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From: rwl@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Ray Lubinsky)
Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal,soc.women
Subject: "Separate but Equal"
Message-ID: <2573@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Date: 29 Jul 88 12:33:43 GMT
References: <1378@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu> <4311@cbmvax.UUCP>
Organization: U.Va. CS in Charlottesville VA
Lines: 35

In article <4311@cbmvax.UUCP>, lauren@cbmvax.UUCP (Lauren Brown CATS) writes:
> In article <1650@osiris.UUCP> ted@osiris.UUCP (Ted Ying) writes:
> 
> >	What I would like however, is to teach people to respect women
> >	as they are, as FEMALE equals.  To teach those that don't
> >	understand, that she and her are not diminuatives.  By using
> >	male pronouns, you are trying to treat women like men.  That
> >	is a misguided goal at best.  To treat women as EQUALS is by
> >	far a better goal.
> 
> Why does the above, and many more points being made during this debate,
> remind me of the "Separate but Equal" philosophy of South Africa?  And
> we all know just how successful *that's* been.

C'mon, where's the "separate" part in this?  I think all Ted's saying is that
you don't have to put on blinders to accept people -- in fact, it would be more
derogatory to do so.  People are different; there's nothing to be gained by
pretending they're not.

Take this MES person -- by insisting that she not be referred to as a female,
she is helping to propagate the myth that women are inferior (just that the
smart ones "jump ship" and pretend that they're men).  She certainly doesn't
come off like a person concerned with equality.  She'd much rather leave her
sisters to stand alone while she hides from what she perceives as the stigma of
her female biology.

BTW -- "separate but equal" was the accepted policy of the United States up
through the 1950's.  In South Africa, "separate" is the law -- there's no
"equal" written into it.

-- 
| Ray Lubinsky,                    UUCP:      ...!uunet!virginia!uvacs!rwl    |
| Department of                    BITNET:    rwl8y@virginia                  |
| Computer Science,                CSNET:     rwl@cs.virginia.edu  -OR-       |
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