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From: mccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: The Great Sexist Language Debate
Message-ID: <5794@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 2-Jun-85 21:32:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.5794
Posted: Sun Jun  2 21:32:14 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 11:07:25 EDT
References: <2221@decwrl.UUCP> <> <145@galbp.UUCP>
Reply-To: mccolm@ucla-cs.UUCP (Eric McColm)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 35

>the real problem is and always has been one of perception, not merely
>what letters a word is composed of.

Exactly.

>and the real cure is a change in the perception of the words, not the
>words themselves.

The real cure is to EFFECT the change in perception.  Somehow.

>in other words, if a word is perceived to stand  for both sexes equally,
>then who cares how it is spelled?
>----------
>"Is anything really real?"
>...akgua!galbp!bing

Sometime in the past, "nigger" disappeared, to be replaced by "black".  Why?
The problem was peoples' perceptions of the meaning of the word.  Changing
the word that refers to someone is a convenient way to notify people that
the meaning has changed.  And people must then build a new association to
the new word.

The problem with "him" is it lingually includes the possibility of "her",
but is perceived to imply a male.  Bringing in a new word that means
"either male or female, but who cares" won't add anything fundamentally new
to the language (other than a pronoun and some other stuff), but will
have the effect of forcing people to reassess the way they refer to people.
--fini--

Eric McColm
UCLA (oo' - kluh) Funny Farm for the Criminally Harmless
UUCP:  ...!{ihnp4,trwspp,cepu,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!mccolm
ARPA:  (still) mccolm@UCLA-CS.ARPA  (someday) mccolm@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
"Brevity is Wit; Politics is Obscenity; Relativity is Maddening."