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Bugmaster comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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I know what I said about unicorns above, and I think that's still relevant, but I disagree with your characterization of the gender misidentification as "stereotyping".
Given that there are more men than women on Internet discussion sites, and especially on Less Wrong, wouldn't it be reasonable to guess that any given poster is male, unless there's evidence to the contrary ? By analogy, if I knew that a bag contained 75 black marbles and 25 white marbles, why shouldn't I guess that a random marble, that I pulled out of the bag without looking, is black ?
Only if you are unable to actually look and check the color. Which was Alicorn's whole point.
I'm not sure how the looking would work in practice. I would feel incredibly creepy if, every time I wanted to quote someone's blog post, I had to first contact the poster and inquire about his/her/etc. gender. Conversely, assuming I ever posted anything of consequence (unlikely, I know), I'd feel uncomfortable if someone asked me, "hey, I liked your blog post and I want to respond to it; BTW, what is your gender ?".
But perhaps my reaction is atypical ?
I am not upset if people write in or around their uncertainty about my gender. "He/his" does not do either, but "(s)he" or "ey" or "they" or "Alicorn" or "the OP" or whatever would be all fine and no contact would be necessary.
She mentioned that a simple google search would have done the job. Granted, the gender-inquiry step often bypasses one's consciousness completely, and it happened to me here and elsewhere on more than one occasion.
Actually a simple google search yields this: http://www.google.it/search?q=alicorn
The first result is Wikipedia, the second and the third are My Little Pony stuff, and they even mention a male alicorn.
This link is not stable. Google uses filter bubbles. I don't have the same first results as you do.
In fact, the first two results for me point to LessWrong directly, the third to an MLP fan wiki, and the fourth to a random news article that apparently misspelled "unicorn".
Interesting.
"alicorn gender site:lesswrong.com" with the date restriction of before Feb 24 2010 (when she posted a question about correcting her gender in someone's blog) gives me a pretty unambiguous second hit.
But you have to know that the person who uses the nickname 'alicorn' has posted something about her gender.
The word 'alicorn' itself doesn't seem associated with anything femmine, other than the 'unicorns are girly' stereotype which is itself far from obvious.
You mean the monstrous, superpowered godlike entity of human-level intelligence that purely selfishly rewards with mystical life-enhancing divine gifts those that save it, and those who would threaten it find themselves and all their relatives and descendents forever cursed, including any innocent offspring five generations removed from a single unicorn-threatening ancestor?
The first time I knew I'd probably encounter a unicorn in a game of D&D, I started rolling my next character.
All in all, I think the "unicorns are girly" stereotype isn't all that widespread outside of certain typical US populations. For most populations, I'd figure the question of unicorn genderness never even occurs in the first place - unicorns are just one of those many "mythical creature" thinghies. Then again, I'm from a rather young generation and I have an extended family that is rather high standards in terms of gender cultural programming and social expectations (or prevention thereof).
In whatever population I am part of (not a US one), it isn't the beast itself that is considered female, but rather that females are more likely to be associated with it. Probably a selection effect because they are slightly less likely to be impaled on sight.
Perhaps the unicorn suffers from a similar problem as the angel. When I hear the word "Angel" I think "Enormously powerful, ruthless, highly masculine yet somewhat pretty enforcer that is quite likely to slaughter you on sight". I don't think "scantily clad girl with harp". Unicorns are somewhat analogous albeit being territorial beasts rather than henchman.
I associate the word "Angel" with an eldritch inhuman monstrosity, the very sight of which will drive you mad, if you're lucky. It is a messenger of an inscrutable divine omni-power, and it only ever carries one message: annihilation.
“The sex of angels” is an Italian idiom for an irrelevant question, much like “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” is in English.
One of my most salient associations with unicorns is dangerous men. One of my friends was a social worker, and he found that nearly every time he saw the lodgings of a male serial rapist or other such severely disturbed male, they were decorated with unicorn posters.
...huh.
Be right back. If anybody needs me, I'll be reevaluating everything I thought I knew about My Little Pony.
Hah, yeah, that's exactly the kind of usage I would come up with if I had to pick something unicorns would be a symbol for.
My image of unicorns as incredibly monstrous, scary supernatural creatures first came from the question: "Okay, it's a white horse with a long, pointy, sometimes serrated or with screw-like sharp spiral edges, horn, but... what the hell do they use that horn for?"
More like 89 black marbles, 8 white marbles, and 3 striped/grey/transparent/other-colour marbles. But still, I don't usually use gendered pronouns unless I'm >95% sure of someone's gender (from the venue, their username, and what I've read by them so far).
Given that the prior for male is 89%, iit doesn't seem it would take lots of evidence to reach 95% posterior probability that somebody is male.