I’d never heard of the word ‘alicorn’ until I started reading lesswrong and I’m comfortable saying that I am not linguistically naive. It didn’t occur to me that it was an actual word until Alicorn posted in a thread that it should be obvious she is female with that user name. Consider that for the same reasons a unicorn-associated handle is associated with being female it might not be an effective handle to signal to males that one is female.
It is probably wise if one is particularly offended by incorrect gender assumptions to pick a username that clearly signals ones gender to the majority of ones audience.
I’d never heard of the word ‘alicorn’ until I started reading lesswrong and I’m comfortable saying that I am not linguistically naive. It didn’t occur to me that it was an actual word until Alicorn posted in a thread that it should be obvious she is female with that user name. Consider that for the same reasons a unicorn-associated handle is associated with being female it might not be an effective handle to signal to males that one is female.
It is probably wise if one is particularly offended by incorrect gender assumptions to pick a username that clearly signals ones gender to the majority of ones audience.