zestyping: Regender.

Ping (

zestyping) wrote,
@ 2005-07-30 04:33:00

Regender.
A new version of my little gender hack is up at regender.com. Thanks to a brilliant suggestion from

eqe, it now alters most common first names as well, which makes news articles read like they come from a parallel universe. Try it out. Hope you find it interesting.

Feel free to post your thoughts on improvements or interesting URLs.

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(Post a new comment)

	jilflirt 2005-07-30 04:41 pm UTC (link)
	This is what it did to one lj entry on my page: different perspectives The man who wrote The Surrendered Husband, a book I posted about a while ago, has ( this ) to say about the movie, The Stepford Husbands. The expanded page is really funny, because it's about gender roles. http://regender.com/swap/http://www.livejournal.com/users/jilflirt/72824.html#cutid1 (Reply to this) (Thread)

	joshbuckler 2005-07-30 10:02 pm UTC (link)
	matriarch wasn't translated (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) -

zestyping, 2005-07-31 12:05 am UTC (Expand)

(no subject) -

rebbyribs, 2005-08-02 06:15 pm UTC (Expand)

	leech 2005-07-30 05:45 pm UTC (link)
	This is just hilarious. (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	jilflirt 2005-07-30 06:35 pm UTC (link)
	Good idea! (Reply to this) (Parent)

(no subject) -

catachthonian, 2005-07-30 08:32 pm UTC (Expand)

	her -> ? joshbuckler 2005-07-30 10:07 pm UTC (link)
	Unfortunately her could go to either him or his. This resulted in the funny translation "stand by him woman". Do you have any mechanism for disambiguating using context? (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	Re: her -> ? zestyping 2005-07-31 12:03 am UTC (link)
	Only some crude rules. Click on the "Test" link at the right end of the mediator toolbar to see some examples. Funny, though, "stand by her man" should have translated correctly. There must be a bug. (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: her -> ? -

zestyping, 2005-07-31 12:04 am UTC (Expand)

Re: her -> ? -

joshbuckler, 2005-07-31 12:37 am UTC (Expand)

Re: her -> ? -

chimerically, 2005-07-31 05:18 pm UTC (Expand)

Re: her -> ? -

zestyping, 2005-08-02 12:51 am UTC (Expand)

	swap guys and gals aaronsw 2005-07-31 02:32 pm UTC (link)
	Great stuff. When are you going to share the source? Also, you need to swap "guys" with "gals" or something like that. I don't use it in a gendered way, but apparently everyone else does. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	more aaronsw 2005-07-31 02:41 pm UTC (link)
	"babe" should be "hunk" entertaining example (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

names of months - (Anonymous), 2005-07-31 08:08 pm UTC (Expand)

Re: names of months -

zestyping, 2005-08-02 09:13 pm UTC (Expand)

	Needs a little more context sensitivity jamused 2005-08-01 04:31 pm UTC (link)
	particularly for rote or foreign phrases. e.g. currently Al Qaeda -> Alice Qaeda, June 25th -> Juan 25th, Season-by-Season -> Sean-by-Sean (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	Re: Needs a little more context sensitivity zestyping 2005-08-02 12:06 am UTC (link)
	Indeed. The rules it uses right now are pretty crude — just getting it figure out whether "her" should become "him" or "his" was a challenge, and it's still not perfect — but i'll keep working at making it better. Keep sending feedback to help me improve it. Thanks! (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Needs a little more context sensitivity -

zestyping, 2005-08-02 09:14 pm UTC (Expand)

	catamorphism 2005-08-01 05:16 pm UTC (link)
	"Housewife" would be a good one to add. As jamused said, some phrases get handled incorrectly: San Diego -> San Diane. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	rebbyribs 2005-08-02 06:17 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, it should be Santa Diane. ;-) (Reply to this) (Parent)

Thanks! and another one for your translation table
(Anonymous)
2005-08-01 11:03 pm UTC (link)

"Crewman" wasn't translated in a regendered news story I just read about the Space Shuttle.

I love this tool, and I plan to use it as a tool to show people how many assumptions about gender we make automatically and unconsciously. What a brilliant, elegant idea. Thank you for creating it.

I just blogged Regender (http://blog.contentious.com/archives/2005/08/01/regendering-fun-makes-you-think), by the way.

- Amy Gahran
Editor, CONTENTIOUS

(Reply to this)

A little add, and a piece of irony...

missratbat
2005-08-02 02:00 am UTC (link)

I messed around with 'translating' my own LJ, with some interesting results. Maybe getting some slang into the table? The Brit expressions 'bloke' and 'geezer' (which essentially mean 'guy') didn't change at all, which was a bit surreal.

