The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

2 June 2006

The girl I used to be

The things you find in referrer logs.

Actually, this is bait for something called regender, which takes your average Web page (and mine is nothing if not average) and, well, does this:

Have you ever wondered ...
  • What would the world look like if the two sexes switched places?
  • What would it look like if English had genderless pronouns?
  • What would it look like if English identified races the way it identifies gender?

I did notice, on my first trip through, that the parser inverts the gender of pronouns, nouns where appropriate, even some proper nouns. The city of Edmond, I noticed, is rendered "Edna," which is kinda cute; I can't wait to see what they do with "Enid." Meanwhile, making an appearance are such luminaries as artist Dawn Chihuly, Senator Jill Inhofe, Governor Brandy Henrietta, composer Rita Wagner, and former President Wilma Jennifer Clinton. On the blogroll: Australian journalist Tina Blanche, crazy Canadian ranter Samuel Burns, both Susan and Phillip Gleeson, Michael Malkin, Melvin Yourish, and the ineffable Brianna J. Noggle. (Ken Layne got mutated into "Kendra Larry," which is utterly wonderful.)

On the other hand, I don't even want to mention what happened to my "Screwing for Chastity" post.

Regender might be more effective as a parlor game than as a Tool for Change, but as M. C. Escher (her friends called her Marilyn) used to say, there's nothing wrong with having your perceptions upended once in a while.

Posted at 8:27 PM to Entirely Too Cool


I tried it on my site and it found very little to change. I have used the word "men" once in the last week and it changed that to "woman" and it changed Tam to Thomas. Does this mean I should talk more about sex?

Posted by: Lynn S at 9:31 PM on 2 June 2006

Maybe I should talk less about it.

Posted by: CGHill at 9:40 PM on 2 June 2006

Charlene, this is very sick ... you know that, don't you?

Posted by: Winston at 5:34 AM on 3 June 2006

btw, when I tried it, I became Winifred... A line from my recent post on sweetgum balls was translated thusly: " ...these spiny little daughters-of-bitches ..." Somehow that just doesn't have the same ring to it as the "s-o-b" variety. I have trouble hearing Jackie Gleason sluring that off his tongue in the Smoky and the Bandit movies instead of his famous "sum-bih".

Posted by: Winston at 5:44 AM on 3 June 2006

That was me that checked your site through regender!! Mine was pretty lame, but knwoing how you go on & on about the fairer sex, I thought it might produce some interesting turns of a phrase. I forgot to check your Invisible Woman post.

Posted by: Dwayne "the canoe guy" at 9:57 AM on 3 June 2006

Well, I saw it was a local referral, but I didn't want to go poking through endless list of IPs trying to match it up, especially since (and this is such a blow to the ego) most people in this area do not read this blog.

Posted by: CGHill at 10:02 AM on 3 June 2006

It probably wouldn't have done any good. I was 'researching' from work and you should probably NOT try to figure out that IP address.

Posted by: Dwayne "the canoe guy" at 10:59 PM on 4 June 2006