Rising up from the MUD: inscribing gender in software design

Although the 'liberatory' approach to new communications technologies has b een, for the most part, called into question by researchers in the humaniti es and social sciences, who now adopt a more critical relationship with tec hnology, it continues to enjoy explanatory power in the popular press and i n software design practices and cultures. According to the liberatory appro ach, freedom from sexism and other forms of oppression is brought about by something as simple and profound as a change in online handle a practice kn own as 'gender swapping' (Bruckman, 1993). Yet, as some language theorists have shown (e.g. Herring, 1996), communication in cyberspace also reinforce s existing social hierarchies, including gender differences found in face-t o-face contexts. Unlike traditional, human-centered studies of computer-med iated communication and gender, this article treats a series of talking sof tware programs as important objects for studying how software design is als o implicated in the construction of gender differences. In addition to the programs' databases of gendered utterances and internal models of communica tive interaction, these differences are also reinforced and negotiated en r oute, in the ongoing process of talking about why and how a software progra m is gendered.