[Jim Hayes]

The poem I'm currently workshopping at TDE scores 474 female, 348 male.
I don't feel up to revising it until I've had a cup of tea and put on a little make-up.

[Catherine Chandler]

Out of curiosity I entered six of my 14 by 14 sonnets and the result was almost two-to-one male.

[Mark Allinson]

Summing up all the responses here, I would have to say that the GG is absobloodylutely useless.

Mary thinks the GG has it right to identify Shakespeare as a woman, but it also identified Spenser and Donne as women, which is patently absurd.

So if a complex computer programme can't consistently pick the correct gender, can anything or anyone do it?

Is there really any discernible difference then between men's and women's writing?

[Susan McLean]

Most good writers have a blend of reason and emotion that makes them very hard to fit into gender stereotypes. It is only stereotyping that assigns personality characteristics to a particular gender instead of recognizing the broad continuum in which the majority of people will fall somewhere in the center. Men's and women's writing may have some variations in content based on differences in their experiences; I have never noticed any predictable differences in their style.

Susan

[Christy Reno]

Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan

As an aside to this: do any male poets here dabble (as I do from time to time) with trying to find a "female voice" (or, conversely, female poets a "male voice")?

Yes. I've tried to writein a man's voice before, but it was a sonnet, so it won't add up to 500 words.

[Chris Childers]

The GG nailed this one:

Words: 108
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 12
Male Score: 132

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Who did Rabbie Lowell think he was fooling?

...

I will add that the Genie consistently identified my prose as male, and that this disappointed me, but that I think Mark gives it too much credit with his question about a 'complex computer programme.' Surely this silly website is not the be-all and end-all in gender identification technology. One day I hope we may develop the resources to prove that Sappho was really a man.

(Must I include a winkie guy? I'd rather not, but oh well, here goes)

[MEHope]

I don't think there's a difference. Style wise, but gender nah.

I did these a couple of years ago, they all came back the same then too.

I tried 6 poems, all scored "male".

Here's the last one:

Words: 521

(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 664
Male Score: 871

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Ha! Snort, snort.

[Susan McLean]

For what it's worth, I tried first an excerpt from one of my articles, then a combination of a couple of my poems. Both of them came back very male. Go figure.

Words: 1229
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 929
Male Score: 1798

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Words: 210
(NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.)

Female Score: 196
Male Score: 428

The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!

Susan

[peter richards]

Originally Posted by Jim Hayes

The poem I'm currently workshopping at TDE scores 474 female, 348 male.
I don't feel up to revising it until I've had a cup of tea and put on a little make-up.

So you're going to make it up now, are you?

James, James...

[James Wilk]

A coin flip could do just as well. I entered 8 poems. 4 came out female and 4 male.