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From: rick@uwmacc.UUCP (the absurdist)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Women are not people?!?!?!?
Message-ID: <716@uwmacc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 16-Feb-85 20:24:53 EST
Article-I.D.: uwmacc.716
Posted: Sat Feb 16 20:24:53 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Feb-85 04:54:22 EST
References: <487@digi-g.UUCP> <615@masscomp.UUCP>
Reply-To: rick@uwmacc.UUCP (Rick Keir)
Distribution: net
Organization: UWisconsin-Madison Academic Comp Center
Lines: 35
Summary: 

> I was reading through a story in net.jokes today, and choked on the
> following sentence:
>
> 	His people spent a good 8 hours a day working in
> 	the fields, and then went home to their wives.  
>	
> This is not merely a linguistic matter - it is insidious, unconscious
> sexism.  I don't know the gender of the writer, but I must assume
> that it was male.  I don't believe a female would have this attitude
> in her subconscience.
>
>				Anne Chennete
>				ihnp4!umn-cs!digi-g!anne

	Why?  "His people" does not say that the women are not people.
It says that only that the workers are male people affiliated with
whoever "His" was in the joke.  If you happened to refer to the people
you supervise as "your people", would you be laying claim to their 
spouses as being under your direction as well?   
	Discussions about "insidious, unconscious sexism" make me uneasy --
they strike me as being a good way to trivialize blatant, conscious sexism.
Consider the current discussion of "comparable worth", for example:
as issues go, the comp-worth issue will probably have a greater effect
on sexism than the content of jokes will.
	An interesting book on all of this is "Language and Women's Place"
by Robin Lakoff -- hard to find in shopping malls, but a perennial
bestseller on college campuses.  Lakoff discusses the question of how
"language" and sexism interact in plain English (aside:  how unusual
for an academic!  :-)).  
-- 
"1985:  Why 1985 isn't like 1984"

Rick Keir -- MicroComputer Information Center, MACC
1210 West Dayton St/U Wisconsin Madison/Mad WI 53706
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!rick