Chrome has a new extension, Not Just Sorry, that eliminates disempowering words like ‘Sorry’ from women’s emails, to help make their language sound more powerful. But will it work
From actress Amy Schumer to life coach Tara Mohr, everyone has been pointing out how women go overboard with apologising and throw the word ‘sorry’ around as if it means nothing for anything and everything— bumping into someone on the street to asking a simple question in a classroom. It is all this criticism against the women kind that inspired Tami Reiss, chief executive of Cyrus Innovation, a software development consultancy company based in New York, to launch the app — Just Not Sorry.
The new extension, available in Chrome, works like a spell-check for disempowering words. The app underlines in red such phrases in a woman’s email and provides a pop-up window giving insights as to why they make you seem weak. It is up to the sender to decide whether to follow the advice, but it certainly draws attention to all the unnecessary qualifiers she uses to soften her language.
“We’ve found people that have started using it actually get a lot more mindful around the use of these words. That makes us happy,” says Tami Reiss about the app that is already being used by over 50,000 people, just days after its launch. The idea is to make a woman’s language more powerful and assertive by removing six such phrases _ ‘Sorry’, ‘I think’, ‘I’m no expert’, ‘Just’, ‘Actually’, ‘Does this make sense ’ and ‘Try’.
Sorry, I’m no expert, but actually, I think, the makers just might be too Pollyanna about the whole thing. Does this make sense Let me try to explain.
The basic premise of the app stems from the questionable idea that female empowerment is all about ‘What a man can do, I can too’ instead of what the ‘I’ really wants to do. This is counter-productive to the cause as it equates everything ‘male’ with power and everything ‘female’ with weakness. The power associated with power suits, dress pants and basal voices are all examples. Perhaps the best empowerment for women would be to not force them to nitpick every word they utter and write to fit the male-dominated society.
Just leaving this piece by Melissa Lozada-Oliva here. Tell them no one will take them seriously in a frilly pink dress/ or that make up. Tell them they have a confidence problem/ that they should learn to speak up/ like the hyper-masculine words were always the first to raise their hands. Invisible red pens in college degrees have been making their way into the middle of my sentences. I have been crossing things out every time I’ve been taking a moment to think.
*Flies away in a frilly pink dress*
