Despite the fact that it seems I've had less time than usual to peruse Slashdot lately, I did catch the article about gender roles on the Internet. Finding the content rather interesting, I decided to share it with another online community (using the term loosely) I sometimes frequent, and see what their reaction would be. (Offtopic postings are acceptable there, as long as they are clearly labelled as such.)

Slashdot's audience, as anyone who's spent any significant amount of time there knows, is overwhelmingly comprised of males (you know, the kind of people who frequently exhibit rudeness, start flamewars, ask rhetorical questions, and present unsupported assumptions as fact. ;) Did I miss anything?). Although there are no official statistics, I suspect Netforum has more female members who actively post than male. Based on the sampling of people who responded to my post, this may be even more the case than I initially believed.

Just for fun, I put a little question at the end, asking people to guess my gender. The results of that were most interesting.

I figured I was probably in trouble after the first two guessed me as female, but decided to wait until a few more responses came in before giving away the game. This morning, after another batch of responses came in, my impatience won out. I knew if I waited another day or two, more people would get a chance to respond, yielding a better sample, but the urge to take the topic and run with it while it's hot was just too much. :)

The results: of those who chose to guess, 6 voted female, 3 male.

What does this mean? Do I now feel somehow less masculine, having failed to convey sufficient "manliness" in this online interaction? Nah. In fact, based on what the article prescribes as stereotypical male behavior online, I might just rather be a girl. Ok, maybe not. I'd rather just ditch the stereotypes, and have everyone be themselves.

At a challenge by one of the other members, I attempted to guess the genders of those who hadn't already given them away. So far, I've been wrong on all but one. So much for the prescribed "gender roles."