Assigned Gender By Algorithm (AGBA)

Hello! This is an essay on how algorithms impact gender online and away from keyboard (AFK).1 It references academic papers but also my own personal experience as a queer existing online. It’s structured as a quiz, so you will encounter different parts of the essay based on what you answer. Do you want to play this quiz? [[Yes|What are you?]] [[No]] --- 1 I’m purposefully using AFK instead of IRL (in real life) here to highlight what Legacy Russell said about the online sphere being as much ‘real life’ as our life away from the keyboard is.

Good luck with your algorithms, goodbye!

How do you identify? [[Cis|Which social media platform do you frequent most often?]] [[None of your business|Which social media platform do you frequent most often?]] [[Trans, enby, gender-nonconforming|Which social media platform do you frequent most often?-T]]

Which social media platform do you frequent most often? [[Twitter]] [[Tumblr]] [[TikTok and/or Instagram]]

Which words do you use most often? [[‘thank’ and ‘bless’ | Twitter Woman]] [[‘scary’ and ‘illness’ | Twitter Woman]] [[‘accurate’ and ‘important’ | Twitter Man]] [[‘issue’ and ‘aches’ | Twitter Man]]

Pick one: [[“gender is a game and im losing” | The likelihood]]1 [[“gender is a sport and im sitting in the grass picking flowers”| The likelihood]]2 [[“gender is a performance and im doing improv comedy”| The likelihood]]3 [[“my relationship with gender? we're divorced”| The likelihood]]4 [[“gender is a game and i’m using cheat codes”| The likelihood]]5 [[“Gender is a game and there are so many stupid inapp purchases”| The likelihood]] 6 ---- 1 <a href="https://t4tmoreid.tumblr.com/post/649188026137952256" target="_blank">https://t4tmoreid.tumblr.com/post/649188026137952256</a> 2 <a href="https://t4tmoreid.tumblr.com/post/649188026137952256" target="_blank">https://t4tmoreid.tumblr.com/post/649188026137952256</a> 3 <a href="https://spitblaze.tumblr.com/post/626458722139619328/gender-is-a-performance-and-im-doing-improv-comedy" target="_blank">https://spitblaze.tumblr.com/post/626458722139619328/gender-is-a-performance-and-im-doing-improv-comedy</a> 4 <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/hodgepodge-collector/789105540092526592" target="_blank">https://www.tumblr.com/hodgepodge-collector/789105540092526592</a> 5 <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/hondakiku/775862265172967424" target="_blank">https://www.tumblr.com/hondakiku/775862265172967424</a> 6 <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/hondakiku/775862265172967424" target="_blank">https://www.tumblr.com/hondakiku/775862265172967424</a> This one is a hashtag in the reaction section

Which one of these aesthetics fits you the most? [[Cottagecore | Why do you gravitate to this, or any internet aesthetic-C]] <img src="img/1.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/2.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/3.webp" width="200px" \> [[Trauma core / Morute| Why do you gravitate to this, or any internet aesthetic-T]] <img src="img/4.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/5.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/6.webp" width="200px" \> [[Clean Girl| Why do you gravitate to this, or any internet aesthetic-CG]] <img src="img/7.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/8.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/9.webp" width="200px" \> [[Dark Academia| Why do you gravitate to this, or any internet aesthetic-DA]] <img src="img/91.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/92.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/93.webp" width="200px" \> [[Waif / Coquette | Why do you gravitate to this, or any internet aesthetic-WC]] <img src="img/94.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/95.webp" width="200px" \> <img src="img/96.webp" width="200px" \>

