Re: Gender in language

From: bcd@pvv.ntnu.no (Bent C Dalager)

Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 01:04:41 +0000

In article <vohvg316a6e.fsf@blue3.math.berkeley.edu>,
David desJardins  <david@desjardins.org> wrote:
>"AC" writes:
>> This is what disturbs me the most; the desire to remove gender
>> entirely from language.  What is the motive?
>
>Calling both men and women "actors" is not at all the same as removing
>gender entirely from language.  Removing gender entirely would involve
>eliminating pronouns such as "he" and "she", which is certainly a much
>larger change.  While there are some who support that, it's a strawman
>in this context.
>
>The motivation to call both men and women "actors" is to avoid
>distinguishing between them in situations where there is no reason to
>distinguish between them.  Making such distinctions facilitates and
>supports discrimination, so some people are against it.

Removing the distinction would serve to further confuse the language
or else make it more cumbersome to use. As it is, I can easily
distinguish between two people within one sentence if they are of
different genders. If the gender-specific words were removed, I
couldn't, and so I would have to further qualify any subsequent
references to the two people introduced.

"I met two people; a bus driver and an actor. While he was happy with
the new reforms, she was not."

is clearly confusing and requires further qualification in the last
sentence whileas

"I met two people; a bus driver and an actress. While he was happy with
the new reforms, she was not."

is quite understandable.

Cheers
	Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - bcd@pvv.org - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
                                    powered by emacs

References

Re: Gender in language
David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>
Wed, 13 Nov 2002 10:22:49 +0000
Re: Gender in language
David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>
Mon, 11 Nov 2002 07:07:58 +0000
Re: Gender in language
David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>
Tue, 12 Nov 2002 01:53:44 +0000
Re: Gender in language
AC <spam@nospam.com.invalid>
Tue, 12 Nov 2002 02:16:22 +0000