I think the reason this article bothered me so much is that
it just seemed as though the authors were a little sensitive towards gendered
views of technology. There are so many women in technical fields (and in
technical writing) that at this point in time the point Gurak and Bayer seemed
to be trying to make seems a little moot. I honestly thought the article was a
little too opinionated, but maybe that’s because I’m still having a little bit
of a hard time trying to get my head around the idea that technology isn’t as
neutral as I thought.
The keyboards were a good example of this. I hadn’t really
thought that they were geared towards a specific, Arabic-alphabet using
audience, but they definitely are. Keyboards are just one of those things you
think of as being pretty standard worldwide. But if that’s not the case, then
there is a lot of room to argue that technology can also pander to
gender—either for good or bad.
That’s not to say I can entirely dismiss the article,
either. It does raise some interesting points, especially when it looks at
technology through different feminist lenses. Because there is a huge
difference between, say, radical feminism and liberal feminism, ideas about
femininity and technology in these two camps are going to be very diverse.
When compared to the book, I don’t really see a lot of room
for feminism. As was said in class, the textbook is really just meant to be an
overview of what technical communication is, what it encompasses, and how to
approach while being both socially and culturally sensitive. In the case of
this last element, though, there might be room for feminism. I’m also taking a
grammar class this semester, and during one class it was mentioned that it’s
more appropriate now to use “he/she” rather than the historically used “he” to
be more gender-neutral and all-encompassing; it’s a common thing to see in most
textbooks now.
It all seems to hinge on knowing your audience. If you know
your audience, it usually isn’t too hard to figure out how to word things specifically
for them, or how to write something so that it’s easy to understand.
