Gender Guesser

Drama Queen · Mar 7, 2008

While scanning jezebel.com this evening, I found a recent post describing a java applet that guesses the gender of any swatch of writing you care to plug into the website box.

In 2003, a team of researchers from the Illinois Institute of Technology and Bar-Ilan University in Israel (Shlomo Argamon, Moshe Koppel, Jonathan Fine, and Anat Rachel Shimoni) developed a method to estimate gender from word usage. Their paper described a Bayesian network where weighted word frequencies and parts of speech could be used to estimate the gender of an author. Their approach made a distinction between fiction and non-fiction writing styles. A simplified version of this work was implemented as the Gender Genie. They showed that fewer words were needed and that writing styles varied based on the forum. For example, fiction and non-fiction differs from blogs (informal writing). Even though the genres differ, there are still gender-specific word frequencies.

The jezebel.com author analyzed passages from a range of authors both male and female, but found that every one was classified as male.

Do you think writing exhibits gender qualities?

Gender Guesser
http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.html#Analyze

Jezebel
http://jezebel.com/365400/doesnt-anyone-write-like-a-fucking-chick-anymore

Enjoy testing your work; I know you will.

Shweta · Mar 7, 2008

Drama Queen!

You might not get much response on this because the gender genie has come up at least three times in Novels in the recent past. I'm gonna see where your post would be best merged in, and we'll go from there

Meanwhile, here are the other places:

Gender Genie?
Are men better writers than women?
Writing from the POV of the opposite sex.

Riley · Mar 7, 2008

I get "weak female" every time. Heh. . . right.

I think that in some cases writing exhibits gender qualities, but I think it would depend on the skill level. Someone very skilled is probably going to be more ambiguous to the analyzer while someone not very skilled will lean more strongly toward one gender or the other.

I think that's because, until we learn how to write well, we tend to. . . be ourselves too much.

Drama Queen · Mar 7, 2008

Shweta, thanks for the welcome. Since the jezebel post and comments I linked to are very recent (today) perhaps wait a bit to let folks see it here before sinking it into the thread graveyard?

Riley: Funny, more than once I've had forum and blog readers absolutely convinced that I was male. I am quite female, thank you very much.

Scrawler · Mar 7, 2008

How funny! When I tested an apology letter I wrote to a friend, it said weak female. When I tested a letter of complaint I wrote to a business, it came back weak male.

nicolen · Mar 7, 2008

I've put in two separate sections from my WIP, both about 1500 words.

The first piece which was written last night came back as being weak female; the second piece which was written last weekend came back as male.

Interesting - and slightly strange.

Shweta · Mar 7, 2008

It'll only sink if people don't respond

I was just being a little over-anxious that you might not get reponses and end up thinking we were all a bunch of meanies.

V.W. Singer · Mar 8, 2008

Drama Queen said:
Do you think writing exhibits gender qualities?

Yes I do. I am rarely able to read a fiction novel written by a woman. (Techinical and news are different.) Even when I have no idea (at the time of reading) of the gender of the author, I will come to a dead halt in certain books and most of the time it will be because the author was a woman. This is the case even when the novel is an action thriller or sci fi space opera (and excludes books that are just poorly written). Somehow the approach to the characters and the tone of the stories written by women just do not work for me. This is not a comment on which sex writes better books, just that they do come out different.

JoNightshade · Mar 8, 2008

I put it one section of my WIP and got "weak female." Weak?! What does that mean?

Anyway, I expected that to register female since it was talking about two people unwrapping Christmas presents and refers back to Christmas shopping. Then I entered a section where my male MC comments on his own body (muscles nicely toned...) and got male. As expected. I think this is more about subject matter than exact words. Yes, there are things women tend to talk more about, and there are things men tend to talk more about. Depending on your narrative, you're going to lean one way or the other. This WIP is essentially a love story, but I suspect if I entered anything from my other novel (about assassins) it would come out as MALE MALE MALE.

PS V.W. Singer, you make me want to cry.

aonarach · Mar 8, 2008

V.W. Singer said:
Yes I do. I am rarely able to read a fiction novel written by a woman. (Techinical and news are different.) Even when I have no idea (at the time of reading) of the gender of the author, I will come to a dead halt in certain books and most of the time it will be because the author was a woman. This is the case even when the novel is an action thriller or sci fi space opera (and excludes books that are just poorly written). Somehow the approach to the characters and the tone of the stories written by women just do not work for me. This is not a comment on which sex writes better books, just that they do come out different.

this is why i use my initials instead of my full name. i think a lot of people hold a similar bias, assuming a woman author's voice will overpower any story, regardless of the gender of the MC's. that being said, i don't know how much stock i put into the "gender genie", but the sections of my WIP i tested came back "male". since i am most definitely NOT male, and the MC's are, i'm happy to know i could at least fool a computer program, even if i couldn't fool V.W. Singer

V.W. Singer · Mar 8, 2008

aonarach said:
this is why i use my initials instead of my full name. i think a lot of people hold a similar bias, assuming a woman author's voice will overpower any story, regardless of the gender of the MC's. that being said, i don't know how much stock i put into the "gender genie", but the sections of my WIP i tested came back "male". since i am most definitely NOT male, and the MC's are, i'm happy to know i could at least fool a computer program, even if i couldn't fool V.W. Singer

The Gender Guesser looks at the choice of words and usage to guess gender. I do not believe that men and women use words differently. What they choose to say with those words does differ.

