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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!rlgvax!jack
From: jack@rlgvax.UUCP (Jack Waugh)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: "Firefighter"
Message-ID: <998@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Aug-83 18:38:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.998
Posted: Sun Aug 14 18:38:44 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Aug-83 22:51:40 EDT
Organization: Computer Consoles
Lines: 35

There has been enough discussion of nonsexist  language  here
to  convince  me  that many people won't be budged from their
opinion.  Anyway, I thought I'd throw in two bits.

I like "firefighter" and "letter carrier".  Not only are they
nonsexist,  they  is  also explicit.  A "firefighter" clearly
fights fires; a "fireman" could be someone who starts  fires,
as in Ray Bradbury's book *Fahrenheit 451*.

On  the  other  hand,  I  find  coinages  that  take  a  word
containing "man" and substitute "person" awkward,  and  don't
use  them.   A  woman  can  be  a  chairman.   The  "man"  in
"chairman"  is  not  stressed  in  speech  (in   fact,   it's
pronounced more like "mun"), and I'm pretty sure that for me,
it has no masculine connotation.

I am convinced, however, that language affects prejudices.  I
used  to  think  that "he" was the pronoun I should use for a
person of unknown sex, since that's what my English  teachers
told  me.   What changed my mind was using a college textbook
that used "she" for this purpose  part  of  the  time  (never
switching  between  "he"  and "she" for the same antecedent).
I'd be jolted by the "she", when  a  picture  of  a  man  had
already  formed  in  my  mind.  If I had had no prejudice, my
mental image would not have specified sex.  I think I am less
prejudiced  now,  because  of the language the authors of the
book chose.  I now emulate them in use of "she" part  of  the
time for an unspecified person.

----------------------------------------
     the canned signature of Jack Waugh

     Computer Consoles, Inc., Reston, Va.

     seismo!rlgvax!jack