There's a Twitter Bot Correcting People Who Misgender Caitlyn Jenner

(Image credit: YouTube)

published 2 June 15

A pair of pronoun-mindful internet genii has gone and made a Twitter bot that politely corrects people who refer to Caitlyn Jenner as "he."

After Jenner's historic Vanity Fair cover broke (opens in new tab) Monday, Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey (opens in new tab) and a coder friend bricoleur-ed together @she_not_he (opens in new tab). The account's bio reads "I might make mistakes reading your tweet!!" which, by my calculations, is true only about 15 percent of the time. (Disappointingly, most of the messages to which the bot responds *are* Drake Bell-level (opens in new tab)—or worse—transphobic.)

.@Dylan_Crawshaw Click, whirrrrrr. It's she, not he.June 2, 2015

.@tsp0897 Click, whirrrrrr. It's she, not he.June 1, 2015

But behold—progress!

@she_not_he corrected it in my next tweet. Sorry!June 1, 2015

@she_not_he you right my badJune 1, 2015

Kind of fun/saddening/hopeful all at once, right? It might just be a silly automated messaging system, but it's doing important work.

Chelsea Peng

Chelsea Peng is a writer and editor who was formerly the assistant editor at MarieClaire.com. She's also worked for The Strategist and Refinery29, and is a graduate of Northwestern University. On her tombstone, she would like a GIF of herself that's better than the one that already exists on the Internet and a free fro-yo machine. Besides frozen dairy products, she's into pirates, carbs, Balzac, and snacking so hard she has to go lie down.