What Sex Is Your Computer?
A language instructor was explaining to her class that in French,
nouns unlike their English counterparts, are grammatically designated
as masculine or feminine. "House," in French, is feminine-"la
maison." "Pencil," in French, is masculine-"le
crayon."
One puzzled student asked, "What gender is 'computer'?"
The teacher did not know, and the word wasn't in her French
dictionary. So for fun she split the class into two groups appropriately
enough, by gender and asked them to decide whether "computer"
should be a masculine or feminine noun.
Both groups were required to give four reasons for their recommendation.
The men's group decided that computers should definitely be
of the feminine gender ("la computer"), because:
- No one but their creator understands their internal logic
- The native languagethey use to communicate with other computers
is incomprehensible to everyone else
- Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory
for possible later retrieval
- As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself
spending half your pay check on accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should
be masculine ("le computer"), because:
- In order to get their attention, you have to turn them
on
- They have a lot of data but they are still clueless
- They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half
the time they ARE the problem
- As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you'd
waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
The womens' group won.
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