angelweave

November 11, 2003

Ah, the Gender Genie


Everyone's run some prose through the Gender Genie by now, no?

I've probably put 15 pieces through it of varying lengths and only ONCE has it ever categorized me as female. Bad Gender Genie.

Virginia Postrel has the best quote ever about this quirky little piece of code. I thought I'd share.
    And I'm a heterosexual woman with raging hormones and an evolutionary-psychology-approved waist-hip ratio of 0.70. I'm not masculine; I just like definite articles. I'm not saying gender is socially constructed, but I wouldn't recommend that anyone look for dates based on Gender Genie scores. It's not just me and not just opinion journalists, D Magazine's restaurant critic, Nancy Nichols, reports scoring 100% male, while executive editor Tim Rogers says, "Turns out, I'm a chick."
Whap! She smacks down out the waist-hip ratio. She throws the definite article curveball! My hero.

hln

Posted by hln at November 11, 2003 08:41 AM | Whimsy | TrackBack
Comments

Great, now you've got me thinking about waist-hip ratios. I'm not gonna get *anything* accomplished today.

mmmm... .70

Posted by: Harvey at November 11, 2003 01:00 PM

Good one!

Gender Genie had some trouble identifying me, too. Interestingly, I think the one blog post it id'd as written by a female was one about hockey.

Posted by: nic at November 11, 2003 04:13 PM

I put a few paragraphs of Shakespeare in it once, and it guessed female.

Posted by: Sophorist at November 11, 2003 09:25 PM

serenity took one of those too. It turned out she was... a man?

Posted by: The Bartender at November 12, 2003 12:40 AM