The Gender Genie has been undergoing something of a revival recently as it is discovered and linked to by those who didn't know about it before last summer's extended break. If you're a new reader here, between May and September 2006 I pretty much let BookBlog rot as I recovered from exhaustion. Teaching fourth grade was already a tiring occupation, and moving to my current home exasperated my situation due to a six-hour round trip commute. The Gender Genie's slapdash code broke down during all this, and I let it wallow until I built up enough strength to fix it.
Personal problems aside, it tickles me to find it mentioned on other sites since its popularity continues to amaze. Following are a few recent links of note, which I place here so I have something to muse on in my golden years.
BBC's Magazine Monitor: "At last! The answer to Paper Monitor's gender can be found at Gender Genie. Based on the last three entries, PM is male. Except on Monday, when we must assume someone filled in for him."Nerve's Scanner: "We find the Gender Genie interesting, mostly because it’s so BAD. We submitted two recent articles for analysis, including the story we recently wrote about Sarah Silverman (in which we actually write about being a woman), and it told us we were a maaan, baby."
BlogHer: "Most of my blog entries are well under 500 words, so I used a tutorial about Firefox for my second test. I pasted in about half of it, 786 words, and the Genie again declared me male. This time the score was female 732, male 1131. I suddenly feel hair growing on my chest. Testosterone rushes to enlarge my biceps."
John Scalzi's Whatever: "Just to be sure to it doesn't think I'm natively girly, however, I also fed it the first chapter of The Android's Dream, in which, as you know, someone farts someone else to death. The result: The algorithm believes the author of that passage is male."
The Scalzi post is the most notable. Being a popular science fiction author, he naturally has author friends who read and comment on his blog. If you scroll through the comments of the above linked post, you'll see Matt Ruff as an active participant in Scalzi's Gender Genie discussion. Ruff wrote Set This House in Order
I think there's another uber-discussion to be had, about how the toy's underlying algorithm actually works, and whether our responses to it are an example of the Eliza effect.Wouldn't it be funny if this business about keywords was just a dodge, and it was actually determining the maleness or femaleness of texts by flipping a digital coin?
To respond to Ruff's wondering, the Genie doesn't flip a coin. It really does score keywords based on Koppel and Argamon's text-sexing algorithm. I've never claimed that the program was accurate, but rather think of it as proof of how far society has progressed in equalizing the sexes. Despite the researchers' claim, you can't tell if a writer is a man or a woman, but it is an interesting study in what kind of writing is perceived as male (i.e. concrete) or female (i.e. connective).
This Scalzi/Ruff business also sets off my irony meter. Here's Ruff, author of a BookBlog selection, bringing up an "uber-discussion" about our toy. Yet, we didn't manage to discuss his book because no one read it besides Daisy, the moderator. I have always felt bad about this and, several months ago, put Set This House in Order at the top of a pile near my desk as a reminder to send Daisy a kindly-worded e-mail about reviving the discussion. I'd promise to read it this time.
