[clug] Google compared to latest Microsoft evilness

Neill Cox neill.cox at ingenious.com.au
Tue Jul 14 17:10:35 MDT 2009


The problem is that in addition to their formal definition words carry  
connotation.

Also there is very little point in arguing about what words used to  
mean. It is a fact that some words are now perceived as having gender  
bias by most people. Arguing that they shouldn't does not change the  
fact that they do.  If we choose to use forms that are perceived to  
carry such bias then people may infer that we have such bias.

Regards,
Neill Cox

On 15/07/2009, at 3:52 AM, Francis James Whittle  
<fudje at grapevine.net.au> wrote:

> On Tue, 2009-07-14 at 20:55 +1000, Jacinta Richardson wrote:
>> 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.  ;)
>
> Oddly enough this should only apply to "his" and "him" (and also "man"
> if you want a noun).  The gender-neutral term covering the nominative
> and accusative cases was "hit" in Old English (now the derived "it") 
>  – I
> think a larger portion of the audience will take offence to being
> referred to as "it" though.
> Curiously I've never found any information about a neutral plural term
> (like 'we' or 'they') except that "him" (I guess "them" is a derived
> term) also applied here for all genders; I assume the language used  
> the
> masculine terms hiē (they) and hiera (their) were used in the mixed  
> or
> neutral case here.
>
> On the other hand wermann and wifmann are very clearly distinguished,
> and the neutral term is mann (from which man is derived).  A logical
> modern equivalent to the masculine form is either weman or wereman (or
> even herman), but for some unknown reason that didn't happen and now  
> the
> word "man" is broken.
> We also have oddities such as not actually being able to refer to a  
> male
> spouse in one word with a gender-specific term – "Husband" is deriv 
> ed
> from the words for house and dweller (and in itself may not  
> necessarily
> refer to a male, although it probably will).
>
>> 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.
>
> Others would argue that since Jesus the Nazarene already had a mother,
> "father" made more sense.  Also it's easier to say than "omniscient
> parental figure," presumably even in Hebrew (and you *have* to choose
> one or the other in Latin).
>
>> 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'm a big fan of just blurting out what comes into my head, but in
> formal writing where the gender of the subject is indeterminate I'll
> tend to stick with ‘they’ and derivative words – the doctor  
> must ask
> the patient if they have blah blah blah.
> Not to mention that ‘he’ is not a language short cut.  In modern  
> English we don't have a singular neutral declension there, and there 
> fore must
> use the plural form in formal language.  In informal language you're
> probably talking about a determinskyview10 at bigpond.com.auate object  
> anyway.
>
>> 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.
>
> Ah, but "men" means the same as "persons" (or "people" depending on
> context), especially when it's a suffix, so those aren't gender labels
> as such as perceived as gender labels by some persons.  On the other
> hand, it's like coding web sites for standards compliance – at some
> point, someone's going to look at it with Internet Explorer 7 and  
> see a
> broken site.  Despite the fact that the problem only lies in their
> browser being obsolete and stupid, they're going to complain.
> Incidentally, so're the next forty thousand people who look at it with
> IE7.  You can only win in these situations by dealing with what should
> be a statistically irrelevant case.
> The –(er)ess denomination was stupid to begin with.  Actor, waiter,
> host, governor - none of these are gender-specific terms.  I guess out
> of control segregationists just have nothing better to do with their
> time.
>
> Cheers,
> Francis
>
> -- 
> linux mailing list
> linux at lists.samba.org
> https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/linux


More information about the linux mailing list