Gender Blending - the internet's a drag...

-I joined a mailing list under a male name to troll out an ex-boyfriend of a friend who was harrassing her. It was harder than I thought, because I was a bit *too* successful, and I didn't know how to react when he started writing me offlist with really dirty locker-room descriptions of her.

-Not just on the internet, but "Fiona" was originally supposed to be a boy named Fletcher. That idea ended quite early when "Fletcher" started going on feminist rants and gushing about cute boys.

My work email address is purposefully just my initials, so that you can't identify me as a woman just with that. I work as a programmer, and I used to know a lot of guy programmers who automatically think that if a woman wrote some code, it must suck. (Thankfully, that doesn't go on in my current group.)

i have always just been me on the net. there is one poster on ILX that i have never been able to work out the gender of but i'm not going to ask that person because a) it shouldn't matter b) if i did said poster might take offense when none is intended.

kate, did you do that on here once, or did i imagine that? i think if you did, i didnt notice, i didnt pick up on it.

Di, Tracer Hand is a guy. His name just looks a lot like Tracey. Hope that's cleared that up.

Sigh. I should have known I'd get little to no real discussion here... there are some things ILX just won't... or can't... discuss.

I've done it for 'chatroom jollies' so to speak - it's interesting/exciting/depressing/ultimately boring. I never really tried to create a persona - too much hard work. I think I was fairly convincing but it was never really tested. Going into the same IRC music chatroom as a guy and as a girl was a pretty miserable experience, but then IRC music chatrooms are anyway.

Did it once after a former friend accused me of cyberstalking him. I wasn't; the same common interests that lead us to be friends in the first place had us showing up on the same mailing lists. But his paranoid overreaction lead me to think "Right, he wants cyberstalking? He'll get it!" I invented vaguely mysterious gothy girl and engaged him (and other folks on the same listserv) in several longish e-mail conversations, until he became flirtatious and the whole scene started to feel outrageously sordid. So the character disappeared -- but the experiment worked, he was completely convinced.

I feel very, very uneasy pretending to be what I'm not. I guess I have a fundamental driving force of honesty, and I'm not going to decive people unless I absolutely have to.

Nah, wouldn't do it. It takes all my effort to pass myself off plausibly as a man.

People usually assume I'm a man until I indicate otherwise - especially in music forums.

Online I assume everyone is men except when it's not obvious.

is obvious

I've never tried this - like Mark C says, I'd feel very uneasy about trying to pass myself off as someone else. I'm also fairly certain I'd be rubbish at it.

Despite loving men dearly I have absolutely no idea how their minds work, so I really doubt I could I post convincingly as one.

Is it really possible to know someones gender by their writing?
On a board like this?

I remember some SF critic writing a long article explaining how women could never write quality hard SF. The central points were all illustrated by comparing a female writer (Ursula Le Guin, possibly?) with a quintessentially male writer of a type that women couldn't hope to emulate: James Tiptree Jr. Who, of course, was then revealed as a woman using a penname.

It is wise not to jump to conclusions.

I once trolled a MUD as a slutty woman and had cybersex with a random guy before revealing I was a man. He didn't care. I later discovered that he was one of my classmates and he went around telling everyone I was gay.

That was the only time I tried trolling.

Was he any good though?

No, he was rubbish. I was amazing, though. (Actually, it was my two roommates and I pointing at the screen and laughing wildly as we thought of more and more outlandish things to emote.)

Were you actually being a she-troll in this MUD game? I had a friend who used to play MUD games on his Spectrum and 1.2 kps modem or whatever. It seemed so futuristic.

All I remember was being dared to trick someone on a MUD into cybersex. In retrospect, I should have viewed this challenge as being on par with getting water to be wet.

But that's a brilliant challenge. It's so easy to win at!

Have I misunderstood the whole point of challenges? Is my life a sham?

You were even in any doubt about your life being a sham?

It was a rhetorical question. I haven't said that since I was 13!

