Sex, Gender, and Handwriting. II. A Justification of Graphology

The article traces the making of the prerequisites of and opportunities for conducting new, more precise and exact experiments on identifying the sex and gender by handwriting and discusses the results obtained in the course of such investigations. The notion of gender, after its separation from “sex”, got independence and thereby allowed of introducing some quantitative grading into the personality’s sexual identity and advancing the distinct notions of “intermediate” and “inverted” individuals. And, more important, there appeared rather effective instruments for measuring those variables (particularly, the Bem’s inventory and the like). On considering them in details and displaying their assets, the author brings to light the shortcomings and defects preventing them from serving as immediate tools of control for graphological judgments. A special attention is paid to the “physiological” marker of sexual identity – the ratio of lengths of the index and ring fingers. Getting deeper into experimental material concerning its relation to the factors determined by sex, the author comes to the conclusion that it is, to a first approximation, fit to be a criterion of correctness and accuracy of graphological judgments. The results of the experiments performed in the beginning of XXI century give firm evidences that even the inferences made by non-graphologists cohere well with the of “physiological” markers of “writers”, the measure of the correlation being higher than between those markers and the assessments “drawn” out of Bem’s inventory. That is confirmed also by the author’s own findings which demonstrate that graphological judgments, in addition, “predict”, within certain limits, the values of the 2D:4D ratio.