Last week, a friend of mine implored me to participate in an online Gender Test that he was particularly impressed with. The test, by asking questions that don`t seem to relate specifically to gender, is able to figure out what sex you are with, it claims, 100% accuracy.
The test doesn`t ask you if you shave your face, or understand lipstick colours, but instead asks whether you`d rather die by drowning or falling off a high building (question 8). The site explains that through the use of its Geni-Tell technology which has "gotten smarter with every taker", it is able to accurately lump you into your correct gender category.
I did the test, and it confirmed what I already knew; that I am a woman. Pleased, I forwarded the mail to a few friends and the rest of the ITWeb newsroom. One female journo reported to me, as if having made a great discovery, that she was a woman. But that was pretty much where the accuracy of the test ground to a screeching halt. The test was adamant that most of the remainder of the newsroom, outwardly a burly and masculine bunch, were in fact women.
Not that I am a raging feminist lingerie torcher, mind you, it`s just that I am always wary of concepts that reaffirm divisive convictions.
Georgina Guedes, editor, ITWeb Brainstorm
I was quite relieved actually. I am always suspicious of gender models that accurately and irretrievably lump women on one side of the scale and men on the other. If it is all as simple as figuring out whether I`d like to have been around to witness the dawn of time (question 11) or if every time I took a painkiller to rid myself of a headache (question 9), I was reaffirming my femininity, I would find myself reluctant to display any personality traits at all, for fear of throwing my differences into sharper contrast to the opposite sex.
Not that I am a raging feminist lingerie torcher, mind you, it`s just that I am always wary of concepts that reaffirm divisive convictions. Books like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, or plays like Defending the Caveman are amusing in their own way, but, by summing up gender-related behaviour into a neat package, these theories provide an excuse, rather than an explanation for the negative variances.
Defending the Caveman would have me believe that as a woman, I am a gatherer, whereas the men in my life, as hunters are more direct and to the point. This model apparently sums up all our behavioural quirks, from asking for directions (gathering) to being in control of the television remote (hunting). Having avoided the Mars and Venus book, I don`t know what my peculiarities are, according to their celestial classification system, but I`m not sorry to have sidestepped this chasm of categorisation.
Sceptical as I am, the suggestion that everything we do is an affirmation of our gender differences, brings with it bouts of paranoia. For instance, was the fact that I found the whole scenario interesting enough to write a column about yet another guarantee that I am, in fact, the female of the species?
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