Gender Neutrality on the Internet

Since this is my first post on a blog EVER I'm curious to see what the general impressions of me (the author) already are.

I've decided to try and remain pretty anonymous so far- I purposely have not made any allusions to my gender or age (as of yet) because I think that is one of the coolest powers of the internet- total anonymity, if one chooses it.

But try as I might to be gender neutral I can't control what thoughts and biases any readers might have out there (as of now I have zero readers, so this isn't an issue just yet). But often times I find myself being put into some kind of gender box whenever I go on the Internet. Case and point, when I play spades on Yahoo! games, my screenname (which is something like "elephant55" - don't ask why- it was the 8th grade and I was young and foolish) is pretty damn neutral. Elephants aren't really more popular among women or men. Also, my little buddy icon is a dog wearing a cap. Although, dogs are typically seen as "masculine" and cats as "feminine", it should still not be concrete evidence as to what gender I am. Yet, I've observed that during general chatting or heated shit talking, I'm referred to as "he's fucking cheating!@#$!" or "that guy is a total douchebag". And aside from thinking, "mwuhaha Ive totally riled these people up" I also wonder if it's truly possible to be gender neutral on the Internet.

For some reason, I have this suspicion that you are by default male unless you prove otherwise. So have I already given myself away of what gender I am by my template colors? My profile icon? (yes- pepe the prawn is male but I dont identify myself with the prawn species so in the end it shouldn't say much at all). Or perhaps I'm not even human at all- and indeed am a prawn. A totally awesome prawn that could probably kick your ass at spades.

That, my friends, is the power of the Internet. So feel free to stay completely anonymous and leave me some comments, or reveal yourself. Either way strangers will probably still form unfounded opinions about you, but YOU still have the power to either dispell,confirm or not give a shit about these opinions.

Finally: without reader comments or messages this blog will be completely useless to me. I made this blog to create discussion about stuff I find interesting and to see whether I might actually be right or whether I've just pulled this crap out of nowhere.

- Ari Maz