I posted Dr. Ruth's initial email on September 21. Avec editorial comment: "Google, show this to NSA and tell them who it's from. NSA, fuck you. Dr. Ruth responded immediately:
"Dude! You are the coolest..."
Humor. She got my humor. She liked it. She had a sense of humor. Weili Ye did not have a sense of humor. She was Chinese. "Dude" is more of a guy-thing to say but in my opinion did not unambiguously reveal gender. American women refer to other women as "guys" sometime. I took it as confirmatory of Dr. Ruth as an American: it was casual, informal, friendly. All in all, not Chinese.
The above, including the previous post, is honestly and truly what I did, what I thought and the conclusions I reached on who Dr.Ruth was. I reached conclusions rapidly, far quicker than it has taken me to write about them of course, but that is the process I went through in the first two days. I would say, using the language of the law, that I was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of my conclusions and by a preponderance of the evidence on the question of gender. Dr. Ruth writes very well; she writes androgynously. She has never used an emoticon for instance, which I would have taken as pathognomonic of femininity. (I loathe emoticons. I use loathsome emoticons because it tickles me to use them. They're so dumb they're good.). Nor, since this was email, could I examine Dr. Ruth's handwriting for clues (Dotting an "i" with a circle: That's a female thing.). In an early email, but not in the first two, Dr. Ruth explained that her interest in China began when "we" adopted two Chinese girls. I still was not convinced. She did not say "husband." She could have had a "partner." Preponderance of the evidence.
Those were my conclusions and my degrees of certainty. But did I know?
No
I
did
not.
"Dude! You are the coolest..."
Humor. She got my humor. She liked it. She had a sense of humor. Weili Ye did not have a sense of humor. She was Chinese. "Dude" is more of a guy-thing to say but in my opinion did not unambiguously reveal gender. American women refer to other women as "guys" sometime. I took it as confirmatory of Dr. Ruth as an American: it was casual, informal, friendly. All in all, not Chinese.
The above, including the previous post, is honestly and truly what I did, what I thought and the conclusions I reached on who Dr.Ruth was. I reached conclusions rapidly, far quicker than it has taken me to write about them of course, but that is the process I went through in the first two days. I would say, using the language of the law, that I was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of my conclusions and by a preponderance of the evidence on the question of gender. Dr. Ruth writes very well; she writes androgynously. She has never used an emoticon for instance, which I would have taken as pathognomonic of femininity. (I loathe emoticons. I use loathsome emoticons because it tickles me to use them. They're so dumb they're good.). Nor, since this was email, could I examine Dr. Ruth's handwriting for clues (Dotting an "i" with a circle: That's a female thing.). In an early email, but not in the first two, Dr. Ruth explained that her interest in China began when "we" adopted two Chinese girls. I still was not convinced. She did not say "husband." She could have had a "partner." Preponderance of the evidence.
Those were my conclusions and my degrees of certainty. But did I know?
No
I
did
not.