Twitter has gender classification algorithms that analyse the language, vocabulary and word frequency of their users.1 Based on this analysis, they infer gender to you which basically means you get assigned a gender by the algorithm. For instance judging by the words you picked right now, it might assume you are a: - Woman This specific example of words came from a study from 2019 where Park and colleagues developed a Gender Classification System (GCS) that had an aim to identify the gender of users making posts on an AIDS-related bulletin board. The GCS would pair gender with the frequency of sentiment-driven words, and came to the conclusion that women used ‘thank,’ ‘bless,’ ‘scary,’ and ‘illness’ twice as much as men, while they used ‘accurate,’ ‘important,’ ‘issue,’ and ‘aches’ twice more than women.2 It's really not only related to the words you use. Another study from 2006 identified the gender of internet bloggers based of off words, fonts and cases, punctuation marks, and emoticons.3 [[Okay..| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?]] [[So?| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?]] [[Sure| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?]] [[Spooky| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?]] ---- 1 Lin, Feng, & Wu, Yingxiao, & Zhuang, Yan, & Long, Xi, & Xu, Wenyao. (2015). Human gender classification: A review. <a href="http://cse.ucdenver.edu/~linfen/papers/2016_IJBM_gender.pdf" target="_blank">http://cse.ucdenver.edu/~linfen/papers/2016_IJBM_gender.pdf.</a> 2 Park, Sunghee, & Woo, Jiyoung (2019). Gender Classification Using Sentiment Analysis and Deep Learning in a Health Web Forum. Applied Sciences., 9, 1249. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/app9061249" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.3390/app9061249.</a> 3 Yan, Xiang, & Yan, Ling (2006). Gender Classification of weblog authors. In Proceedings of the Conference: Computational Approaches to Analyzing Weblogs, Papers from the 2006 AAAI Spring Symposium, Technical Report SS-06-03, Stanford, California, USA, March 27-29, 2006 (pp. 228–230).

Twitter has gender classification algorithms that analyse the language, vocabulary and word frequency of their users.1 Based on this analysis, they infer gender to you which basically means you get assigned a gender by the algorithm. For instance judging by the words you picked right now, it might assume you are a: - Man This specific example of words came from a study from 2019 where Park and colleagues developed a Gender Classification System (GCS) that had an aim to identify the gender of users making posts on an AIDS-related bulletin board. The GCS would pair gender with the frequency of sentiment-driven words, and came to the conclusion that women used ‘thank,’ ‘bless,’ ‘scary,’ and ‘illness’ twice as much as men, while they used ‘accurate,’ ‘important,’ ‘issue,’ and ‘aches’ twice more than women.2 It's really not only related to the words you use. Another study from 2006 identified the gender of internet bloggers based of off words, fonts and cases, punctuation marks, and emoticons.3 [[Okay..| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?]] [[So?| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?]] [[Sure| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?]] [[Spooky| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?]] ---- 1 Lin, Feng, & Wu, Yingxiao, & Zhuang, Yan, & Long, Xi, & Xu, Wenyao. (2015). Human gender classification: A review. <a href="http://cse.ucdenver.edu/~linfen/papers/2016_IJBM_gender.pdf" target="_blank">http://cse.ucdenver.edu/~linfen/papers/2016_IJBM_gender.pdf.</a> 2 Park, Sunghee, & Woo, Jiyoung (2019). Gender Classification Using Sentiment Analysis and Deep Learning in a Health Web Forum. Applied Sciences., 9, 1249. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/app9061249" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.3390/app9061249.</a> 3 Yan, Xiang, & Yan, Ling (2006). Gender Classification of weblog authors. In Proceedings of the Conference: Computational Approaches to Analyzing Weblogs, Papers from the 2006 AAAI Spring Symposium, Technical Report SS-06-03, Stanford, California, USA, March 27-29, 2006 (pp. 228–230).

Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life? [[Yes | Well]] [[No | Well]]

Well.. it does. Sure, the scope of the consequences it has on your life have not fully been determined, but we know about a part of it. For instance, the data extracted from large datasets are used for subsequent decision-making and micro-targeting.1 What this means is that your behaviour can be predicted for marketing purposes and influenced for generating profit.2 And it’s not only marketing that is affected by this. You can also get an automatic refusal of an online credit card, e-recruited (without human intervention), or misdiagnosed.3 So, the consequences go far and wide. Gender gets baked into us in its most stereotypical binary. You might think of the online space as a liberating one where you get to express yourself in ways that you can’t AFK.4 But, truth be told, what transpires there is what ends up impacting your day-to-day expression. [[Okay I get it |Okay I get it -C]] [[Yeah, but what if I want to get targeted advertising? |Yeah, but what if I want to get targeted advertising? -C]] --- 1 Hildebrandt, M., & Gutwirth, S. (2008). Profiling the European citizen. Heidelberg: Springer. 2 Wachter, S. (2020). Affinity profiling and discrimination by association in online behavioural advertising. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 35(2). 3 Hänold, S. (2018). Profiling and Automated Decision-Making: Legal Implications and Shortcomings. In M. Corrales, M. Fenwick, & N. Forgó (Eds.), Robotics, ai and the future of law. perspectives in law, business and innovation (pp. 123–153). Singapore: Springer. 4 I’m purposefully using AFK instead of IRL (in real life) here to highlight what Legacy Russell said about the online sphere being as much ‘real life’ as our life away from the keyboard is.

