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From: pedersen@cartan.berkeley.edu (Sharon L. Pedersen)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Coed - slur or not ?
Message-ID: <1990Sep20.191922.12906@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 20 Sep 90 19:19:22 GMT
References: <2150@prles2.prl.philips.nl>
Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Reply-To: pedersen@cartan.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Sharon L. Pedersen)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Yay!  Another language war!  (So much safer than the real kind.)

In article <2150@prles2.prl.philips.nl>
mcardle@apolloway.prl.philips.nl (Owen McArdle) writes:
[what about "coed"?]

Sheesh, does anyone actually still USE the word?  I remember when I
first encountered it, reading the "Anne of Green Gables" series.  I
figured out that it apparently meant "student at an institution
educating both sexes" (i.e., a coeducational institution, but I'm
trying to avoid defining a word with a similar word).  OK, that was
fine, not that it seemed such a big deal to have a coed institution
(notice "coed" as an adjective just means "coeducational" and doesn't
have any negative connotations).  Except this definition didn't really
work.  Imagine (these are made-up but true-to-life sentences):

"Anne met with a group of other coeds for dinner.  They decided to go
out for ice cream later with some boys they had met."

	(Another antiquated usage--calling college students _boys_ really
	stands out to my eye--_nobody_ does that any more, even the ones who
	call college students _girls_.)

Hmmmm.  How come Anne and this group of students of both sexes are
trying to find a group of just boys to do things with?

Gradually I figured out that for some wierd reason, only _female_
students were called coeds.  Seemed pointless, but at least now I
could understand what Anne and her friends were up to.

Owen said it quite nicely:

>   Anyway, to get to the point (finally, I hear you say :-), every
>time I hear this term being used the old shackles rise & my blood temp
>along with them, as I read an implication that female students are
>somehow `different'. That _they_ are not the real students, but simply a
>sop to the co-educational system, so to speak. 

Yup.  And overwhelmingly, being evaluated on their sexual
characteristics.  The term as used has nothing to do with "studently"
characteristics.  I mean, have you ever heard _anyone_ say, "I was a
coed at Harvard and wrote my senior paper with John Kenneth Galbraith,
before I went to Stanford for law school"?

> Now I may simply be over-
>reacting to to a (cultural) difference in language usage (but then the
>girl/woman debate would seem to provide a welcome precedent for this),

No, you're not.

>and this may be acceptable in all the best (American) homes, 

No, it isn't.

> but I'd
>just like to find out how this is viewed by all these people who have
>such _strong_ opinions about the proper nomenclature for the female
>population in _all_ social situations... and any others who've managed
>to stay awake this far :-).

Strongly!

--Sharon Pedersen
  pedersen@cartan.berkeley.edu   OR   ucbvax!cartan!pedersen