blog entry

Regender.com

I am a bad, bad blogger. I haven't blogged in a month. But I have a really good excuse—a new addiction.

It's called Regender.com http://www.regender.com and it is cool. The site was designed by a UC Berkeley grad and it shares a philosophy of mine: language matters.

I do not subscribe to the "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" theory. I believe words are powerful and what you say matters. If we don't call men boys, we won’t call women girls. Civil unions are not marriages and we can not be fooled into thinking they are. Those of us with full rights don't get "civilly unioned." We get married. You get my point.

Regender.com offers what it calls a gender swapped view of the web. You can type in any URL and the site will "translate" the web page. All references to men are changed to women and vice versa.

Regender helps demonstrate the power of language. Try this link*** http://regender.com/swap/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071902668.html. It's the regendered Washington Post piece on Hillary Clinton's cleavage. Discussing the color and style of a man's outfit on the Senate floor sure seems silly.

Then there is this story*** about balancing career and family. I find this discussion about "Mr." Palin's family obligations entertaining.http://regender.com/swap/http://dailycents.com/guest-blogger/faux-sarah-palin.html

I especially love this regendered paragraph:

"In a country where men balance demanding jobs, families, and manicures, the question of whether or not brains and beauty can co-exist should be archaic and irrelevant. Men have worked long and hard to prove that they are more than pretty faces."

You go boy!

***If you click on the links from my blog, you will go to the Regender website. To see the regendered stories, paste the links in your bowser.