Sike! It’s all of the above.1 It has an impact on everything! From how you dress and what you buy, to how you vote and who you hang out with. One could argue that nowadays, what impacts your wallet impacts your politics. Sure, but it also goes deeper. All of these aesthetics, and their outright or outspoken expression online, allow algorithms to more distinctly and succinctly create a user profile for you. This user profile gives them a better gateway into advertising things to you and, one could argue, for influencing the course of these aesthetics. For instance, you’ve chosen: Cottagecore – ultimately lead to existence of Trad Wives: women who claimed to wilfully want to return to tradition. Tradition here doesn’t only mean living closer to nature, but also living by traditional patriarchal gender norms. Such as staying at home, doing all of the reproductive labour and being subservient to your husband. The whole aesthetic and its political leanings have received a justified, heavy spoonful of critiques. Not only for ‘setting feminism back decades’ but also for racism and classism—mainly propagating an idea of a white and rich family being able to detach from the city and disconnect in a time when most do not have this luxury. You might think it’s just about sourdough bread and flowery dresses, but an identity and ideology are being algorithmically served to you along with them. After all, it is a political pipeline. And probably one of the most crystal-clear examples of an aesthetic turning into a troublesome political leaning. You might get into an internet aesthetic thinking it might not have any consequences on you. But it’s a bit like: <img src="https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/558/752/e34.jpeg"\> It impacts crowds on subliminal levels and that’s nothing new. Wasn’t Romanticism the aesthetic of the Nazis to some degree? [[Yeah, I think so | Well,whatever]] [[No| Well,whatever]] [[Never heard of that| Well,whatever]] ---- 1 Wiki, Contributors to Aesthetics. “Internet Aesthetic.” Aesthetics Wiki, n.d. <a href="https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic" target="_blank">https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic.</a>

Why do you gravitate to this, or any other internet aesthetic? [[It’s fun! | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-C]] [[It lets me express myself | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-C]] [[I get to escape the fleshy world through it | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-C]] [[I’m feeling nostalgic about a different time | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-C]]

Why do you gravitate to this, or any other internet aesthetic? [[It’s fun! | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?]] [[It lets me express myself | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?]] [[I get to escape the fleshy world through it | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?]] [[I’m feeling nostalgic about a different time | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?]]

Why do you gravitate to this, or any other internet aesthetic? [[It’s fun! | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-CG]] [[It lets me express myself | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-CG]] [[I get to escape the fleshy world through it | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-CG]] [[I’m feeling nostalgic about a different time | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-CG]]

Why do you gravitate to this, or any other internet aesthetic? [[It’s fun! | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-DA]] [[It lets me express myself | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-DA]] [[I get to escape the fleshy world through it | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-DA]] [[I’m feeling nostalgic about a different time | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-DA]]

Why do you gravitate to this, or any other internet aesthetic? [[It’s fun! | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-WC]] [[It lets me express myself | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-WC]] [[I get to escape the fleshy world through it | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-WC]] [[I’m feeling nostalgic about a different time | What do you think an internet aesthetic has an impact on in your, or someone else’s, life?-WC]]

Sike! It’s all of the above.1 It has an impact on everything! From how you dress and what you buy, to how you vote and who you hang out with. One could argue that nowadays, what impacts your wallet impacts your politics. Sure, but it also goes deeper. All of these aesthetics, and their outright or outspoken expression online, allow algorithms to more distinctly and succinctly create a user profile for you. This user profile gives them a better gateway into advertising things to you and, one could argue, for influencing the course of these aesthetics. For instance, you’ve chosen: Trauma core – has a lot of spawning smaller aesthetics, such as Morune. It features a lot of subjects that are difficult to talk about (which is given away by the name). The aesthetic has been criticised for a myriad of reasons, such as having a big amount of body checks and being pro anorexia (pro-ana), which contributes to, and to a degree enforces, a negative self-image and identification. Most prominently, it has been scolded for an idealisation of violence, which could hypothetically make it easier for people who subscribe to this aesthetic to seek out the violent misogynistic dynamics portrayed. Nothing like worshiping an image until you start to live by it, binding yourself to it until you can no longer distinguish the qualities that came from you versus the ones you acquired from it. You might get into an internet aesthetic thinking it might not have any consequences on you. But it’s a bit like: <img src="https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/558/752/e34.jpeg"\> It impacts crowds on subliminal levels and that’s nothing new. Wasn’t Romanticism the aesthetic of the Nazis to some degree? [[Yeah, I think so | Well,whatever]] [[No| Well,whatever]] [[Never heard of that| Well,whatever]] ---- 1 Wiki, Contributors to Aesthetics. “Internet Aesthetic.” Aesthetics Wiki, n.d. <a href="https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic" target="_blank">https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic.</a>

