The Prairiedog Files Yup, another wordpress blog

Computers Are Female

The Romantic languages define each and every noun as being either feminine or masculine. It's part of the flavour of the language, but it can leave one pondering as to how they decided the gender of something as androgenous as, for example, a toaster.

Fortunately, nouns largely end in vowels and so that draws a fuzzy line between the two. "Una tavola" is a table, and a feminine one at that, while "la dolcezza" is sweetness and more believably female. "Un cane", man's best friend, is decidedly male which is also appropriate.

"Computer", to the best of my knowledge, is male in all of its Roman forms. While you ladies probably feel that the trouble your computer gives you entitles it to be grouped with your dumb boyfriend, I would argue that the computer ought instead to be female.

Take one piece of software that I use for work. Each time that it loads, it reverts back to its default language of Italian. "I can handle this", I reasoned, on one of my first attempts at using it. I know enough of the language to get by, so this should be a good learning experience.

Try as I may though, the program was at that point beyond me, regardless of language. I fought and fought and probably cursed at it for a bit, when I spotted the solution. There at the top of the screen was a button marked "FINE". "Maybe", I thought, "if I just give the program its way then it'll be more agreeable to work with".

Clicking "FINE" was a bad idea. The program immediately terminated. It wasn't even a hollow victory either, because the assignment from my boss still remained. I had to go in again and start from scratch.

Issuing the command "FINE" was exactly equivalent to saying "fine" to a girlfriend; you think it's the end of the argument, but in fact it's just the start of another one.

Thus it follows that I argue in favor of computers being classed as female. Well, Italian computers anyway.