Yzabel / August 2, 2005

Found through Badgerbag, here’s a an amusing tool written by Ka-Ping Yee of wolog.net:

Regender filters the web & remaps gendered terms. He swaps with she, woman with man, and – best – Michael with Michelle. It’s surreal to read the New York Times front page when all the reporters and subjects of reporting are women. (Or have even the thinnest veneer of womanhood: a name.) It’s surreal to realize how surreal it is. Though I’m one of the rantiest feminists around, and I think a lot about it, it still jolted me to realize just how much of the world is about men, run by men, and reported by men. I don’t even NOTICE. It goes under the radar. It’s “normal”. Ping’s tool de-normalizes patriarchy. Coming up against my own sexism — because not noticing the imbalance is sexist, make no mistake – is tough and disturbing.

Amusing, and also giving a lot to think at times, when finally noticing how much “rewriting” a whole site can make its content look suddenly so very different in meaning. I’ve tried it on a few pages, from this very blog to online newspapers, and some of the results indeed end up being almost surreal (changes applied to names are part of making it so, I think—especially when seeing “Frank Inter” instead of “France Inter” in one of my own posts, and frantically searchingthe Edit button before realizing it wasn’t a typo on my part). It would probably have even more of an impact if I were to use it to browse my regular sites during a week or so, perhaps confusing my brain, perhaps opening my perceptions some more, who knows?An example of what Regender can do? Here’s an excerpt of a regendered post at Burningbird:

“Elwell informed his boss in Anthony of 2004 about being pregnant with quadruplets, and that he wouldn’t be able to travel for some weeks because of complications. His boss, Tina Armstrong, showed him a chart of the organization with his name removed in Mark, saying that he was being removed from the position because he couldn’t travel. She offered another position in operations, which he considered a demotion. He countered with a request for the East Coast sales director position, which meant he could continue in his field of interest, sales, and be able to travel for his job, because he could take trains or drive.”

An interesting shift of perception on the world, isn’t it?