Sike! It’s all of the above.1 It has an impact on everything! From how you dress and what you buy, to how you vote and who you hang out with. One could argue that nowadays, what impacts your wallet impacts your politics. Sure, but it also goes deeper. All of these aesthetics, and their outright or outspoken expression online, allow algorithms to more distinctly and succinctly create a user profile for you. This user profile gives them a better gateway into advertising things to you and, one could argue, for influencing the course of these aesthetics. For instance, you’ve chosen: Clean girl – is technically classified as a micro aesthetic, but I find that some derivatives of it—especially in terms of minimalism and perceived quality—really exist on a wide scale in the public pop culture imagination.2 The whole aesthetic makes heavy use of body checks, and reinforces unachievable beauty standards and perpetual weight loss. It focuses on promoting extremely expensive skin care routine products to fully achieve the aesthetic—a clear sign when an algorithm might steer into your wallet based on an aesthetic trend. You might get into an internet aesthetic thinking it might not have any consequences on you. But it’s a bit like: <img src="https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/558/752/e34.jpeg"\> It impacts crowds on subliminal levels and that’s nothing new. Wasn’t Romanticism the aesthetic of the Nazis to some degree? [[Yeah, I think so | Well,whatever]] [[No| Well,whatever]] [[Never heard of that| Well,whatever]] --------- 1 Wiki, Contributors to Aesthetics. “Internet Aesthetic.” Aesthetics Wiki, n.d. <a href="https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic" target="_blank">https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic.</a> 2 Here I’m specifically thinking of Kim Kardashian’s beige apartment tour and Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘wellness’ company Goop which I would categorise as clean girl adjacent. Because it makes use of much of the same language, focus on the idea of ‘clean’ as something that can only be achieved with the right expensive products.

Sike! It’s all of the above.1 It has an impact on everything! From how you dress and what you buy, to how you vote and who you hang out with. One could argue that nowadays, what impacts your wallet impacts your politics. Sure, but it also goes deeper. All of these aesthetics, and their outright or outspoken expression online, allow algorithms to more distinctly and succinctly create a user profile for you. This user profile gives them a better gateway into advertising things to you and, one could argue, for influencing the course of these aesthetics. For instance, you’ve chosen: Dark Academia – has mostly been criticised for classism, elitism, eurocentrism, and anti-intellectualism. Some have noted that the aesthetic perceives critical thinking being tied to Western eurocentrism and board schools, which only people with generational wealth could afford. So, in a sense, the aesthetic becomes more about the style of dress you can buy and the circles your wealth grants you access to, rather than an actual admiration for knowledge. This makes it an easy target for people to sell you stuff. You might get into an internet aesthetic thinking it might not have any consequences on you. But it’s a bit like: <img src="https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/558/752/e34.jpeg"\> It impacts crowds on subliminal levels and that’s nothing new. Wasn’t Romanticism the aesthetic of the Nazis to some degree? [[Yeah, I think so | Well,whatever]] [[No| Well,whatever]] [[Never heard of that| Well,whatever]] --------- 1 Wiki, Contributors to Aesthetics. “Internet Aesthetic.” Aesthetics Wiki, n.d. <a href="https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic" target="_blank">https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic.</a>