As for pen names, I remember when I was a lot younger I had no idea whether Andre Norton was male of female (this was before the internet). She is one of the few female writers that I have read and liked.

Perhaps I just have rather odd tastes in fictional characters. My favorite hero is still Matt Helm by Donald Hamilton. By modern standards the guy is a sociopathic murderer. I have never found an equivalent novel or series by a female author. Another favorite is the bodyguard of Colonel Hammer in David Drake's "Hammers Slammers" series. He is a totally ruthless homosexual albino sociopathic killer. Also Dracula as told by Fred Saberhagen, in which old Drac is the hero as well as being a sociopathic killer. Hmmm. Is there a trend there somewhere?

The_Grand_Duchess · Mar 8, 2008

I put in a section of my WIP and got female. Def female. I don't know what that means. Good or bad?

Matera the Mad · Mar 8, 2008

Waooo! I'm male! :roll:

Well...I'm in my MC's head, or he's in mine, so I guess something is working right.

PastMidnight · Mar 8, 2008

Interesting! Passages from my male MC's POV come back as 'male' or 'weak male' and passages from my female's POV come back as 'female'. I tried a variety of passages (conversations, emotional reflection, love, hate) for both genders, and they both came back with consistent results.

At any rate, it's a fun way to procrastinate!

Sonneillon · Mar 8, 2008

I got male. Since everyone on this board who doesn't know otherwise seems to assume I'm male, that doesn't actually surprise me. I do, however, find it funny because I copy-pasted from a short romance fanfic I wrote a while back, figuring that if ANYTHING got me a female verdict, it would be romance.

Autodidact · Mar 8, 2008

query letter got female, article got male. Seems pretty inaccurate to me. Even the site only gives it 60-70%, which is not a high correlation IMO.

Sage · Mar 8, 2008

Cool. My male POV got weak male, and my female POV got weak female

Hapax Legomenon · Mar 8, 2008

I'm quite confused.

I pasted in the first 2,000 words of my current WIP. It's told in first person from my MC's POV, who's a guy with a strange halfway-formal wishywashy way of explaining things. I got weak female for informal and weak male for formal.

Does that mean it's ambiguous, or does that mean I'm just weak?

I also found a very important disclaimer:

Lyrics, lists, poems, and prose are special writing styles. This tool is unlikely to classify these texts correctly.

...Yeah.

lute · Mar 8, 2008

Hi Haphazard. Small world, neh? (lol, uh. Intention. NaNoWriMo)

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't take the Gender Guesser seriously. I just find it entertaining that everything I've written is classified as male (or weak male, perhaps European). Kills me. We should let this thread die in peace

Sage · Mar 8, 2008

It's for fun, folks

Hapax Legomenon · Mar 8, 2008

lute said:
Hi Haphazard. Small world, neh? (lol, uh. Intention. NaNoWriMo)

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't take the Gender Guesser seriously. I just find it entertaining that everything I've written is classified as male (or weak male, perhaps European). Kills me. We should let this thread die in peace

Oh wow. Hi!

Yep, small world.

I dunno, gender guessers are wacky for me. Especially because most of my characters, at least now, have a somewhat idiosyncratic way of speaking, so it's hard to say whether they talk like a girl or talk like a boy. They just talk like themselves.

lute · Mar 8, 2008

Most of my characters are male but speak more femininely, if you know what I mean. The thing is, most of my stories aren't dialogue, but even then, my diction is usually more masculine, which I am already aware of and am content with.

Whoa, did that make any sense. If you'll excuse me, I'll stumble off to bed.

Gender Guesser

Drama Queen

Shweta

gone

Riley

They won't let me be good

Drama Queen

Scrawler

Bored fanatic

nicolen

Shweta

gone

V.W. Singer

JoNightshade

has finally arrived

aonarach

Not all who wander are lost

V.W. Singer

The_Grand_Duchess

I record everything.

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint

PastMidnight

Oponionated

Sonneillon

Autophobic Misanthrope

Autodidact

...in my Maidenform Bra.

Sage

Our Lady of Parentheticals

Hapax Legomenon

lute

Sage

Our Lady of Parentheticals

Hapax Legomenon

lute