Xref: utzoo news.admin:3092 misc.legal:5375 soc.women:12080
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rcj@moss.ATT.COM
From: rcj@moss.ATT.COM
Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal,soc.women
Subject: Re: Proposed lawsuit
Keywords: Sexual, gender, discrimination,pronouns,language
Message-ID: <29966@clyde.ATT.COM>
Date: 21 Jul 88 18:29:52 GMT
References: <12165@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <6278@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <12180@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1040@unccvax.UUCP> <23898@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> <792@isieng.UUCP>
Sender: nuucp@clyde.ATT.COM
Reply-To: rcj@moss.UUCP (Curtis Jackson)
Followup-To: soc.women
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany NJ
Lines: 32

[I've directed followups to soc.women in an attempt to get the non-news-
 related crap out of news.admin]

In article <792@isieng.UUCP> roy@isieng.UUCP (Roy Wells) writes:
}In article <23898@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP (William Lieberman) writes:
}>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,

Yes, it's true!  And the government just last week passed special
legislation declaring that as of 1 January 1989 all references to
the word "woman" would be stricken from government documents and
replaced with the non-sexist term "woperchild".

Senator Politi Correct, Chair of the Committee for Frivolous Language
Mutilation, explained the reason for the new term:

"'woman' is clearly misleading, in that it contains the word 'man';
 this is very sexist.  We therefore changed the 'man' to 'person',
 giving us 'woperson'.  But this has the male term 'son' in it, so
 we after much debate we substituted the non-sexist term 'child' for
 'son', yielding the non-sexist and actually rather lyrical term
 'woperchild'.  We're all quite proud of it."

Curtis Jackson	-- moss!rcj  201-386-6409  (CORNET 232)
	...![ att ulysses ucbvax allegra ]!moss!rcj
	...![ att ucbvax akgua watmath  ]!clyde!rcj

P.S.: I do actually support non-sexist writing 100% -- firefighter,
flight attendant, and the chair (as opposed to chair[wo]man) and
such are really very nice, but I hate to see it taken to ungainly
extremes.  "Personhole cover" indeed!  Hummph!