Fresh & New(er)

discussion of issues around digital media and museums by Seb Chan

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Simple gender determination from linguistic analysis

December 29th, 2006 by Seb Chan

The Gender Genie is a little text analyser that suggest the gender of the writer based on the frequency and occurrence of particular words. (via Gizmodo)

Tags: 3 Comments

  • http://aliasfrequencies.org/son Shannon

    Simplistic binary gender distinctions are problematic, to put it mildly…

    Based on a blog post I fed it, the ‘Gender Genie’ thinks I’m female! I’ve always known that I’m touch with my ‘feminine side’, but I’m not about to identify as female just yet… ;)

  • Seb Chan

    Unsurprisingly the collection records I fed it were overwhelmingly male.

    I’m not sure that this necessarily reinforces binary gender distinctions, but perhaps it could be argued that it instead reveals the linguistic construction of gender,

  • http://aliasfrequencies.org/son Shannon

    I reckon it does both – I guess it depends how people use it.