Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:12438 news.sysadmin:1484 sci.lang:3339
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!inria!imag!pierre
From: pierre@imag.imag.fr (Pierre LAFORGUE)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,news.sysadmin,sci.lang,imag.ragots
Subject: Re: sexist language
Message-ID: <3803@imag.imag.fr>
Date: 15 Nov 88 11:37:27 GMT
References: <1460@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> <698@packard.UUCP> <1988Nov9.200939.6069@utzoo.uucp> <10837@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com> <1988Nov13.202622.23562@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: pierre@imag.UUCP (Pierre LAFORGUE)
Organization: IMAG, University of Grenoble, France
Lines: 25

In article <1988Nov13.202622.23562@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> woods@gpu.utcs.Toronto.EDU (Greg Woods) writes:
>....

There are such a lot of irrelevant stuffs in these technical groups that I
may append my contribution.

Why don't you use the latin language, instead of decadent ones as is the
english ? Distinction between "HOMO" and "VIR" allows to avoid frustations.

The french language is more subtil than english : we distinguish the
"genre grammatical" from the sexual attributes. Nobody (male or female)
thinks that an object (or an appointment or an art or a feeling or ...)
is "viril" (male) because its grammatical mode is "masculin".

Maybe is it because we do not know sexual discrimination ; maybe is it
because we have not the same conceptual undergrounds ; maybe is it
because we like the economy of our language : use of a neutral form for
objects and creatures (men included), adjunction of a suffix or special
form only to specificaly reference a feminal being (she has something
MORE) or a very important thing (the sea for example, or the earth/ground
-of course this last one was a goddess, Ge, in the good old greek times).

By the way, when you speak of the virus or the worm, do you use "he or she" ?
-- 
Pierre LAFORGUE   pierre@imag.fr or pierre@imag.UUCP (uunet.uu.net!imag!pierre)