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From: wcf@psuhcx.psu.edu (Bill Fenner)
Newsgroups: misc.legal,news.admin,soc.women
Subject: Re: A real sweetheart
Message-ID: <312@psuhcx.psu.edu>
Date: 30 Jul 88 17:01:07 GMT
References: <12624@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1809@iscuva.ISCS.COM> <343@tekbspa.UUCP>
Reply-To: wcf@psuhcx (Bill Fenner)
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 25

In article <343@tekbspa.UUCP> mathon@tekbspa.UUCP (John D. Mathon ) writes:
|> In article <12624@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> era1987@violet.berkeley.edu (Mark Ethan Smith) writes:
|> >[...]
|> >The "truth" that you think (and all your friends agree) that
|> >somebody is, in truth, a real sweetheart, is perhaps a defense
|> >in a defamation suit, but not in a suit for discrimination andor
|> >harassment if you persist in calling them sweetheart andor referring
|> >to them as sweetheart, and they object.
|> >[...]
|> 
(sorry I couldn't find the origional article to get a better quote, so I
used this.)

You complained that men calling women sweetheart and calling blacks boy is
like our referring to you as she.  Now, we have a problem here.  The first
two are second person.  Hey, sweetheart!  You, boy, come here!  I can agree
that you have *some* right to ask not to be called by something you don't
like in the second person.  She is third person.  You don't say "Hey, she!"
or "You, she, come here!" (well, you do if you're really weird, but that's
beside the point.)  And you can also say "She's a really nice person" but
you can't say "Sweetheart's a really nice person" and have it mean the same.
There is nothing wrong with being called she.  Are you really that ashamed
of your sex that you have to hide it behind masculine pronouns?  And do you
really think it will make a difference?  Every time someone writes 'he' in
reference to you, they're lying.