Sike! It’s all of the above.1 It has an impact on everything! From how you dress and what you buy, to how you vote and who you hang out with. One could argue that nowadays, what impacts your wallet impacts your politics. Sure, but it also goes deeper. All of these aesthetics, and their outright or outspoken expression online, allow algorithms to more distinctly and succinctly create a user profile for you. This user profile gives them a better gateway into advertising things to you and, one could argue, for influencing the course of these aesthetics. For instance, you’ve chosen: Waif – has been mostly associated with a rise in ‘female toxicity,’ femcels and has— similarly to some of the other aesthetics—a deep bond with eating disorders. It has been criticised for glorifying narcissism and manipulation, positing it as a sign of intelligence rather than something you go to therapy for. Through this glorification, it cemented this idea of a ‘female manipulator’ with an associated visual style with it. You might get into an internet aesthetic thinking it might not have any consequences on you. But it’s a bit like: <img src="https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/558/752/e34.jpeg"\> It impacts crowds on subliminal levels and that’s nothing new. Wasn’t Romanticism the aesthetic of the Nazis to some degree? [[Yeah, I think so | Well,whatever]] [[No| Well,whatever]] [[Never heard of that| Well,whatever]] --------- 1 Wiki, Contributors to Aesthetics. “Internet Aesthetic.” Aesthetics Wiki, n.d. <a href="https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic" target="_blank">https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Internet_aesthetic.</a>

Well, whatever you think about that subject matter, it’s similar to the political compass; a test through which (usually) teens would see where they fell on the political spectrum. Users would be assigned a political leaning, which they then engaged with online, causing the algorithm to provide more content aligned with that newfound political leaning. Aesthetics and the idea of identity play played a big role in this process. People who were still developing, choosing different hats on until they find one that fits. 1 In a parallel way, these aesthetics kind of subliminally encourage certain politicised ideas. Not all of which are intentional, of course, or embedded with a pre-existing agenda. BUT they end up leading users to a certain pipeline and a way of thinking that has an undeniable impact on their life. If it’s not clear by now, these aesthetics not only have an influence on how we perceive our body and might seek to change it AFK. It also governs how we might purchase items to achieve the standards these aesthetics coin. Btw, do you use any of these other platforms? [[Twitter]] [[Tumblr]] [[No |No-END]] -------------- 1 Joshua Citarella has done extensive work on the political compass quiz and the political radicalization radicalization of teenage youth online. If you want to know more about it, check out ‘Politigram and the Post-Left’ or listen to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhsUchBe3I0" target="_blank">‘Jreg: Post-Ironic Hyper-Political Extremism | Doomscroll’.</a>

As one Tumblr user stated: <tw-hook name="center"> “<a href="https://an-ruraiocht.tumblr.com/post/781815390115332096/i-dont-think-a-third-option-specific-undeclared" target="_blank"> an-ruraiocht: </a> why do we even have legal genders anyway. maybe we should not have those <a href="https://an-ruraiocht.tumblr.com/post/781815390115332096/i-dont-think-a-third-option-specific-undeclared" target="_blank"> an-ruraiocht: </a> i don’t want to self-declare myself to fit in a specific box. i want to undeclare myself. it’s none of your business. why does anyone need to know that <a href="https://an-ruraiocht.tumblr.com/post/781815390115332096/i-dont-think-a-third-option-specific-undeclared" target="_blank"> an-ruraiocht: </a> i don’t think a third option / specific undeclared opt-out works in a hostile society, either. like, oh good, i’ve given myself the Freak label, that won’t cause any problems. i think we need to rethink why gender is considered basic identity information that has to be included anywhere. what purpose does this serve. why should ANY of us be providing this to strangers. i don’t want a different gender marker on my ID i want there not to be gender markers on my ID in the first place” </tw-hook> Sure, they meant this in relation to gender in the physical realm, but I think we could equally be applied to gender in the digital realm. We don’t necessarily need more representation, or for gender non-conforming people to be included in algorithmic classification of gender. Gender shouldn’t be classified and assigned in this way, for profit. Period. In this moment, it is used for consumerism, surveillance and steering how you vote. But as our world gets more politically grim, this amount of information about the users can be misused to degrees which we can’t even imagine. Ask yourself how do you feel knowing this and more importantly, do you want a way out? [[Yes]] [[No]]

You could resist the algorithm by performing a different gendered existence online to see how it trickles AFK. This might seem a bit strange, but my suggestion here is to engage with identity play aimed at confusing the assumptions the algorithm has of you, as well as learning what different gender realities exist out there. I would hope this goes without saying, but if it doesn’t: be wary of how you go about this. Try not to merely appropriate but think about how every researched term, change of username, click on a suggested video or post, might steer your algorithm in a different direction. It’s about the micro movements that end up rippling into categorisation.

