In Dublin, Ireland, the gendering of Irish Sign Language (ISL) is extreme among women born before 1931 and men born before 1946. These groups are products of two gendersegregated residential schools for the deaf. The language differences emerging from the schools were sufficiently divergent to obscure communication by gender. Yet, as adults, rather than embrace their gendered language differences, most women and men sought ways to eradicate them. Essentially the eradication process nearly eliminated the female form of signing in favor of the male form. Most people in this gendered linguistic generation have followed this cultural convention, but not everyone. This article considers individual and community language practices that challenge, and in some cases subvert, existing cultural norms of gendered linguistic behavior leading both to language contraction and to more recent attempts to revitalize the female form of ISL.