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Path: utzoo!utgpu!utfyzx!oscvax!lsuc!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!tness7!killer!dcs!wnp
From: wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul)
Newsgroups: soc.women,misc.legal,news.admin
Subject: Re: Abusenet--Reply to Karl Denninger and other Libertarians. (Was: Re: The Rhetoric of Cruelty)
Message-ID: <143@dcs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Jul-88 07:44:09 EDT
References: <11659@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <22312@tis.llnl.gov> <590@splut.UUCP> <1390@ddsw1.UUCP> <12138@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <4870@gryphon.CTS <1420@ddsw1.UUCP> <12176@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul)
Organization: DCS, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 105

At the risk of being included as a defendant in this rather bizarre lawsuit
and of being flamed by some, here are some comments:

In article <12176@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> era1987@violet.berkeley.edu writes:

>...  I remember when you were sure I had no
>right to my name.  And all your friends agreed.  Why?  Well, since
>you couldn't give a nondiscriminatory reason, you gave a discriminatory
>one.  You were sure I wasn't entitled to my name because of my sex.

I think you will have a hard time to claim that you have a right to
be called certain things. You may have the right to call yourself whatever
you wish, and certain statutes and precedents give you the right not to
be referred to in certain insulting or defamatory ways, but I don't think
there is a way under the law to force anyone to refer to you
in any particular way.

>And you found out differently.  Now you're saying that you think I'm
>not entitled to the pronouns appropriate to my name.  And again there
>is only the discriminatory reason for your belief--I can't possibly
>be entitled to the same pronouns men use because I'm female.  It is
>getting rather tiresome at this point.  Men have no patent or
>copyright on undiminished names or on undiminished pronouns.  Both
>are in the public domain.  And you cannot deny somebody something
>on the basis of sex alone.  But bigots will never believe that.

I think you will find very little acceptance in a court of law for the
idea that female pronouns are "diminished". Pronouns used are not a matter
of rights, but of language conventions. To refer to a woman with female
pronouns is not discrimination, but proper English.

>What about the women (or female pseudos) who claim that they prefer
>diminutive terms?  That's no problem.  That's *their* preference.
>When the first women dared to wear pants, previously clothing restricted
>only to men (remember the Bloomer girls?), many women were outraged.
>And there are still women who have never worn pants on any occasion and
>never will because they feel it is unladylike.  That's their right.
>But they cannot force other women not to wear pants.  And women who
>prefer traditional forms of address cannot force other women to have
>the same preference.  Haven't any of you Libertarians ever heard of
>individual freedoms?

Ah, but there is no law saying that I have to abide by everbody's preferences
when speaking to or about them. Of course that might be the polite thing
to do, but there is no law requiring politeness.

Also, by your own style of reasoning, you are discriminating against and
slandering women who prefer traditional forms of address and traditional
roles by calling them "female pseudos" and by saying that what they prefer
are "diminutive terms".

>Some women would never want to work at what they consider to be
>a man's job.  Some women would never want to earn what they
>consider to be a man's salary.  In China, for 2,000 years, most women
>wanted to have bound feet because they didn't want to walk around
>on what they considered to be men's feet.  But men have no legal
>right to be the only ones to practice law or medicine, or to
>do contruction work or plumbing, or to run for Presidennt, or to
>earn a living wage, or to have healthy feet.  It just takes people
>a long time to realize these things.

I agree with you there, but I think you overestimate/overstate the
influence of USENET if you think that postings here are significant
enough to prevent you from holding any job you want. If you don't think
that, then the above paragraph is irrelevant to this discussion.

>and most men in America today would rather not die than submit to
>surgery performed by a woman surgeon, tolerance can be learned.

Caught yourself in your own trap. The sentence above implies that 
one runs the risk of death by submitting to a a woman surgeon. Replace
"submit" with "refuse", or "refuse to submit", and it says what you
intended.

A few more comments:

Mark, you have a tendency to ascribe crimes like rape and childabuse
to men as a class, and to ascribe evil motives to anyone who dares to
disagree with you.

That makes you a royal pain in the ***, and I believe that it is largely
for that reason that people flame you, not because you are either a
woman or because you prefer non-traditional (and ungrammatical) forms
of address.

As has been stated in some of the groups in the context of the JJ
discussion, USENET sites probably are not liable for the contents
of messages which pass through them, since the USENET as a whole functions
as a sort of "common carrier". Thus all this talk of sueing such
sites is illusory.

As for the individuals, I'm sure they can prove that they have flamed
men as well as women over the course of their net-careers; unless you
can show that their flaming you has caused you specific damage in your
job or such like, you stand no chance.

Your emotional distress is easily dealt with: stop reading articles
which come from certain people, or stop reading netnews altogether.
There is noone who forces you to read netnews, and reading netnews is
not a constitutional right.

Wolf Paul
-- 
Wolf N. Paul * 3387 Sam Rayburn Run * Carrollton TX 75007 * (214) 306-9101
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