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From: travis@liberty.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Language formality
Message-ID: <9010151718.AA26580@liberty.cs.columbia.edu>
Date: 15 Oct 90 21:08:16 GMT
References: <1990Oct11.121502.353@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: O'Reilly and Associates Inc., Cambridge MA
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Approved: ambar@ora.com
In-Reply-To: b39y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu's message of 11 Oct 90 16:37:02 GMT

In article <1990Oct11.121502.353@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> b39y@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
>...
>	   "So I was out with this guy and two women"
>	   "So I was out with this man and two gals"
>...
>	   Equally stupid.  The point is that, unless the two women were
>   in formal gowns or business suits and the man in cutoffs and a
>   t-shirt, your choice of language is presupposing a level of
>   formality/informality which is just as wrong and the implications
>   present in the "man/girl" discussions.

Isn't there another presupposition here: that it is always necessary
to identify the gender of other people?  In beginning your story, you
could have said:

	"So I was out with three friends"
	"So I was out with three people"
	"So I was out with these three wombats from accounting"
	"So I was out with Max, Wanda, and a friend you don't
		know named Kirsten" 

without running into the formality/informality problems you perceive.
You could even toss on "n males" and "m females" in case you were all
hanging out talking about vasectomies or whatever.

Notice that race is also frequently used in a similar way, as an
irrelevant marker when it's irrelevant, e.g.,

	"So I was sitting next to this black guy ..."
	"This black couple was in the next car ..."

This is not insulting per se, but the race marker is frequently used
to explain subsequent behavior.

Also, if we habitually indicate race and gender only when the race is
not white, and the gender is not male, then we project a mental
silhouette: the default person is white and male.  (As a side note,
the mental silhouette shows as someone who is heterosexual by default,
but that doesn't come up with these sorts of language issues.)

>	   I'm not trying to be harsh on people for wanting language to be
>   precise and informative, but it seems to me that the solution is
>   (easier said that done) to come up with three words that could be
>   universally accepted and start using them.  They would map to the
>   informal male ('guy'), the informal female ('gal') and the informal
>   group ('guys'.)  They should each be one syllable, and should be
>   similar-sounding (I think.)

Well, how about "stud" and "babe"?  At least they'd be equivalent, in
meaning and connotation.  And think of the havoc this would wreak with
older generations.

Just kidding.

t