[clug] Google compared to latest Microsoft evilness

[Jacinta Richardson]

Alex Satrapa wrote:
> On 10/07/2009, at 23:32 , Jacinta Richardson wrote:
> 
>> Only in limited circumstances.  For a lot of the population, in a lot of
>> circumstances it still means male.
> 
> The discussion of gender-neutral pronouns even has it's own Wikipedia
> page :)  The problem is much older than the "there are no sheilas on the
> intertubes" argument.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun

Good link.

> For the moment, I'll stick to using "he" as the gender neutral pronoun
> (along with man/men for the collective noun, as per "Firemen" and
> "policemen") mainly because I'm too lazy to invent a new pronoun.

Be aware that if you choose to use "he", "man" and "men" as gender neutral terms
that a very large portion of your audience will not see those terms as gender
neutral and will instead view you as being exclusionary.  I agree that they were
historically used as if gender neutral, but I think that has a lot more to do
with the relative positions of men and women historically, plus the gendered
nature of most European languages, than the correctness in doing so.  Words are
political beasts.  ;)

Many of the Christian clergy will tell you that when Jesus spoke of his "Father"
he was referring to a familial position of respect rather than making a specific
declaration of God's gender.  They will assert that we say He and His with
respect to God as a common language short hand without implying that God has a
gender.  Yet the vast majority of people view God as male because of our
language about Him and associated imagery.  To talk about God in a feminine
sense is (and has been for a few centuries) an unusual, almost rebellious thing
to do, verging on blasphemy to some.

I would rather redraft what I am writing a few times in order to make sure it
says what I mean, and to make sure that most people will understand it to mean
the same thing, than use language short-cuts that cause parts of my target
audience to feel excluded.  Not to miss that using "he" in a gender neutral
sense can lead to some very strange sentences:

	Before starting the procedure the doctor must ask the patient if he has
	any contra-indicating issues such as pregnancy, breast-feeding, high
	blood pressure or haemophilia.

I am very happy about how our language is changing to allow the titles in
professions to remove their gendered labels.  We have police officers, fire
fighters; instead of police men and fire men.  We have the meeting chair, rather
than chair man.  Many professions weren't labelled as such anyway: engineer,
baker, cleaner, soldier, doctor, nurse, teacher, physicist, researcher,
programmer.  Then there are the -ress professions:
	actor/actress    =>  actor
	waiter/waitress	 =>  serving staff
etc.  These are being worked around too.

All the best,

	J

-- 
   ("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._          |  Jacinta Richardson         |
    `6_ 6  )   `-.  (     ).`-.__.`)  |  Perl Training Australia    |
    (_Y_.)'  ._   )  `._ `. ``-..-'   |      +61 3 9354 6001        |
  _..`--'_..-_/  /--'_.' ,'           | contact at perltraining.com.au |
 (il),-''  (li),'  ((!.-'             |   www.perltraining.com.au   |