This is really no surprise to us Jatraqueros. In the Guess the Author game, gender was almost always the first thing that people figured out.
But now someone has developed a computer program that can determine an author's gender with 80 percent accuracy. However, it seems that some people dislike the idea that gender is something that can be determined by a computer.
quote:[Koppel] told the Boston Globe, "[The National Academy of Sciences] said, 'What do you mean? You're trying to make some claim about men and women being different, and we don't know if that's true. That's just the kind of thing that people are saying in order to oppress women.'"
Is it just me, or is this one of the most ridiculous statements ever made? OF COURSE men and women are different. Any idiot can tell you that. We have different brain structures, different anatomy, different hormones. Are we really so concerned with political correctness that it's hindering science? Part of science is making claims and then finding out if they hold true.
This whole thing reminds me of another quote I read once by a psychologist named Carol Tavris: "A bevy of recent books seems intent on portraying girls and women as unique. But aren't they really much like other people?" This question doesn't even really make sense. By "people," does she mean "men"? If so, the answer is both yes and no. Of course women are unique; there's no other gender like them. But they're human, just like men (even though Kayla will probably say that men aren't human), so I suppose they really are "much like other people."
Anyway, I'm not quite sure where this post is going now, so I'll wrap it up by saying, "Yay, Hatrack, for figuring out differences in men's and women's writing without using any sort of cool new software!"
[ August 18, 2003, 01:54 PM: Message edited by: Jon Boy ]
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Actually, I remember gender guesses to have often been wrong.
And I don't think differences in men's and women's writing are necessarily indicative of innate differences. They could just as easily be caused by the ways in which we socialize bos and girls.
The problem with sciences that are based extensively on statistics is that it's real easy to draw incorrect inferences about what results mean.
Correlation does not imply causality.
Sorry, but I just don't buy the conclusion we're apparently being lead to.
In any case, why is this relevant? What can we do with whatever knowledge we think we have found here?
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Come on Ic! can't you see the implications? If I hadn't already known you were a guy, i could've ran your post through the little program and with an 80% accuracy been able to tell you that you are, in fact, a man.
And since I had $50 bet riding on this, i'm now a happy man. People will gamble on anything...
quote: Women write about people and relationships... Men write about things.
um... okay, so since I'm writing about this thing, this computer, that figures out gender based on writing I'm a man right now.
and now, since I'm writing about how this could seriously harm my relationships with other people since I'm switching gender all the time depending on what I'm writing at the time and how I'm quite upset about it, I'm a woman.
Posts: 3420 | Registered: Jun 2002
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Yeah, those are definitely some gross overgeneralizations, Dragon.
It's worth noting that this study relied on nonfiction, and the Guess the Author samples were fiction, so that might make things more difficult. Yes, there were some inaccurate guesses about the author's gender, but it seemed like people were right the majority of the time.
quote:They could just as easily be caused by the ways in which we socialize boys and girls.
I wonder if they've tested this on other cultures to see if the patterns hold true.
quote:Sorry, but I just don't buy the conclusion we're apparently being lead to.
The conclusion that men and women have fundamental differences? Why don't you buy that? I think you're still upset that TheSpark.com's gender test said you were a chick.
And I don't know why this article is relevant. I just thought it was interesting, that's all.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I've always been able to tell men's writing from women's. Men have strong, boxy letters, while women dot their "i"s with hearts or little smilie faces.
Online, it gets a little tricker, but still, I have my ways.
Posts: 45 | Registered: Sep 2002
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eslaine (and anyone else who’s wondering), the Guess the Author Game is on hiatus. Posting was slowing down and I was afraid people were getting bored. I decided to take a few weeks off and hope for renewed interest.
Hmm . . . maybe I should be bumping the re-runs during the off-season to build anticipation?
.
Oh, and I didn’t keep track of how often the gender guesses were right, but I know I was when they were wrong. Especially when they came with elaborate reasoning.
quote:Women write about people and relationships... Men write about things.
That is too simplistic. It needs some elaboration. AVERAGE women write about people. SMART women write about relationships. AVERAGE men write about things. SMART men write about concepts.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I'd like to say what you say is too simplistic, but then that would defy the point of the thread. You can usually tell whether the author is male or female, but is it usually judge by what they write about, or how they write, and the details they put in?
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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As mentioned in Parachat last night, people tend to think I'm a woman. I really don't care much, but since it was brought up, yeah, I'm a straight guy. I guess that this would indicate that it's harder to tell than you might, at first, think.
A mature writer will be able to ascend above that, I think. What matters is what your reader is thinking after reading, not what sex they are. If your reader is influenced by your actual sex, then they came in with presuppositions anyway, based on your name. Posts: 2506 | Registered: Jul 2003
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