The likelihood of you being queer and/or that you’ve been on Tumblr for 10+ years is high. You’re probably familiar with the stereotype of a Tumblr user: a queer snowflake with 300 genders. To some degree, this became a stereotype for a reason—MOGAI1, a library of seemingly infinite gender identifications was started on Tumblr. It was coined by the user cisphobeofficial around 2015, to fill a linguistic gap to describe sexual and gender identities.2 MOGAI stands for Marginalised Orientations, Gender Alignments, and Intersex. It received a lot of backlash for being an SJW (Social Justice Warrior) attempt to create an abundance of gender terms which are impractical and ‘set back the queer fight for liberation back by a decade’. But it was also an attempt of queer teenagers online to make sense of their existence using the terms they crafted, at a time when education on this matter was sparse or non-existent.3 Do you want to know more about this? [[Wait, why are you telling me this? | Well!]] [[Not really | Well!]] [[Yes | Well!]] ---- 1 The original blog has been deleted, but there are still resources that have documented it, such as: <a href="https://mogai.miraheze.org/wiki/MOGAI_Wiki" target="_blank"> https://mogai.miraheze.org/wiki/MOGAI_Wiki</a>. 2 Important info when engaging with this information is that the user at the time was a 14-year-old. Here is the link to their non-active Tumblr account <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/cisphobeofficial" target="_blank">https://www.tumblr.com/cisphobeofficial</a>. 3 STRANGE ÆONS. “That Time Tumblr Invented Its Own Genders,” June 2, 2023. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBOmffiWss0" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBOmffiWss0</a>.

Well! Tumblr was a space—and still remains one for those who linger on there—where non-normative gender expression beamed. By some standards, it is barely a social media platform and more a blogging platform with social features. On it you can reverse a lot of algorithmic defaults, such as having your dashboard curated by the algorithm and getting personalised adds. Instead, you can make it chronological and receive adds that have nothing to do with your clicks and scrolls. The only downside is that the platform is not profitable.1 This is partly why it changed so radically—from a platform where users customised so much of their blogs to one that has the standardised layout more characteristic of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or Twitter. Another factor that made Tumblr into a queer haven—especially for trans folks—was that it offered anonymity. Instead of relying on your information, name and address, you could exist on there under a pseudonym, a username of a character you liked and proliferate under a veil of anonymity. From my point of view, the lack of algorithmic presence, existing under the watchful eye of surveillance consumerism and instead having anonymity, resulted in more queer-centric online spaces.2 That being said, it’s important to think about how gender expression can exist without being monetised. Less oriented towards the individual as a consumer trying to achieve a ‘Look’, and more towards spaces where we can find solidarity and build worlds with each other.3 Btw, do you use any of these other platforms? [[Twitter]] [[TikTok and/or Instagram]] [[No|No-END]] ---- 1 This does bring us to think about what an alternative would look like, if for instance we would pay to be online but to not ‘be the product’ of ‘free’ services. To learn more about his, read <a href="https://cjthex.com/what-is-to-be-done/" target="_blank">‘What Is To Be Done? A Manifesto To Return To Web 1.5’</a> by CJ the X. 2 This point of view has been impacted by knowing the kind of queer and trans knowledge that was anonymously shared and circulated on Tumblr. 3 This is also not to say that I’m trying to romanticize Tumblr as a platform, so many harmful aesthetics were started and proliferated right there. This section is just to highlight certain aspects of it to think about what kind of political impact they had on the users, or what kind of discourse they generated.

I’m glad we’re on the same page now… Do you want to know more about this? [[Yes|Yes-C]] [[No|No-C]]

Well.. one thing you might not have considered is that this specific algorithm doesn’t recognise people who exit outside of the gendered binary. That’s for starters. Secondly, it also misgenders—predominantly individuals who are not cishet men. That might not include you—who knows—but it does include most enby people, and a good portion of gay people and cis women. So, in some sense, even when you think you are benefiting from this, you might not be. [[Show me the receipts]] [[Ok, I get your point]]

According to one smaller study, which included 109 respondents, only 8% of men were misgendered, compared to the 25% of gay men and 16% of straight women. Bisexual individuals were misgendered at a rate of between 20-25%, and non-binary individuals were misgendered in all cases.1 Btw, do you use any of these other platforms? [[Tumblr]] [[TikTok and/or Instagram]] [[No|No-END]] --- 1 E. Fosch-Villaronga, A. Poulsen, R.A. Søraa, B.H.M. Custers, “A little bird told me your gender: Gender inferences in social media”, Information Processing & Management, Volume 58, Issue 3, 2021, 102541, ISSN 0306-4573, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102541" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102541.</a>

Okay, bye! Not really sure why you chose to read this article if you weren’t ready for a bit of a reality check on how you’re being perceived.

