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From: ran@ho95b.UUCP (RANeinast)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Woman sexist? (Not any more)
Message-ID: <419@ho95b.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-May-85 09:46:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: ho95b.419
Posted: Thu May 23 09:46:24 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 25-May-85 00:00:15 EDT
Organization: AT&T-Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 41

>>Uh, oh.  Then we'd better get rid of the word "woman".  It comes almost
>>directly from "wife (of) man", as if that's all that counts.
>>More seriously, I usually gauge these things by the image they confer
>>in my mind.  "RepairMAN" seems sexist because I subconsiously think
>>of a man.  Even though "woman" is derived as above, due to the evolution
>>of the language, it doesn't mean that anymore.  That's not the case
>>with "repairman". -- RANeinast

>    Seems you badly misinterpreted my last article, which focussed on words
>    THAT ARE INTENDED AS GENERIC TERMS regardless of sex, such as the
>    generic use of `-man' and `he'. `Woman' is simply not in this category,
>    being a strictly female designator -- it is supposed to be `sexist' (as
>    opposed to generic), and it seems to suit its purpose quite well.

No, you misinterpreted mine (Nyah, nyah, nyah <-intended jocularly;
if we do this too long, we'll look like a pair of children: you did it!,
no, you did, etc.).
One of your points was that person->perchild was stupid (agreed) because
the derivation of person (persona) had nothing sexist about it (and the
-son had nothing to do with "son").  I was pointing out that even
if the derivation WAS sexist, it was still stupid to change the root
(e.g., "-man") if today's word is no longer sexist.  What is important
is *what the word means to people, today*.  "Repairman" conjures up a
picture of a male repairer only, so it's NOT stupid to change to a better
word.
>        `Woman' no longer obviously breaks into prefix+root, unlike far
>	more recent compounds such as repair+man.  `Wo-' scarcely FEELS
>	like a prefix, because it never appears elsewhere as a formative
>	element.  Compare with `repair-'.
This was the point I was trying to make, though obviously not with
the sort of additional information you can add to it..


I think we're fighting the same battle here.  I thought the "uh, oh"
and the "more seriously" in my posting were sufficient to point
out the whimsical nature of my presentation of the idea.
-- 

". . . and shun the frumious Bandersnatch."
Robert Neinast (ihnp4!ho95b!ran)
AT&T-Bell Labs