I love the freedom from discrimination that is possible in the online world. It’s great to have one’s ideas, logic, information, and argument considered on their own merit, not on one’s gender, orientation, race, age, or any other potentially discriminatory element.

As for why more males than females responded, and more comment on the site, sociolinguistics professor and author Teborah Tannen has written extensively on the hesitance of females to be conversationally assertive in mixed gendered environments and the almost universal habit of males to interrupt the speech of females. Both males and females are socialized from an early age for females to be non-assertive, and males assertive in communication as well as in other areas.

Pat Gundry

or how about …

Since we now know that the majority of bloggers who come to ProBlogger are male, does this mean that in order to enlarge his market share, Darren will now do a rethink to target female bloggers?

cat

Funny thing is that in the practice of PR (offline) women make up 70 percent of the profession. I have written about this extensively and the link to my blog links directly to the most relevant article.

I’m a man named Darren. I’ve never met a female Darren before :)

Au contraire, mon frere. I know a Darrin who is as female as they come. I’d describe her in vivid detail for the joy of the guys, but the disgust of the women and the transgendered/male neutered/confused folks among us. :)

Oh, and I inventoried my Chromosomes. I have a Y.

But the Gender Genie thing for blogs (http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html) thinks I write like a male. =)

– J.

Will my answer skew your poll?

Perhaps a none of the above option? transgendered people would be neither I’d guess.

I know a few transgender people, and they consider themselves whatever sex they chose to be. So if they were male and had a sex change, they’d consider themselves female — nothing any more or less. And the opposite is true as well. It’s really quite simple for them, and I don’t see any reason they should be singled out.

In any event, the fact that such a brain-dead simple poll could generate some of the ridiculous responses here says something about people’s desire to label others. I mean, it’s a simple question — are you male or female?

Thanks for the survey. A few days ago, I noticed a link to my blog, where I was referred to as “her”. I am actually a “him”. Mine is an Indian name and for some reason, lot of people seem to think it is a female name. I was trying to figure out how to say that I am a male on my blog without sounding chauvenistic. Here are a few ideas I came up with:

- I can put up a picture (even though it may scare some people)
- I can say I am a male in my profile (did not sound right)

So I just updated my profile to say that I am a father of two children and live with my wife in California.

I would probably make a joke post to clarify the issue. “Contrary to popular belief, I am a guy. See? Here is my picture: <insert pic>” Something along those lines, and then jokingly reference it every now and again.

I sometimes run into a similar issue — people not knowing how to say my name, and sometimes thinking I’m a girl when they see it in writing. It’s spelled “Rian” but pronounced “Ryan” — I don’t understand the confusion. It’s like “Brian” but without the B. Heh. :p I also have a distinctly masculine writing style; I’m not sure why or how this is, but it is, you can tell a guy is writing when you read what I write.

Anyway, talk about a rambling comment… :p