But the sensitivity made for a cute result in one area: I referred to Billie Piper, and Regender turned her into Billy Paul. Billie Piper's middle name actually is Paul. She's immune! :)

(Reply to this)

	Nice work (Anonymous) 2005-08-02 04:40 pm UTC (link)
	http://regender.com/swap/http://wcco.com/topstories/topstories_story_214100944.html (Reply to this)

	rebbyribs 2005-08-02 06:20 pm UTC (link)
	Point Reyes got turned into Point Rebecca. I like it! (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	chimerically 2005-08-05 10:28 pm UTC (link)
	Nice! :~) Maybe it's okay to let place names be switched. It would make it harder to tell what location people are talking about, but there are lots of things named after men out there, and that can be "regendered" too. (Reply to this) (Parent)

(Reply from suspended user)

digitalsidhe
2005-08-02 10:23 pm UTC (link)

Just saw a link to this in a friend's LJ. This is fabulous! I love it! Especially the fact that it swaps first names.

Just a few data-points and bugs that I caught while running it on a couple of my own sites:

It doesn't switch "webmaster" to "webmistress".
A mention of author Washington Irving became "Washington Irene", which was kindof disorienting. You might want to check for first-names-being-used-as-last-names.
On the page my friend linked to, I see a few interesting things. I love that major computer-tech site Tom's Hardware became Tonya's Hardware (19th paragraph, about 2/3 of the way down the page). Law firm Piper Rudnick Gray Cary LLP didn't fare so well, with "Cary" becoming "Carol". Again, the last-name-looks-like-a-first-name issue. Finally, while it's cool that security consultant Raven Alder (in the 14th paragraph) got correctly changed from female to male, I wonder what would happen with a male Raven. (Of the three Ravens I know, one is Ms. Alder — the friend who pointed me at your site, in fact — and the other two are male.) Does the Regenderizer actually have login to attempt detection of gender-ambiguous names from surrounding context? Or did it just get lucky this time?
John Le Carre becomes "Joyce Leonard Carre". I'm guessing it would have been okay if "LeCarre" hadn't had the space in it.
On the same page that gave me the last bug, there's a very weird bug at the end of the first paragraph. Some of the text is just plain missing. Broken off in the middle of a word, where there weren't any HTML tags or even entity references. On further checking, it's there in the source; it jsut doesn't display in my browser (Firefox 1.0.6 on WinXP). Maybe it's a browser bug.
My first name/nickname, "Kai", gets swapped to "Karl". Apparently the Regenderizer thinks Kai is a female name? Nearly all the Kais I've ever known or heard of were male, by at least a 4-1 margin.
A reference to "flamboyant as a modern-day Byron" became a "modern-day Barbara". While I think it would be cool to gender-swap Lord Byron somehow, I can't thinkof a way to do so that still makes the reference clear. I also can't think of any good way to distinguish references to Byron the poet from references to random men named Byron.
Hey, "son or daughter" becomes "daughter or son". Yes, it's obviously just a strict application of basic programmatic swapping rules. But the effect is kind of nice.
Mona Lisa becomes... Monte Lionel? Another case of a reference that becomes painfully opaque when gender-swapped. (I would have been utterly confused if not for the context, which was a mention of a character in William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive. Plus, I already knew the text of the page, as it's on one of my own sites.)
"OK" becomes "OSCAR". Huh? I hope this bug makes sense to you, as I can't imagine what the heck is causing it.

Overall, I think this thing is totally cool. Hope I was able to provide you with some useful input for improving it. Just let me know if you need any further details on any of the comments I made.

(Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	Gaah, Silly Typo digitalsidhe 2005-08-02 10:25 pm UTC (link)
	Does the Regenderizer actually have login to attempt detection of gender-ambiguous names from surrounding context? Logic. That was supposed to be logic. Sorry about that. (Reply to this) (Parent)

(no subject) -

zestyping, 2005-08-07 09:44 am UTC (Expand)

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2005-09-03 03:05 pm UTC (Expand)

Comments and corrections
(Anonymous)
2005-08-03 04:10 pm UTC (link)

First, I think that it's OK that last names get changed too, as that has its own illustrative effect.

Second, I was glancing through the Bizzaro Bible and found that "brethren" and "maid/maiden" were not translated. Not sure what the opposites of those are: "sistren?" "manservant?"

Also, little "Monica" (i.e. the alter-ego to "Moses") was described as a "hunk". Not sure that the "hunk/babe" thing is perfect in all cases...

Lastly, I just want to say that your site is just AWESOME. So much fun.

(Reply to this)

	highlights? (Anonymous) 2005-08-04 08:21 pm UTC (link)
	Could you highlight the words that have been changed? It would make it easier for us to spot the changes made. didier http://aida.homelinux.net/wordpress/ (Reply to this)

chimerically
2005-08-05 10:43 pm UTC (link)

"bachelorette" <-> "bachelor"
"hero" <-> "heroine"

Someone else posted this link, and the way "beautiful" is applied to men is very disconcerting. But I think it should be left that way. :~) And maybe months that are switched are okay, too, even if they're a bit confusing ("Anthony Fools' Day").

You have logs of all this, right? It might be interesting to see what people are doing with this ...

