Re: Gender in language

From: madcentral@aol.com (MadCentral)

Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 10:48:57 +0000

>>What I meant to say is this: I believe that using "man" in some contexts
for all humankind, and in other contexts for only males, does encourage
and enable sex discrimination. <<

Its a very nice sentiment, but equally a very annoying one.  The word means
what the word means.  It is patently NOT sexist.  If it is somehow construed as
sexist, then the people who are incorrectly interpreting it are the ones at
fault.  This is not a good reason to change the usage of a word.

The endless parade of "political correctness" which is, IMHO, making a mockery
of most of the Western world, is incredibly tiresome and mostly the result of
bored middle-class people with nothing better to do.  It achieves nothing,
simply putting a pretty gloss over a deeper problem and pretending its gone
away.

If people want to stop using the word Golliwog because they think its racist
then thats fine by me, but it'll always be a golliwog to me.  I'm not racist,
nor have I ever been racist, and I do not accept that I should stop using a
word I grew up with because it has some connotation to something that happened
before I was born to people who are mostly now dead.    Nor do I accept any
implied responsibility to something some other folk, who happened to have the
same colour skin as I do, did before I was conceived to some other folk who did
not have the same skin colour as I do.

Equally, if people want to say humankind instead of mankind, or postal delivery
agent instead of postman, or Actor instead of actress then that's their
privelige.  Not me, though.  Personally, I prefer to think of racism, sexism
and any other form of mindless bigotry, as something that happens as a result
of deliberate ignorance, rather than because of the misuse of a few words
common to the language we speak.  I'll make my stand with my actions and
motivations, not by bastardizing my language in the false pretence that this
somehow makes everything okay.

Steve T.
<climbs down and waits for the torrent of abuse>    : )

References

Re: Gender in language
David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>
Mon, 11 Nov 2002 07:07:58 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Gender in language
David desJardins <desj@math.berkeley.edu>
Mon, 11 Nov 2002 07:07:58 +0000