I like having a semi-non-gender-specific name on line. People who are familiar with romance languages assume I am male because it ends with an "o", even though it's obviously not a European name. People who know anything about Japanese and manga know that I am female because it ends with "ko".

Anyway, I like ambiguity. Occasionaly elderly people in real life think I'm a boy, despite the fact that I have breasts. When I was little many people thought I was a boy. - which was my intention as I was modelling my self on George from the Famous Five.

yeah you and thousands of others girls surely?

I hate that mostly if I'm using a non female-indicating name I am taken for male, say (especially) if I'm talking about music... always used to happen to me just being on Napster.

> Is it really possible to know someones gender by their writing?

I think that's the question of the Century. I've been through two grad. level courses (rather unwillingly) on "gendered rhetoric." It is actually an interesting topic, so long as everyone is willing to talk openly and to accept other's viewpoints (ended-up with a rabid feminist in one course who believed that males had no business talking about gender and rhetoric). There are some interesting books on the subject, too.

I guess that the main things I remember as being at least stereotypically "gendered" are as follows: women tend to use more dramatic/stressing language (I REALLY like it; That's ABSOLUTELY perfect, etc.); women tend to use more hedges (I THINK, I GUESS, MAYBE, etc.); women tend to use more emotionally explanatory terms (I am feeling slightly depressed and also a bit unloved); women are more comfortable with descriptions than with dialogue; women tend to try to create cohesion and happiness through writing; women tend to be less directly confrontational and more likely to talk behind one's back) and so forth. PLEASE REMEMBER THAT THESE ARE STEREOTYPES! There are also lists for men's stereotypes, too - mostly the opposite side of the dualities shown in the women's tendencies. Many have been disproven through tests, others are currently being explored. Also, many studies have shown that the significantly obvious differences between the genders in writing tend to be most apparent in youths, and the lower-educated. The more educated, traveled, and read a peson is, the less "gendered" their writing is, unless they are gendering their writing intentionally.

But, anyway, I think it might be possible to develop theories about someone's gender, based on their writings. However, if the writer knows about these marks, they might consciously use them to create a different impression. Also, I believe that people have tendencies along a gender spectrum, from female to male, and that we all fit somewhere along this line - and therefore our writings will reflect that position. But just because we identify along a specturm, that does not necessarily show our sex, sexual orientation, or dominant/submissive tendencies - it's important to remember that gender is more of an identification of roles/behaviors and that sex refers to one's genitalia (and when we get to transgenderism, things get really confusing - I'm actually finishing a paper on the topic of gendered language in the writings of post-operative transgendered persons.)

Sorry for the long-windedness. LCD

my name is somewhat gender neutral, but i haven't been mistaken for the opposite sex (knowingly anyway) when i use my real name.

But, i have been mistaken for the opposite sex when i'm using an internet nick. once when i was having quite a confrontational debate with someone, and loads of people on the board assumed i was a guy.

the other time was a few nights ago, on soulseek. the guy i was talking to assumed i was male, and i think it was because i was talking about music. i didn't correct him though, mostly because i was afraid he'd get all creepy if i told him i was a girl (ok, i have no proof this would happen, but it's happend enough for me to be cautious)

Of the six woman-stereotypes LCD mentions, I think I fit into ALL of them PERFECTLY. This revelation unnerves me. *goes off to talk evilly about LCD behind her back*

thing is, people make an asssumption. theyll get it wrong sometimes. sometimes i assume M, sometimes F, sometimes im not sure i do (slsk perhaps)

the anonymous posts on here are interesting because, generally, i dont assume either way, it actually quite hard to - mainly because on some of those threads yuo are speculating/sherlocking who it could be and often yu just cant guess...

No, I don't find I assume on here, either. It quite often happens that I suddenly realise after seeing a name loads of times which sex it belongs to, but I don't think it's come as a surprise yet. It's not that I've guessed, it's that I hadn't made assumpions either way. Obviously on most threads/subjects it's not important.

well, my confusion has just been cleared up. err sorry geeta.

(you're still da bomb)