I know someone will tell me I am wrong. But I’m not asking or telling anyone to change. I just want to share what unnecessary gendering looks like to me. And for the record, all my robots are non-gendered (“Scout, Skittles, Rover”).
Gender dysphoria is a recognized medical condition, for which there are suggested plans of treatment--up to and including hormone therapy and reassignment. Just go with the treatment, and be done with it, and accept that people who have done so were trying to make themselves better. I don't know why society is making it such a hot-button political issue.
(Actually I do know why... politicians need to find wedge issues to split and enthuse people, to get votes.)
I’m motivated by the suffering I see in our society experienced by gender nonconforming individuals who feel uncomfortable in a world that believes in the gender binary.
It’s interesting that you mention treatment. I’m not sure if you know any gender nonconforming people, but “just go with the treatment and be done with it” doesn’t really reflect accurately the experience I’ve seen other people have. Hormones and surgery can treat the symptoms of dysphoria but the cause seems to be society and the expectation that all people fit in to a binary. (Please ask if you’d like me to elaborate on that.) So here I am proscribing a treatment for society: stop gendering things unnecessarily and stop supporting a hard gender binary.
I am completely fine with gendered personal assistants, which was the original topic being discussed.
And I don’t buy all this political crap regarding gender.
Stop using all women to support your political agenda. Stop speaking for the 51%. Not all of us support you, don’t speak for all of us.
At least in English you don't have nouns automatically selecting gender for you, like in other languages.
Or "they". People seem to think that singluar they is some kind of modern invention, but most people also use it all the time without thinking when talking about people that they don't know the gender.
Having said that, I've never heard a genderless voice (although there have been times when I'm on the phone and cannot make out the other person's sex from just their voice). I think this idea that everyone should stop considering gender as binary simply due to the apparently increase in gender dysphoria is a bit ridiculous. Creating the voice for a digital Assistant is a perfect example of this, since the big companies involved have probably done a lot of research to try to determine the best way to make one that doesn't lend itself to a particular gender but always seem to default to a female voice / character (excluding this "Leon").
But gender isn't inherently binary, even if many but not all cultures have tended to ascribe gender from a binary pallette.
> Creating the voice for a digital Assistant is a perfect example of this, since the big companies involved have probably done a lot of research to try to determine the best way to make one that doesn't lend itself to a particular gender but always seem to default to a female voice / character (excluding this "Leon").
They probably haven't aimed for genderlessness, and in fact has e probably avoided it, because real people have genders (whether or not aligned in the stereotypical way with external sex traits) and conforming to social expectations improves receptions (and, at least in America, there is significant research that, across genders of listeners, people on average respond more positively to feminine voices, which is why the default usually is for a feminine voice.)
You say that, but based on what? It's not a construct that makes any sense, except with regard to mental disorders (gender dysphoria). The mental disorder context is particularly relevant when you look at the wildly abnormal rates of suicide attempts among gender dysphoria sufferers.
> someone will tell me I am wrong
I know "+1" style comments are generally dissuaded on HN, but just chiming in to say that not everyone thinks this sounds unreasonable. It's a topic well worth opening discussions on.
> And for the record, all my robots are non-gendered (“Scout, Skittles, Rover”).
All of my robots are named "Larry"[0]
I would actually prefer it if humans weren't given a gender either. Obviously we should recognise that people have different physical characteristics, but the abstraction of genders with different societal roles doesn't seem like a very useful one in this day and age.
Maybe it's different for other people, but that's certainly the case for me, in movies, lectures, radio, and synthesised voices.