Do you want to know more about this? [[Yes |Yes-C1]] [[No |No-C]]

Which social media platform do you frequent most often? [[Twitter|Twitter-T]] [[Tumblr]] [[TikTok and/or Instagram]]

Which words do you use most often? [[‘thank’ and ‘bless’ | Twitter Woman-T]] [[‘scary’ and ‘illness’ | Twitter Woman-T]] [[‘accurate’ and ‘important’ | Twitter Man-T]] [[‘issue’ and ‘aches’ | Twitter Man-T]]

Twitter has gender classification algorithms that analyse the language, vocabulary and word frequency of their users.1 Based on this analysis, they infer gender to you which basically means you get assigned a gender by the algorithm. For instance judging by the words you picked right now, it might assume you are a: - Woman This specific example of words came from a study from 2019 where Park and colleagues developed a Gender Classification System (GCS) that had an aim to identify the gender of users making posts on an AIDS-related bulletin board. The GCS would pair gender with the frequency of sentiment-driven words, and came to the conclusion that women used ‘thank,’ ‘bless,’ ‘scary,’ and ‘illness’ twice as much as men, while they used ‘accurate,’ ‘important,’ ‘issue,’ and ‘aches’ twice more than women.2 It's really not only related to the words you use. Another study by Yan and colleagues from 2006 identified the gender of internet bloggers based of off word fonts and cases, punctuation marks, and emoticons.3 [[Okay..| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?-T]] [[So?| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?-T]] [[Sure| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?-T]] [[Spooky| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?-T]] ---- 1 Lin, Feng, & Wu, Yingxiao, & Zhuang, Yan, & Long, Xi, & Xu, Wenyao. (2015). Human gender classification: A review. <a href="http://cse.ucdenver.edu/~linfen/papers/2016_IJBM_gender.pdf" target="_blank">http://cse.ucdenver.edu/~linfen/papers/2016_IJBM_gender.pdf.</a> 2 Park, Sunghee, & Woo, Jiyoung (2019). Gender Classification Using Sentiment Analysis and Deep Learning in a Health Web Forum. Applied Sciences., 9, 1249. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/app9061249" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.3390/app9061249.</a> 3 Yan, Xiang, & Yan, Ling (2006). Gender Classification of weblog authors. In Proceedings of the Conference: Computational Approaches to Analyzing Weblogs, Papers from the 2006 AAAI Spring Symposium, Technical Report SS-06-03, Stanford, California, USA, March 27-29, 2006 (pp. 228–230).

Twitter has gender classification algorithms that analyse the language, vocabulary and word frequency of their users.1 Based on this analysis, they infer gender to you which basically means you get assigned a gender by the algorithm. For instance judging by the words you picked right now, it might assume you are a: - Man This specific example of words came from a study from 2019 where Park and colleagues developed a Gender Classification System (GCS) that had an aim to identify the gender of users making posts on an AIDS-related bulletin board. The GCS would pair gender with the frequency of sentiment-driven words, and came to the conclusion that women used ‘thank,’ ‘bless,’ ‘scary,’ and ‘illness’ twice as much as men, while they used ‘accurate,’ ‘important,’ ‘issue,’ and ‘aches’ twice more than women.2 It's really not only related to the words you use. Another study by Yan and colleagues from 2006 identified the gender of internet bloggers based of off word fonts and cases, punctuation marks, and emoticons.3 [[Okay..| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?-T]] [[So?| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?-T]] [[Sure| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?-T]] [[Spooky| Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life?-T]] ---- 1 Lin, Feng, & Wu, Yingxiao, & Zhuang, Yan, & Long, Xi, & Xu, Wenyao. (2015). Human gender classification: A review. <a href="http://cse.ucdenver.edu/~linfen/papers/2016_IJBM_gender.pdf" target="_blank">http://cse.ucdenver.edu/~linfen/papers/2016_IJBM_gender.pdf.</a> 2 Park, Sunghee, & Woo, Jiyoung (2019). Gender Classification Using Sentiment Analysis and Deep Learning in a Health Web Forum. Applied Sciences., 9, 1249. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/app9061249" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.3390/app9061249.</a> 3 Yan, Xiang, & Yan, Ling (2006). Gender Classification of weblog authors. In Proceedings of the Conference: Computational Approaches to Analyzing Weblogs, Papers from the 2006 AAAI Spring Symposium, Technical Report SS-06-03, Stanford, California, USA, March 27-29, 2006 (pp. 228–230).

