Thursday, June 3, 2010

Genderanalyzer!








GenderAnalyzer
Yesterday in my advanced writing class which spurred the creation of this blog, I received the assignment to explore other blogs and websites which are talking about issues similar to my topic and comment on those blogs. As I was doing some exploring I came across an AWESOME website called GenderAnalyzer. You take any web address, copy, paste and Genderanalyzer using "artificial intelligence" analyzes if a male or female created the web site as well as gives a percentage as to how sure they are in that analysis. As I have experimented with this tool it's so fun to use and especially relevant to the topic of words and visual design's effect upon a site's gender definition. I used three blogs as "tests," my blog, my colleague Ben's Research 2.0 blog, and my colleague Krista's gender ambiguous Uffishsthoughts blog...GenderAnalyzer got it right each time (Krista, you may want to do something about that)! Perhaps being gender ambiguous isn't as easy as first thought! Try it out, have some fun =)! I'm contemplating starting another blog under the pseudo name "John Smith" to see if I can fool GenderAnalyzer! We'll see = )
Blogs
In addition to having way too much fun with GenderAnalyzer, I found the Difference blog, whose writers comment on current sex and gender issues. The issues presented vary from news items to every day events which serve to strengthen gender roles as "set" in society. I posted a comment on a few. If you're interested you can comment as well, though your comment must first be approved by the director of the group and won't show up immediately. Each post is only a few paragraphs and can be read in about 3 minutes. See what you think!

1 comment:

  1. Interesting, Becca! I'll have to look at that Genderanalyzer thing.

    As I was looking through some blogs of my own, I came across a post on Danah Boyd's blog called "whose voice do you hear? gender issues and success". Thought it sounded perfect for your studies! Danah Boyd basically realized that when she spoke to others so confidently, they thought she sounded male. Here's the link:
    http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/01/19/whose_voice_do.html

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