What gender do you prefer for language exchange?

Female or shemale. I really don't like men, present company excepted (and Iversen).

I don't mind. What's important is that the person is nice and kind, and that the person has humour.

I don't do such language exchanges but I can easily imagine that with females one gets a more relaxed non-focused exchange instead of a transaction type of goal-directed one, kind of like how each sex approaches shopping. Which might not be an issue if one is paying for a tutor where it is more one-way.

With either sex, as a man in his 50s like BD, I think a significant age disparity might be more of an issue, since I imagine one finds mostly younger people interested in being language partners.

As a single man, I obviously try to find excuses to spend time with women, and as a teacher, I generally don't do that many language exchanges (competing with myself).

Females, only. I also only work with female language tutors.

Mostly dudes. I'm married, so I'm not looking for dates or flirting, and it seems to be mostly men who contact me anyway. I have had some good exchanges with women on occasion, though.

Also one of the main language learning sites I frequent has probably at least a 5 to 1 male to female ratio, so it often just happens that the people I run across are guys.

This is my reasoning too. While I have many male friends and colleagues in the real world, I'm just not interested in sifting through the guys online who are only interested in talking to women. I'm also wary when accepting a new male student on italki if I can see from his student history that he's worked with multiple female teachers - and no men.

While I'm sure that I'm missing out on some good language partners, the fact is that many men who contact women for language exchange are interested in flirting - and I'm really not.

Maybe it's different in real life? I haven't done the online languages conversations at all, but I know someone who is German native, sometimes I meet a Dutch native, and now my parents and me live in London I will have much practice in English although mostly we know French people until now, but it's only very short time. we are back in Belgium this week, and although the foreigners think that all the Belgians are multilingual, in Wallonia mostly the people speak only French.

anyway, for my real life languages partners I don't mind if the person is male or female.

It's not the voice, it's the behavior. I don't hate men, but on the other hand I've never had any male friends past high school. Language geek males seem better somehow but you all live distant. (If I could borrow a DNA sample Iversen and Richard Simcott could be cloned and reconstituted in my spare time, but of course they'd have to be trained to be polyglots ! But Iversen v2 could learn Mandarin and come to relish the characters.)

Sorry Big Dog!

(And all of the other men on this forum...seriously, we need some more female members. This place is in danger of turning into a boys' club.)

I know that there are many men out there looking for a language exchange who aren't interested in flirting. But there's a large - and very vocal - subset of men who are just interested in talking up girls. I've received so many messages that start with a variation of: "I am learning English (French) and am looking for a girl to talk to. Are you single?"

While obviously not all men are interested in flirting, enough of them are (especially in the relative social anonymity of the internet) that it just isn't worth it to sift through to find the serious ones.

I have nothing against flirting if that's what both people want to do! But as a happily married woman, I'm just not interested.

Not offended at all! I don't offend easily - and even if I did, you said absolutely nothing offensive. I was just explaining why I, personally, prefer female language partners.

That said, I suspect that female-female and male-male conversations might be different. Not being a man, I'm not sure what a man-man conversation is like, but based on some of the comments here, it sounds like there's often an element of competitiveness. My conversations with women tutors and language partners have generally been very relaxed, friendly and intimate (intimate as in sharing life stories, worries and goals).

If I don't feel that I'm "friends" with a tutor or a language partner after a half-dozen sessions, then I generally stop working with her. I joke with my favourite Spanish teacher that I pay her to be my friend.

I definitely think that the benefit of two people forging a relationship (in my case, friendship with my tutors or partners) is huge in language learning. From a woman's perspective, I can relax more easily into a relationship with females than with males, because I don't have to worry about ulterior motives or about the other person misinterpreting our communication.

edited to add: I'm not suggesting that a man and a woman can't have a relationship without flirting, by the way! I have many male friends and colleagues. It's just that, given the large pool of people to choose from for Skype exchanges, I find it easier to just stick to women.

I tried a few male skype language partners, but after the initial introductions, the focus ended up being on sports. If I want to talk about that I am happy to talk to my husband.
Both my long-term skype partners are married women like myself, but once or twice I have spoken to their husbands, when it was a specialized topic that tends to be in a more traditionally male sphere, although in one case the wife is actually the more avid soccer fan.
I've also found I have more in common with people close to my own age (within 10-15 years in either direction), but really the main thing is someone who is friendly, open, and tolerant of their own (and my) mistakes. A good sense of humor is essential...

I don't typically flirt with my language partners, it's just nice to have female company. I have a big enough circle of friends that mostly consists of guys, so it's nice to have a bit of a change. It's much easier to motivate myself to dedicate time to speak to a relatively unknown woman than a similarly unknown man, even though I'm not expecting anything more than a conversation once a week.

In my time with Esperanto, I've talked only to men. If I was looking for a language teacher (whom I'm paying), I would probably go for a woman because in my experience they tend to be better teachers in general. If I'm just looking for someone to chat to then I don't particularly care, but given my experience - most of the people I'd encounter would be probably be male and I don't particularly care.

I've found that for both face-to-face and online language exchanges, I get contacted by many more women than men, so as a result most of the exchanges I've done have been with females. And I like to think that my interest in languages comes across enough that it's fairly clear that my goal is to learn rather than to flirt.

Generally I've found that with women, we're more likely to get along well and have a pleasant conversation, while with other guys it can be a bit more awkward and hit-or-miss. On the flip side though, I find with men that when we do get on we really get on: the conversations tend to be much deeper and more personal, and we become friends rather than just exchange partners. I've also found men to be a bit more reliable and serious; that's of course relative since language exchange partners are as a general rule extremely unreliable, but I've found women in particular to be bad for deciding one day that language exchanges are a good idea, sending out loads of messages, and then losing interest in the whole thing after or even before the first meetings.

All that said, there have been exceptions on both sides and I can't say I've had enough experience to say whether all these observations are actually due to gender or they're just coincidence and I'm seeing patterns where there are none. And almost all of my attempts at language exchanges have failed and have lasted one or two sessions at most, regardless of the partner's gender.

I have no preference regarding gender, and I never flirt, language studying is language studying.

Not really thought about this until now. But most of my Russian teachers have been female, but I think this is more due to availability than any preference. There just aren't that many male Russian teachers, at least not on italki or in the UK.

Personal chemistry (of the friendship kind), and the ability to maintain a conversation is important. Probably more important than any teaching skill.