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From: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: re: The power of words
Message-ID: <5537@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 9-Feb-84 09:19:38 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.5537
Posted: Thu Feb  9 09:19:38 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Feb-84 05:54:46 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: DEC Western Research Lab, Los Altos, CA
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From: akov68::boyajian


********************************************************************************

from Sherry Marts:

	I can't imagine that any (formally or self) educated person, male or
	female, would readily give up the privilege of reading great literature
	as originally written.  From a feminist perspective, such literature
	serves as a record of the psychological, social, and political oppres-
	sion of women throughout history.  (Conspicuous in its nearly complete
	absence is the literature of, by and about women, but that is another
	topic.)...

	     No, I would never condone the re-writing of any work of literature,
	no matter how sexist.  These works are part of the history of MANkind's
	greatest crime, the continuous, systematic oppresssion of one half of
	humanity. But I see no harm, and great good, in encouraging the imagina-
	tion and vision of the next generation of women.

********************************************************************************

	I'm tempted to flame rather hotly in response to this, but I'll try to
keep calm. Quite frankly, I don't see where you get off psychoanalyzing writers
of the past. The fact that they have used the generic he/him/his/MANkind/etc.
only shows that they followed the rules of English grammar. I fail to see how this
implies that they are oppressing "one half of humanity" by doing so. To say that
they are guilty of "MANkind's greatest crime" without having the slightest know-
ledge of their motivations or characters smacks of the worst kind of blind, knee-
jerk arrogance. By your standards, I (because of my usage of the generic he/etc.)
am an oppressor of women, but if you should tell me that to my face (or my term-
inal), your ears would probably burn from my response.

	Indulge me in a semi-facetious argument, please. Take a look at the words
"feMALE", "woMAN", "sHE". Now try looking at things from a different perspective.
Has it occured to you that instead of the masculine terms being used for the
generic, it's actually the generic terms that are being used for the masculine?
Practically speaking, it makes no difference which is the source and which is the
object, but the implications are vastly different (That was the serious part, now
we go for the facetious part) What this means is that us poor men, who don't
count for nothing, have to use generic terms in reference to us while you women
get to have words all to yourself. We're just ordinary generic human (excuse me,
huMAN) beings while you're something *special*! Women are just special-case men,
rather like squares are special-case rectangles.

	So think about it. Long and hard. Are you *really* convinced that the
traditional generic terms have a one-to-one relationship with the oppression of
women? Are you *really* convinced that inventing new generic terms will and/or
introducing clumsy construction will end oppression of women? I'm certainly not.
As I said in my previous posting, changing the language will not eliminate sexist
thought, but eliminate sexist thought and you will also eliminate the need to
change the language.


				  --- jayembee
				      (Jerry Boyajian, DEC Maynard)
				UUCP: (decvax!decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian)
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