Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!cca!ima!ism780!jim
From: jim@ism780.UUCP (Jim Balter)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Net Language Use (what, again?)
Message-ID: <27@ism780.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Sep-83 22:26:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ism780.27
Posted: Mon Sep  5 22:26:00 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Sep-83 11:12:42 EDT
Lines: 34

Re:
	Here we go again, Rosemarie... Don't you people out there think there
are much more important issues at stake than flaming about MAN-MONTHs and the
like? I mean, would WOMAN-MONTH be better? Or, as many would suggest,
PERSON-MONTH ? Who cares anyway?  (In MAN-MONTH, I think the term MAN refers
to the *species*, not the sex). Why get annoyed at such trivia? 
---
Of all the issues discussed on the net, why is this one singled out in
terms of its importance relative to other issues?  Do you only discuss
the issue most important to you?  Such arguments are ad hominem and
irrelevant.  Arguments such as Laura's that the purity of the language is
at stake are much more legitimate, but belong elsewhere (where I
personally think they could be easily refuted).  In the meantime, there
are obviously people who do care; your asking who cares is arrogant and
condescending.  There are people coming up with reasonable terms such as
work-months, which you of course ignore because it doesn't make your
attack sound as good.  I am sure that most of those people spend only a
fraction of their time on this language issue, so your "Don't you people
..." question is stupid and condescending rhetoric.  I am tired of this
insulting belittling of the concerns of myself and others.  When someone
says something bothers her and wonders if other people have a similar
problem, responses of the form "you are a silly little twit for caring
about that" or "it is not OK for you to care about that unless you can
formally prove that it does you harm" are not being solicited, are not
relevant, are ad hominem (attacking the person rather than the argument),
are negative, and are misdirecting.  If you want to defend the way things
are, do so openly, but there is no point in attacking people who are
trying to change something for trying to change it, just because you
yourself don't consider it worth changing; they will go ahead and change
it anyway.  Don't you people out there have anything better to do?

Jim Balter (decvax!yale-co!ima!jim), Interactive Systems Corp

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