Survey Says...
Jan. 31st, 2004 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackofallgeeksSo right, I had a little experiment running these last few days, trying to see if one ould determine the gender of an author through their works, and I promised that Today I would let you know how it went.
The results were interesting, given the situation. As I've already told a number of you, I had written up a little scene in about ten or fifteen minutes (with every intention of going back and expanding it with details), and when I showed it to Anastasiya, she claimed she could write it in a 'more girlie' way. I thought it was an inherently flawed idea, that one style of writing was more feminine than another or the like, and it occured to me (after getting her piece emailed to me) that I might test the theory on the LJ-community. If the majority seemed to guess 'correctly,' then her theory held, and gender could be divined through works of literature. If not, then the theory was false, and gender is ambiguous.
I had eleven votes, all told; 6 voted that #1 was the girl, 2 voted that #2 was the girl, and 3 abstained from voting either way -- one out of complete lack of conviction either way and two from the fact that they themselves thought it was a flawed theory.
And in truth... I am Writer #1 and Anastasiya is Writer #2. I hope the results say more about the theory and less about the authors! At the same time, it was slightly skewed, I think. That is, my piece was necessarily less-finished than Anastasiya's, simply by virtue of the fact that she took my piece and added some flesh to it. And that seems to have affected a few of the votes. But, there you have it.
The results were interesting, given the situation. As I've already told a number of you, I had written up a little scene in about ten or fifteen minutes (with every intention of going back and expanding it with details), and when I showed it to Anastasiya, she claimed she could write it in a 'more girlie' way. I thought it was an inherently flawed idea, that one style of writing was more feminine than another or the like, and it occured to me (after getting her piece emailed to me) that I might test the theory on the LJ-community. If the majority seemed to guess 'correctly,' then her theory held, and gender could be divined through works of literature. If not, then the theory was false, and gender is ambiguous.
I had eleven votes, all told; 6 voted that #1 was the girl, 2 voted that #2 was the girl, and 3 abstained from voting either way -- one out of complete lack of conviction either way and two from the fact that they themselves thought it was a flawed theory.
And in truth... I am Writer #1 and Anastasiya is Writer #2. I hope the results say more about the theory and less about the authors! At the same time, it was slightly skewed, I think. That is, my piece was necessarily less-finished than Anastasiya's, simply by virtue of the fact that she took my piece and added some flesh to it. And that seems to have affected a few of the votes. But, there you have it.
