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Bindbreaker comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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How on earth did he get 'he' from 'Alicorn'?
The user name "Alicorn" seems gender-indeterminate to me.
Maybe, but I certainly assumed she was female the first time I heard the name, and I had never heard it before... maybe associations with Alice or Allison or whatever. Anyway it sure seems determinately female to me.
Ali can be short for several female names, but it can also be a male name.
This is a cultural norm kind of thing, but in the cultural norms where Alicorn chose her name, I think it really was intended to be a feminine username. I think women do have a tendency to try and choose somewhat feminine usernames, because otherwise a lot of the time on the internet they will be mistaken for men which gets annoying quickly.
I think something that would allow us to definitely solve this problem is profile pictures (which don't have to be your actual picture) or user profiles.
User profiles good, pictures bad.
Frankly, the "problem" here really isn't very hard to solve: just don't assume you know a person's sex unless you actually know it!
This is undoubtedly the case. However, the opposite choice is also quite popular -- choosing masculine usernames to avoid being harassed for being female.
I assume that is without knowing that the word "alicorn" is related to unicorns? Or are you not confident enough in females liking unicorns much more so than males to be able to give a probability estimate?
When I once wasn't sure about Alicorn's gender, I googled "alicorn", saw alicorn was a word related to unicorns and assigned a 95% probability then that Alicorn was female, which was confirmed by seeing someone refer to her as she on here.
That's a 95% female probability, even accounting for the fact that LW is mostly male? You're amazingly confident that female persons like unicorns much more, considering that unicorns have a huge sharp pointy phallic weapon sticking out of their foreheads.
That's 95% confidence that the username would be picked by a female. Not at all the same thing as a 95% confidence that a person who likes unicorns is female. You are ignoring the fact that picking such a username is a powerful signal (to people who know what it means). I think unicorns are kind of cool but that doesn't mean I would pick a username that references unicorns.
"Alicorn" sounds much more feminine than either "Unicorn" or "Aliborn".
I sold my unicorn when I realized why the guys would never believe my locker-room stories of sexual conquest.
Yup-- didn't know "alicorn" was a word.