How in the world....

[lilevilpunk]

...Do you tell if the person you are talking to in a pm/thread is male or female... I go to their profile and if they dont have a pic I cant tell if they are a guy or a girl. And I dont want to just come out and ask...

 

[Eilan]

Good question. I don't always know, either, so I tend not to say anything along gender lines unless I know for sure. I'm assuming that if they don't have a pic on their profile, then they don't have their profile filled out, either.

You could go ahead and ask someone directly and still not know for sure. I've heard stories about men pretending to be women online, but I've never had any personal encounters with them. None that I know of, anyway.

One thing you could do if the person has posted on the boards is look at their posts. Sometimes you can get clues from what they've written that'll help you figure it out.

When I was teaching Freshman Composition, I could almost always tell the male and female students apart by their writing. The females tended to be--for lack of a better term--wordier. There are always exceptions, however.

BTW--I'm female.

 

[Weird Harold]

...Do you tell if the person you are talking to in a pm/thread is male or female... I go to their profile and if they dont have a pic I cant tell if they are a guy or a girl. And I dont want to just come out and ask...

You often can't tell, and often because they don't want you to be able to tell.

Unless you're flirting, does it really matter, though?

I don't really need to know what your gender is to answer your question and YOUR profile and username don't provide any clues if I did need to know -- so I'd have to ask if it was relevant.

 

[mrtnmoon]

if you're ever talking to me, I swear that I am a guy.

 

[Guest]

Pssst...

That's because some people don't want you to know

 

[fathom7]

Maybe the way to go is change my signature! Yeah - -that's the ticket. In case you can't tell from the "voice" used in my postings maybe I could add to the signature lines: HEY -- I'M A GUY! LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

 

[lilevilpunk]

umm Okay...Thank you

 

[lilevilpunk]

I thought I had uploaded a pic. onto my profile, however...it was too big. But thats ok I fixed the problem!

 

[mrtnmoon]

you say that you don't want to come out and ask.... I don't see a problem with asking, but if you don't want to ask you could approach it another way. tell the person you'd like to see what they look like and ask for a pic. the important thing to remember is that even with a clearly asked and answered question, or even with a pic, in an online world there's no way to know for sure so use caution....

wow, that sounded so serious. if it's just innocent chat/flirtation and harmless fun, no biggie. like weird harold said, in that case gender doesn't really matter (altho I am always curious about gender, too). if it's a situation where feelings are starting to get involved, tho, you should definitely use caution.

back in my more naive days a woman convinced me that she wanted to come see me. I won't say I was young, but I've always been shy and I was very inexperienced and I got swept up pretty quickly. she sent pics, too... gorgeous pics. I was blown away.... "wow, this really hot chick wants to come see me and do my bidding!" then I found out the same person had talked to other people on the site I was frequenting, as a guy. I still dunno whether it was a male or female, but I cut off communication with it. so, the moral of that story is either use caution, or I'm a dumbass. maybe both.lol.

p.s. I didn't look at your amateur pic thread at first, lilevilpunk, because from a name like that I just assumed you were a guy. I can't remember how I decided that you might be female, but I'm glad I did.... very pretty.

 

[bertrande]

Yeah just ask - it's not a rude question.

Just in case my profile doesnt make it clear I am a woman.

 

[lilevilpunk]

p.s. I didn't look at your amateur pic thread at first, lilevilpunk, because from a name like that I just assumed you were a guy. I can't remember how I decided that you might be female, but I'm glad I did.... very pretty.

thank you, I know th epix arent there anymore, I had to take them down for personal reasons

 

[Baron]

If it's not obvious and they don't want you to know, they probably wouldn't want to get to know you "that way" anyway...