I’d like to read the article but I just noticed my work actually has a filter called “GLBT Topics” and… well… stay klassy corporate america.

I remember I went to this Illustration Gallery in Manhattan and saw this New Yorker cartoonists work along with the artists full name. “That’s a guy?” I asked. “Yes, Why?” The curator asked. “I dunno, he just doesn’t draw like one.”

I’m not sure a fire breathing dragon DOESN’T live in the sun after all.

I mean I have some reasons to think it could, especially if you consider what I might really mean by the word dragon.

So yeah, prove there isn’t one.

I give you snaps and props.
Kieryn

After all the brains we have did evolve along with all our other parts, and an awful lot of our psychology has to do with our brains. So while there’s a lot of wrong hypothesis, bad ideas, and generally embarrassing tripe that has been put out there that’s really not a reason to call the whole thing quackery. Those are just ways evolutionary psychology probably doesn’t work I think.

“Following the Military Coup in Thailand in 2006 kathoeys are hoping for a new third sex to be added to passports and other official documents in a proposed new constitution.” Wikipedia article

Thinking about it some more. I’m not genderqueer, I’m not non-feminine appearing, I’m not an androgen resistant male although I look like one. I just have scruffy handwriting.

I also happen to know a male who writes big loopy letters complete with little circles for “i” and he’s not gay either. I think people for the most part can learn to write however they think they are supposed to. If I put enough work into it I can write pretty girly letters, it’s just a pain in the rear and why would I bother?

Considering how much duress I was put under to write “like a girl” I’m inclined to think that there is no innate gender handwriting. Girls just get the shit slammed out of them if they don’t or can’t learn to write in pretty loopy cursive.

I’ll hold my judgment until Andrea James writes her denouncement of evolutionary psychology next week, but I’m guessing she’s going to portray it as genetic determinism.

I was pretty bummed when Corey posted a glowing review of a book trashing a straw man version of evopsych a few weeks ago.

Irrelevant if the study group have all received the same base education, of course.

Maybe this is interesting: frustrated with having to conform to different styles, I finally merged them and created my own calligraphy in high school. My younger sister who has also seen two different schools in two different countries did the exact same thing at that stage of her life. And though my weird style didn’t last long, it evolved into the way I write now, which, funnily enough, closely resembles my father’s handwriting. Which in short means it is completely illegible.

There are of course going to be all kinds of other factors affecting handwriting–formal writing education (I studied Russian in college and now I write all my lowercase b’s as Cyrillic v’s, and also write cursive z’s as in Cyrillic, for example; I was formally taught bits of old-style and Italic cursive, but never all of either; I’m a calligrapher with a preference for Gothic scripts); temperament; job (doctors tend to have illegible handwriting; museum collections managers tend to have very small, very tidy and legible handwriting); native speaker status (people who learn a new writing system tend to write both more carefully and less fluidly, especially at first); and so on.

But, accurate or not, many people will often tend to categorize these complexities of handwriting as “masculine” or “feminine” regardless of their origin.

Incidentally, almost every calligrapher I know has either an affinity for “round” or “straight” hands–round hands tend to be more slanted and involve ovals or circles as the base letterforms. Straight hands include the assorted Gothic hands and tend to be more vertical. In extreme cases, these hands can completely lack curves. I haven’t noticed any particular gender trends among modern calligraphers, but the Elizabethans believed Secretary (a semi-cursive, curvy/spiky hybrid hand of Gothic origin) was too difficult for women and most women consequently learned Italic (educated men often knew both and would switch back and forth within a given document). So obviously societal preferences play a role as well.

Would a person with extremely active mirror neurons and a high sense of empathy have the same theories of morality as someone with a very low sense of empathy, just to grab one potential example.

It’s hard to explain exactly what the difference is between “masculine” and “feminine” handwriting; and I’m tempted to echo the immortal words of Justice Potter Stewart and simply say, “I know it when I see it.” But I guess that the key difference is that “feminine” handwriting tends to look more fluid, more precise, and neater, with letters that are more “curvy” and “loopy”; whereas “masculine” handwriting tends to look more deliberate (even halting), more uneven, and often quite messy, with letters that are more “square”, “angular”, or even “jagged”. I don’t know why there tends to be such a noticeable difference between men’s and women’s handwriting. I’d have to guess that at least part of the explanation has to be cultural. However, I wouldn’t rule out biological explanations entirely. I’m tempted to speculate that women may (on average) have better fine motor control than men do. (But, since I’m not a neurologist, I really don’t know that for sure.)

For more info check out the Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fa%27afafine

Go and sample the writing of a gay man, or lesbian woman to see ready examples of what I mean.

Generalizations can be made, but there is no absolute gender identifier that I have found that is consistent.

In my regular day-to-day I don’t often come across people who know enough about Ev. Psych to know that it’s nonsense, or those who understand gender as performance. It’s amazingly satisfying to read this post!

One thing I find intriguing is that my handwriting is nearly identical to my father’s, whom left when I was a young kid so he was never involved in my development. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we are both lefties and cartoonists? My mother shakes her head in puzzlement every time she gets a written note from me.

In a short and maybe incorrect summary that omits many things: Many, many years ago women weren’t allowed to use kanji (chinese ideograms/letters), so they developed hiragana and popularized writing for the masses, in fact, japanese women from generations ago were their first written poets.

Hiragana is very loopy and circular, with soft edges and curves every where, and if boingboing.net is Unicode compliant (*), you can see here an examples: ひらがな　(“Hiragana”, written in… Hiragana! Shocking, isn’t it?)

Now, katakana, the one used now to write foreign words, is more like if it was written with a katana on your enemies skin, following the previous example: カタカナ

And now to the point, hiragana is girly and katakana is very macho. Nah, just kidding here, but the historic poetess thing is, supposedly, true.

(*) A good summary if it isn’t or somebody else is interested is here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html