sexist language

Pierre LAFORGUE pierre at imag.imag.fr
Tue Nov 15 21:37:27 AEST 1988


In article <1988Nov13.202622.23562 at gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> woods at 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 at imag.fr or pierre at imag.UUCP (uunet.uu.net!imag!pierre)



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