Fun With Text Gendering

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Yes, it's *another* blog about the OC rewrite.

So today I decided it would be fun to test what I've got for the story so far and see how a few text analyzing programs read different things about the person who the story is told from the viewpoint of. The results have been interesting to say the least.

For anyone not familiar with the original story, or familiar with it who I haven't confided in with the rewrite yet, Dane/Dana/D is a somewhat gender-confused 15 year old with a love of punk and a love of trying to be witty. The story is from a first person view, with D's opinions and outlook tinging the text everywhere.

With that in mind, here were my results:

Gender -- I actually ran this in two different analyzers and got two radically different results; the first one read the text as about 51% masculine for a rating of "weak male," while the second analyzer I used (from the same site I found the others) read the text as an astounding 82% female. Talk about gender confused!

Age -- I was pretty happy with the outcome here. The analyzer came up with my text being around 28% age-appropriate for someone in the 13-17 range, which might sound low at first, but all things considered is better than I was expecting. The next highest value (21%) was for the next age range up of 18-25, so I kept it pretty well balanced.

Myers Briggs -- This one I was kinda worried about, to be honest. I personally am an ENFP personality on the Myers Briggs ranking scale (barely, 54% for the E,) but I always want my characters to be their own person, not a reflection of me in character form. Luckily I seem to have done well here: D comes out as an ESFJ personality, so pretty different from my own!

If anyone else is interested in trying some of the same tests, the website I used for most of them (including the recommended gendering test since I liked its results best) is uClassify. They have a lot of them available for those interested.

Anyway, have fun!

Melanie E.

Comments

That was fun, thanks....

Ragtime Rachel's picture

I particularly enjoy gendering text analyzers, and to say the least, didn't expect the results I got on the site you linked to. I uploaded part of an old letter to my mother. According to the analyzer, the writing sample was not only female, but overwhelmingly so: 78%. That amazed me, because most of my written material, according to other analyzers, came across as "weak male", or "weak female", just as yours did.

I don't put much stock in such analyzers, but when I get results like the above, it does make me wonder.

I wish I still had some of the letters I wrote to relatives when I was a child. It would have been fun to determine if I came across as a little girl.

Livin' A Ragtime Life,
aufder.jpg

Rachel

Wow

Patricia Marie Allen's picture

If I've ever needed conformation of my mental/emotional gender this really nailed it for me.

I subjected my piece "Silence is Golden" to GenderAnalyzer_v5 on the site and it came up with the following:

1. female (84.2 %)
2. male (15.8 %)

And my wife wonders why I need to express my feminine nature so strongly. I chose "Silence is Golden" because it was an example of me writing as myself with no attempt to put any character values in it.

The site also nailed my age as well with Ageanalyzer:

1. 65-100 (41.7 %)
2. 18-25 (14.0 %)
3. 51-65 (12.5 %)

I'm 69-years-old.

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt

Age Analyzer

Ragtime Rachel's picture

I noticed something curious (and that's a huge understatement) when I pasted my blog's URL into the age analyzer as opposed to one of my long e-mails. The analyzer apparently thinks my blog is written by someone between 26 and 35 (I'm 52). I thought my writing just skewed young, but when I pasted an old e-mail into the analyzer, I found to my surprise that I skew old AND young (65-100 and 18-25 were in a dead heat at 20%).

In the first instance, I suppose I could explain it by saying that my blog caters to folks in the aforementioned age group (it's an animation-themed blog written to appeal to fans) but the second is an old letter to my mom. So maybe I skew older in those letters to appeal to her, but also younger because I'm writing to a parent?

Livin' A Ragtime Life,
aufder.jpg

Rachel