Gender Equity Humor

Elizabeth Homer (lizlansing@mindspring.com)
Mon, 13 Apr 1998 19:17:16 -0500


> Subject: What sex is your computer?
>
> As you are aware, ships have long been characterized as being female
> (e.g., "Steady as she goes" or "She's listing to starboard, Captain!").
> Recently, a group of computer scientists (all males) announced that
> computers should also be referred to as being female. Their reasons
> for drawing this conclusion follow:
>
> Five reasons to believe computers are female:
> 1. No one but the Creator understands their internal logic.
> 2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers
> is incomprehensible to everyone else.
> 3. The message "Bad command or file name" is about as informative
> as, "If you don't know why I'm mad at you, then I'm certainly not
> going to tell you."
> 4. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for
> later retrieval.
> 5. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself
> spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
>
> However, another group of computer scientists (all female) think
> that computers should be referred to as if they were male. Their
> reasons follow:
>
> Five reasons to believe computers are male:
> 1. They have a lot of data, but are still clueless.
> 2. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time
> they are the problem.
> 3. As soon as you commit to one you realize that, if you had waited
> a little longer, you could have obtained a better model.
> 4. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.
> 5. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the night.

lizlansing@mindspring.com


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