Sunday, December 11, 2011

Oh, semantics. Why you so lovely and so pain-inducing.

I like sci-fi, but sci-fi is not one of my fields of expertise. (Fields of expertise: Dissociative Identity Disorder, Adam Lambert, the works of John Green, Batwoman.) So after TCAST came out, I talked to quite a few sci-fi devotees about how TCAST fit into the awesome universe of sci-fi tropes.

One thing I started noticing was the term "gynoid." Gynoid means a robot that is built to resemble a female. You're supposed to use it instead of "android," since the "andr" root of the word refers to men. The word is supposed to be less sexist.

But somehow it kind of rubs me the wrong way.