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From: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman)
Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal,soc.women
Subject: Re: Proposed lawsuit
Message-ID: <23898@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 18-Jul-88 17:57:17 EDT
References: <12165@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <6278@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <12180@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1040@unccvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP (William Lieberman)
Organization: Teknowledge, Inc., Palo Alto CA
Lines: 62
Keywords: Sexual, gender, discrimination,pronouns,language
Summary: Sexual Discrimination Is Not In Our Pronouns


The brouhaha surrounding the use of the otherwise male terms 'he', 'his',
'him', is just that: an otherwise term.

It is so obvious these terms, in our language, have two separate and
independent meanings, it hurts. Even the term "woman" has 'man' in it.
Should we change "woman" to "woperson"?  But then "woperson" has "son"
in it. So should we change "woperson" to "woperdaughter"?

Someone told me the term "mailman" in Boston was recently changed to 
"personperson".  I don't believe it, but I bet it's not too far from
the truth. I suppose if you do a little lexicographic investigation,
you will discover that our pronouns come from a mixture of Old English,
Danish, Swedish, German, and French pronouns. There's a tremendously 
interesting and eye-opening discussion of these matters in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica.

Also, we are so smug about the relatively few 'imperfections' in our 
language, because, at first glance some of our terms seem gender-
discriminatory (which they are not). How many Americans have given thought
to some other languages, such as French, Spanish, or (am I correct
here, German?) where ALL nouns MUST have a gender. That is, every
person, place or thing, or idea, in those languages has been assigned
a gender, doubtless according to stereotypes. How do people speaking
those languages, and many others, propose to make their languages
'gender-neutral?'  

Is it possible, that because of our relatively-benign sexual-discrimination
in our language, that this has itself fed ideas about sexual equality?
Or is it more likely that the nature of our culture itself (less sexual
discrmination inherently) has led to our adoption of gender-neutral
terms, such as the article "the"?

In which language culture were ideas about sexual equality first expressed
AND realized. The right of women to vote, the right of women to be full
citizens, etc.  In English!  France didn't even give women the right
to vote until 1945!  In Switzerland, is it not the case there are still
some Cantons where women STILL cannot vote? SWITZERLAND?  No English, there,
I guess.

How about Saudi Arabia? I don't even think women are allowed to drive a car
there, by law!  Forget voting.  (And we sell THEM arms to protect what?)

In South Africa, it is true English is spoken, and 24 million blacks have not
a single vote.  But perhaps there the language is dominated by Afrikaans.

I wish also to point out that not a single woman in the United States, England,
or Canada (except perhaps in Wyoming) voted to give women the right to vote.
That was done entirely by men.  There was no violent revolution - no
taking of power by force. It was given by deliberation, via the secret
ballot box.  Men did have the POWER to to grant the vote to women, but
they eventually chose to do so, out of a sense of fairness. This
is another great achievement of our Western society. - It seems
so obvious now, but it wasn't so obvious then (to men). So some men are human;
I wish I would hear from time to time at least some grudging respect for that 
fact.

I see also now that Denmark now, after a study, includes women in all
phases of combat roles in their military, the first country, to my knowledge,
to do so.

Bill Lieberman