Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ubc-cs.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!ludemann
From: ludemann@ubc-cs.UUCP (Peter Ludemann)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Sexless language
Message-ID: <1173@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Jul-85 20:39:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.1173
Posted: Sat Jul 20 20:39:02 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 07:05:08 EDT
Reply-To: ludemann@ubc-cs.UUCP (Peter Ludemann)
Distribution: net
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 27

The Japanese language is almost completely non-sexist, yet the
culture is very sexist.

Example of cultural sexism: an ad for a quick food
restaurant (Macdonalds? Kentucky Fried Chicken? - I forget) which
asked for males or females but offered females about 30% less pay
(all in the *same* ad and for the *same* job).

The language does not distinguish between Mr., Mrs., Miss, etc. -
everyone gets "-san" at the end.  And you may notice that Japanese
speakers of English often get "he" and "she" mixed up (although
Japanese can make this distinction - but such pronouns are usually
avoided by using the person's name or position instead).

However, looking at written Japanese, I can easily tell if the
speaker is male or female and his/her social position with respect to
the other people in the conversation.  The language takes into account
people's relative ranks rather than their sex.  And women are "inferior".

The major difference between Japanese and English (as I see it) is that
English comes from the Indo-European tradition of classifying everything
as male, female or (sometimes) neuter.  Japanese doesn't have this
tradition, but still manages to make women inferior.  There is
much more to sexism in a language or culture than whether the
third person pronoun is by default "he" or "she".

This is, of course, all a great simplification.  I would welcome rebuttals.