Do you think this doesn’t have any consequences on your life? [[Yes | Well-T]] [[No | Well-T]]

Well.. it does. Sure, the scope of the consequences it has on your life have not fully been determined, but we know about a part of it. For instance, the data extracted from large datasets are used for subsequent decision-making and micro-targeting.1 What this means is that your behaviour can be predicted for marketing purposes and influenced for generating profit.2 And it’s not only marketing that is affected by this. You can also get an automatic refusal of an online credit card, e-recruited (without human intervention), or misdiagnosed.3 So, the consequences go far and wide. Gender gets baked into us in its most stereotypical binary. You might think of the online space as a liberating one where you get to express yourself in ways that you can’t AFK.4 But, truth be told, what transpires there is what ends up impacting your day-to-day expression. These algorithms—at least at the time of writing this—don’t recognise any gender non-conformity or transness, which is a problem in and of itself. Nowadays, we could equally ask whether you even exist if you are not registered by the algorithmic gaze. Instead, you get pigeonholed into ‘male’ and ‘female’, whether you like it or not. [[Yikes. How does it affect cis people?]] [[Uh oh. What else do I need to know?]] --- 1 Hildebrandt, M., & Gutwirth, S. (2008). Profiling the European citizen. Heidelberg: Springer. 2 Wachter, S. (2020). Affinity profiling and discrimination by association in online behavioural advertising. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 35(2). 3 Hänold, S. (2018). Profiling and Automated Decision-Making: Legal Implications and Shortcomings. In M. Corrales, M. Fenwick, & N. Forgó (Eds.), Robotics, ai and the future of law. perspectives in law, business and innovation (pp. 123–153). Singapore: Springer. 4 I’m purposefully using AFK instead of IRL (in real life) here to highlight what Legacy Russell said about the online sphere being as much ‘real life’ as our life away from the keyboard is.

It’s quite accurate for cishet men, but has a bigger percentage of misgendering for pretty much everyone else (women, gay men, trans and enby people). [[Uh oh. What else do I need to know?]]

That in some social media platforms these algorithms will still run and classify you, even if you have opted out of providing your gender or sex in your personal details. Assuming that is really even an option within a given platform. In the case of Twitter,1 your account suggestions, advertising, recommendations and timeline rankings are all impacted by the gender its algorithm assigns you. To assign a gender to you, they look at your user content, activity, relationships and interactions on the platform.2 The emphasis is always that this is done for your benefit. If you want to have a good, enjoyable, personalised twitter account, you need to be fine with it making assumptions about who you are. [[Show me the receipts]] --- 1 I’m refusing to write X, might as well deadname a platform that a transphobe is currently running. 2 Robinson, L., Cotten, S. R., Ono, H., Quan-Haase, A., Mesch, G., Chen, W., et al. (2015). Digital inequalities and why they matter. Information. Communication & Society, 18(5), 569–582. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1012532" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1012532.</a>

According to one smaller study, which included 109 respondents, only 8% of men were misgendered, compared to the 25% of gay men and 16% of straight women. Bisexual individuals were misgendered at a rate of between 20-25%, and non-binary individuals were misgendered in all cases.1 Btw, do you use any of these other platforms? [[Tumblr]] [[TikTok and/or Instagram]] [[No|No-END]] --- 1 E. Fosch-Villaronga, A. Poulsen, R.A. Søraa, B.H.M. Custers, “A little bird told me your gender: Gender inferences in social media”, Information Processing & Management, Volume 58, Issue 3, 2021, 102541, ISSN 0306-4573, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102541" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102541.</a>