about that, then might
some of the social problems we're seeing be caused by
a fundamental perception of "there are men" and "there
are women", with the modification "some men act like
women and some women act like men", with no allowance
for this third "gender" since it falls outside of that
model?  (And if there is a third, might there be a
fourth?  Or would that be dividing things up too far
to be useful?)

The source of the model is obvious - and body
modification is not (yet) widespread enough that there
are many who do away with the bothersome reproductive
organs.  (What if I don't want to have kids, but
rather to impress other peoples' kids so they'll
follow in my footsteps more firmly than offspring
related only by genetics?)