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From: sunny@sun.uucp (Ms. Sunny Kirsten)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Saying It Nicely
Message-ID: <2722@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 28-Aug-85 20:35:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.2722
Posted: Wed Aug 28 20:35:41 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 05:49:19 EDT
References: <130@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 46

> 	The above-quoted sentence was written by a netter whose articles have
> been perceived by many as anti-male.  It is my opinion that these perceptions
> are derived from the fact that said articles would say things like "men do
> <something>," or "men are <something>."
> 	The use of the word "men" is ambiguous.  Does it mean *some* men or
> does it mean *all* men?  The ambiguity is likely to lead to somebody being
> offended on grounds of sexism.

As previous discussions here have indicated, the terms "man", "he", and "his"
are simultaneously representative of both men and women.  They are also
simultaneously representative of both the whole collection and any subgroup
thereof.  We women, who have repeatedly asked in various net.forums for the
usage of pronouns which were non-gender specific, have been repeatedly told
by "men" that there is no need, that "men" is sufficient to refer to all
cases of people.  The term "men" is just as ambiguous about gender as it is
about number.  Why don't you support solving it's gender ambiguity?

I take it you've also ignored my articles which I periodically post in
response to articles like yours above, where I've indicated that in ANY case
of dealing with stereotypes such as "men" or "masculine" which accounts for
any (near)majority group of approximately HALF the entire population, that
there OBVIOUSLY have to me MANY exceptions to the stereotype. 

If I ever said "all men", I don't recall having done so.
Therefore, you may presume that rather than talking of half the population
in toto, I'm referring to the generic average stereotypical representative.

Women are Female.  Men are Male. (<stereotype> is <characteristic>)
Men populate the earth. (Gender ambiguous)

I might as well take this opportunity to point out that the only reason I
find it acceptable to tolerate the use of the gender unspecific generic term
"men" or "he" to include the set of women, is that women are a superset of men:

All    "men" are capable of being computer programmers.
Only "women" are capable of bearing children or suckling them.

That is, a "woman" is "womb" + "man" (abbreviated from wombman to woman),
and a "she" is superset of "he" (the child nurturing addition to the generic).

Language constrains the concepts presentable AND THINKABLE:

				NEWSPEAK for all...
				Sunny
-- 
{ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sun!sunny (Ms. Sunny Kirsten)