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	zestyping 2005-08-07 09:47 am UTC (link)
	Added these entries to the table, thanks. "April Fools" is now detected as a fixed phrase (rather than someone whose first name is "April" and last name is "Fools"). (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jesserud 2005-08-07 06:32 am UTC (link)
	It should replace "chick" with something, but I don't know what. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	zestyping 2005-08-07 09:47 am UTC (link)
	What do you think of "dude"? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

(no subject) -

jesserud, 2005-08-08 02:44 am UTC (Expand)

(no subject) -

jesserud, 2005-08-08 04:06 am UTC (Expand)

(no subject) -

xatharine, 2005-08-09 05:53 am UTC (Expand)

(no subject) -

xatharine, 2005-08-09 05:54 am UTC (Expand)

	Debugging angharad 2005-08-09 07:12 am UTC (link)
	(This is such a nifty tool.) Some unswapped words from the Wikipedia "Masculism" article: LadyWiki lesbian lesbianism misandry misogyny Muhammad (a pretty common spelling variant) superwomen transfeminism womanism And an unusual one: "In particular Dianic Wicca is a religion whose origins lie within radical masculism." (Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	Re: Debugging angharad 2005-08-09 07:17 am UTC (link)
	To be clearer, I mean the article that was originally about Feminism. (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Debugging -

zestyping, 2005-08-09 01:09 pm UTC (Expand)

Re: Debugging -

rettiger, 2005-08-09 02:53 pm UTC (Expand)

Re: Debugging -

angharad, 2005-08-09 06:25 pm UTC (Expand)

	Also angharad 2005-08-09 07:20 am UTC (link)
	You'll want to debug the source code of http://regender.com/index.html, because I can see some dangling CSS, and because some of the text is white on white. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Also zestyping 2005-08-09 01:13 pm UTC (link)
	I'm surprised to hear this. I edited the page to make sure that it validates (both for HTML and CSS). Does it look better to you now? What browser are you using? I've been testing on Firefox and Safari. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)(Expand)

Re: Also -

rettiger, 2005-08-09 02:51 pm UTC (Expand)

Re: Also -

angharad, 2005-08-09 06:27 pm UTC (Expand)

	rettiger 2005-08-09 02:51 pm UTC (link)
	brethren doesn't translate (Reply to this)

	Quantum Masculist Mnemotechnics catachthonian 2005-08-09 04:05 pm UTC (link)
	http://www.mcluhan.utoronto.ca/academy/carolynguertin/diss.html Not translated: patriarchal feminized feminisms cyberfeminist cyberfeminism http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101021111/ "Odds are against a man over 35 bearing children" Would it be possible/desirable to attempt to swap homologous female and male organs? (Reply to this)

	pyrop 2005-08-09 05:43 pm UTC (link)
	Bwahahah, this is awesome. Suggested additions: Karl <-> Karla (and Carl <-> Carla) Nathan <-> Natalie (Reply to this)

	rikchik 2005-08-10 06:24 pm UTC (link)
	You seem to be missing "bride". (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2005-08-11 05:28 am UTC (link)
	Christ, I'm pretty liberal but you need to get grow a pair and get a life. This crap will not help you to lose your virginity. (Reply to this)

Same Sh*t, Different Decade
(Anonymous)
2005-08-11 06:47 am UTC (link)

Oh, I guess you are the kind of people that go around bastardizing the English language by changing "HIStory to "HERstory" because of, "like, the disenfranchised and the oppressed and, like, justice and stuff." Right.

I guess we should go all out and invent some sort of Orwellian Newspeak (or, better yet, Duckspeak!) that obliterates a) any qualification, b) any distinction, c) all superlatives and d) all comparatives, so we're all nice, uniform, P.C., correct and mother fucking boring.

You people sicken me, you and your bored North American decadence. Why not look ahead, admit that what we have now is not half damn bad compared to other places and struggle for a better future instead of a) rehashing the past, b) designing a language through revolution, not evolution (look at Esperanto and Interlingua; hell, look at French - form over function is what that language is).

Well, whatever gets you going; go back to your liberal "what if" lovefest. Somehow, as a bisexual, white, half-Jewish immigrant (twice) white male I don't feel compelled to dump my problems on the world in order to recontextualize my personal experience and "let the healing begin," hah, whether I look like your favourite word "HERgemony" or not (I like the sound of that!) Fuck the fuckers who do you wrong and move on, you damn demagogues.

Oh yeah, and since the system doesn't let me leave my name, it's Mike and my blog is at http://www.mig81.com/. Do your worst.

(Reply to this) (Thread)(Expand)

	*Re: Same Sht, Different Decade** (Anonymous) 2006-11-18 06:42 pm UTC (link)
	I'm really sorry that you were apparently tied up and forced to use regender on threat of being tortured to death. (Reply to this) (Parent)

Re: Same Sh*t, Different Decade - (Anonymous), 2006-11-23 06:54 am UTC (Expand)

	(Anonymous) 2005-08-11 06:03 pm UTC (link)
	One of the Google News stories tells the bizarre story of women with prostate cancer. Should some more appropriate organs be gender-swapped also? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	regnboga 2006-11-21 09:39 pm UTC (link)
	Seconded. I was reading the Regendered version of Karen Healey's Girls Read Comics column, and references to male boobs, tits and breasts were a little strange. Fortunately, butts seems to be comfortably gender neutral. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sethg_prime 2005-08-12 06:11 pm UTC (link)
	"Karl Marx" gets translated to "Karen Mark". I didn't realize "Marx" was a female name. (Reply to this)

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