Her over there, using IRC!

There's a reason I think "her" is a very powerful word indeed - one of the most powerful words in the English language - and I think it has something to do with sex chat rooms and erotic stories.

No, wait, come back, I'll explain this one, honest!

"Her" - unlike "him/his" - can be used as a pronoun in the nominative ("her over there"), accusative ("look at her over there" or dative ("I'm going to sleep with her"), but can also be a possessive pronoun ("she picked up her cash from the client") - and that's the one that's powerful, that possessive pronoun.

It's not unknown for me to have, back in my single days (of which there were many), visited sex chat rooms, mostly around IRC servers like irc.sexnet.org and similar places. I rarely used the same name twice (and it was never "ILB"), but I did hang around, and as an innocent onlooker, I was fascinated by the question that came spilling from the mouths of the angry, horny males that congregated in the rooms - which people were girls?

There's an easy way to tell who's a lady if you're in a room with lots of non-gender-specific nicks (although a lot of them are gender-specific; names like "yx", however, are wonderfully deceptive), and it's easier than opening a /query and asking everyone "m/f?" or even "asl?" (question marks optional) - which will probably get you kicked from the channel anyway. You just look for the "her".

This is where the /me command comes in. Actions which involve things like "[girlname] picks her cash up from the client", innocent as they may be, provide a vital clue as to exactly which gender [girlname] may be. It's the small clues like that which you have to look out for, and which I noticed the angry, horny males ignoring.

What was always funny - well, I thought it was funny, anyway - was when a "her" was dropped into the mix in a main channel and nobody had clocked that the user in question was female to begin with. I can't quite remember the specifics of the channel in question or the action that precipitated it, but it went something like this:

* [girlname] shakes her head in disbelief
[male1] you're a girl?
[male2] u're female?
[male3] wanna pm, [girlname]?
* [male4] looks at [girlname] and is horny
* [girlname] has left IRC (QUIT: Connection reset by peer)

Which just goes to show the effect "her" can have on any number of people.

Of course, I'm biased - I find ladies attractive - but I'm having a difficult time trying to consider the fact that "his" may have the same effect. It doesn't seem to carry the same gravitas. Even in erotica - "he slowly slid his massive, throbbing, blood-engorged cannon into her petite lady garden" - it doesn't seem quite right. I don't think "his" fits too well. It probably doesn't carry the same revelation factor.

So, yeah. "Her". What a word! One of the most powerful, and aesthetically, one of the best - well, I think so, anyway.

And IRC. What a median that is, too!