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From: brian@digi-g.UUCP (Brian Westley)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: A Small Victory; Not at All
Message-ID: <519@digi-g.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-Mar-85 11:48:46 EST
Article-I.D.: digi-g.519
Posted: Mon Mar 25 11:48:46 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Mar-85 06:27:53 EST
References: <824@druxo.UUCP> <269@mhuxr.UUCP> <2060@sun.uucp> <271@mhuxr.UUCP>
Reply-To: brian@digi-g.UUCP (brian)
Organization: Digigraphic Systems Corp., Mpls, MN
Lines: 18
Summary: 

In article <271@mhuxr.UUCP> mfs@mhuxr.UUCP (SIMON) writes:
>>>Actually, I do not understand why people spend so much time on such trivial
>>>tasks as eradicating gender specific pronouns from the language.
>>Because it is not always clear that everyone must be EITHER a "he" OR a "she".
>Sorry, but unless you have invented a new genus of human, every one is either
>a 'he' or a 'she'. This does not imply the superiority or degradation one one
>with respect to the other.
Specific people are male or female; hypothetical people usually don't have to
be referred to as specifically male or female.  However, it's quite common
for the default to be male.  How would you feel if (as a ten-year-old boy)
all stories about doctors, lawyers, computer programmers, etc, were about
women, all males stayed home raising children, and the occasional male
engineer was ALWAYS called a 'man engineer', instead of just 'engineer'.
Kind of discouraging, say what?

Merlyn Leroy
"...a dimension between stupidity and substance, between science and
superficiality, a place we call...The Usenet Zone"