Sex, Gender, and Handwriting. I. A Scandal in the “Gentle Family”

The background and the evolution of the problem of identifying sex and gender from handwriting are examined in the paper. The experiment of Binet and his typology of handwritings as well as the results of other similar researches are scrutinized. They had shown that a quarter to a third of graphological judgments on sex are wrong what begot a scandal forcing the graphologists to put aside that task for long. The reasons of the idea that handwriting and soul itself do not have sex are revealed as well as the first attempts of its disproof. The data from observations and experiments related to fundamental differences and even a certain contrast between the masculine and the feminine constitutions are adduced. The author gives an account of the material displaying how the latter are expressed in handwritings of not only adult persons but also children scarcely able learnt to write. The experimentally established signs from which even laymen succeed in ascertaining the sex are systematically described. Finally, a demonstration is provided that handwriting as a form of expression manifests a good coordination with other ones (gait, gesticulation, etc.) and produces, in fact, barely a fragment of the “self-portrait” of personality, being embodied in various activities he undertakes.