I’m always fascinated by the people who claim they can determine the gender of a person on an Internet message board, chatroom, or similar context where we only have access to that person’s expressed thoughts.
Does a person’s gender actually shape the way they think? It is possible to determine (or at least make a judgment that’s better than chance) a person’s gender from the way they post, argue, and write in Net communities?
I’d like to attempt a small experiment to satisfy my curiosity: Those of you who have read a few of my posts, please state what you think my gender is. (Trinopus is officially disqualified. He knows too much.)
Moderators, if you feel this is better suited for another forum, so be it.
Gender, sex, what’s the difference any more? The distinction is rapidly being erased… so why not embrace the change?
Hey, Trinopus, are you aware that your e-mail listing on these boards is outdated? I tried to thank you for correcting me about raindrops, but I couldn’t contact you.
I don’t claim that I could identify a person’s sex/gender/whathaveyou. Nor would I claim that most people’s genders are identifiable by just posting.
But I do think some people’s are. That doesn’t mean that there are inherent mental differences, but it could mean that some people fulfill cultural expectations of communicating styles more than others.
For the guessing part: I’ve always thought you were male. I have absolutely no idea why I think that.
I am quite certain that you are male. You are right in asking though because I have no idea why I ‘know’ that. I would guess that there are differences in syntax and expression that allow us to make judgement calls. What those differences may be I have no idea.
I wonder what gender people assign to me based on my posts?
This makes me wonder if my “default” position is that a poster is male until they say otherwise. If so, I wonder if that’s a holdover from my days on usenet when males outnumbered females by a large number, or if it’s a sign of some sort of bias?
By default, I assume all posters here are male unless they use an obviously female tag. This is probably not very smart on my part, and I’ve been surprised in the past that some seemingly female tags belong to males. Smart or not, that’s the way my brain operates.
You often reply in very short, cryptic form. In my experience, that is more often a trait one finds in males than in females.
Of course, the fact that you are asking leads me to question the above assumption. Assuming there are more men than women posting here, the likely assumption is that you are male. Why then would you ask? Of course that might be a tactic in and of itself to throw people off.
Well, after throwing out the bait, you better let us all know after some reasonable amount of time. Next week sometime at the latest?
BTW, I must add that I’ve only debated with you very infrequently. But I’ve often gotten quite a laugh out of your more cryptic posts. I have almost no idea whether or not we share the same overall philosophy but I somehow supspect we would end up agreeing more often than not. Maybe that’s another reason I assume you’re male.
While the first is probably true to some extent, I don’t think the latter follows. The same is true for age, as well. However, that might be a biased view due to my own efforts on the first message board I frequented to convince people (using this cutesy screenname no less) that I was a. female, and then after convincing them that I do indeed possess to x chromosomes b. 19, not someone in their 40s. It stuck me as slightly insulting that their rationalizations were that they didn’t think a 19-year-old girl would be capable of writing in the manner I did, so good for me. I knew they meant well and were trying to be positive, so I didn’t make an issue of it.
You could be a woman, you could be a man…I’m not sure. I don’t have a default gender in mind for posters, though I know many people do. I don’t tend to think about a poster’s gender at all until they show up in a “period gripe” or “urinal etiquette” type of thread that leads to knowing without a doubt which gender the posters within are.
Oh please. Stop trying to impress the SDMB ladies with this “I’m so sensitive and mysterious” pose . You couldn’t be more of a male SDMB geek if they zapped you with an atomic powered geekifying machine set to “geekify-SDMB-male”.
Oh, I must disagree, John Mace - I am a female, and my posts are generally short and cryptic. As opposed to, say, Zenster’s posts, and he’s a man. (Love ya, Zen.) I’ll agree with your first point, however - given my user ID, I don’t think my gender has ever been in question. I’m tempted to post to the board with a “masculine” ID to see how long I can keep everyone fooled.
ISTR that TVAA is female. However, I have no evidence other than a very fuzzy memory, so take that for what it’s worth.
I usually don’t consciously think of people online being ostentatiously male or female unless they have a gender-specific name (Blonde, John Mace, etc.) However, I am occasionally surprised by someone’s gender, so I guess I must give them a gender in my head. (Rather to my shame, that gender is usually male.)
BTW, y’all can guess my gender also. I’ve always thought it was relatively obvious, but people have misstated it before.
I initially would have said female, just because I hunch that women are more prone to think about gender issues, so that’s strictly based on the simple fact that you asked.
But then I noted your handle, especially the letters "TV,"and I start to suspect that it is a playful but trick question coming from someone who pretty well escapes traditional gender assignations altogether, and is mulling about what vibe they give off to the binary populace.
I really like this post because I’m 0 for 4 with my guesses. If it means anything, I don’t think there are enough posts to form a really good guess. For some reason you’re style reminds me of Marilyn vos Savant so my guess was influenced by that.
-woman
-IQ OF 125
-reserved nature,
-weighs words carefully
-reflective but not overly philosophical
I have found differences in thought processes between men and women in the way they express themselves. Best example I can give are directions: Men will give them in a grid pattern, (turn left, go West 2 miles turn right on Lefty Street). Women will often give them based on reference points (turn left at McDonalds, 2 miles turn right at the big red church with the steeple). I also find Women think more from the heart and men think more with their hands (or other appendages).
. You couldn’t be more of a male SDMB geek if they zapped you with an atomic powered geekifying machine set to “geekify-SDMB-male”. 