Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

02 Feb 2002, 12:10 p.m.

The other day I experienced a shock. I heard a…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

The other day I experienced a shock. I heard a radio ad that used the second person and at some point it referred to "your eighth-grade boyfriend." I thought the ad was using the male gaze and it turned out the listener was supposed to be feminine! I'm not used to this!