BTW do you think this ad is aimed at men, or do women respond to this version of feminine gendering too? Like the old jokes about women needing wives?

Back in the day The Au Pairs had a song called “It’s Obvious” which had the chorus “You’re equal, but different” repeated a number of times by the main female singer’s voice, and then “It’s obvious” sung by her and another female voice echoed by a male voice more stating (mansplaining?) than singing “It’s obvious.” And of course the point was that it wasn’t.

Do you think there would be any purchase in trying to go a multiple genders route?

Do your ideas about how deeply this is embedded in structures point to an idea that cyborgs are going to be sexed as well as gendered too, as human beings are?

This seems to go beyond issues of being “offended,” beyond conscious intentions, and beyond free will psychology identity theory of the “I can be whatever I want” variety. Is that perception mistaken?

I’m not sure that women’s voices are not always necessarily more appealing. In several European countries Siri was not compulsory female. In fact, when BMW first introduced its navigation system with a female voice, they had to recall it in Germany because men didn’t like taking directions from a “woman” (see my Siri link above).

Second, of course women patronize these products. In this vein, many women also probably found the advertisement funny, compelling, or at least unproblematic. Sexism isn’t something performed by men and resisted by women, but something ingrained, something in which we are all complicit.