🚀 go-pugleaf

> Stevan Harnad >> Andre Guirard >>> Saumya Debray

>>> Bengali [and other languages] have only one third person pronoun,
>>> roughly equivalent to "it". [This] doesn't change the fact that
>>> these societies are extremely sexist.

    Saumya, I answered your absurd argument several times a few years
    ago and you never answered my arguments, therefore I conclude that
    you have shit-for-brains...

>> [This is no] counter-example to the statement that "sexist language
>> can cause sexist attitudes."  I don't think I've heard anybody
>> claim that sexist language is the _sole_ cause of sexist attitudes.
>> It's as if I said, "The rabbits are getting into my garden and
>> eating my lettuce," and you replied, "No, it can't be rabbits,
>> because there are no rabbits where I live and still something eats
>> the lettuce in my garden"

> Not quite. I would say that the burden of proof for the thesis that
> linguistic gender plays a causal role in sex discrimination includes
> sorting out the causal and the noncausal correlations. The negative
> evidence from Bengali (and let me add Hungarian to that list)
> definitely counts against this thesis.

    This is all horse manure. The thesis that "linguistic gender plays
    a causal role is sex discrimination" is a strawperson that Lackeys
    for the Patriachy foam at the mouth over in order to avoid
    listening to the real issue at hand.
 
    For one thing, I have not heard ANY intelligent feminist thought
    for years, whether by moderates or by extremist lesbian
    separatists (who are actually lovely people, BTW), aimed towards
    removing gender distinctions (don't waste your time telling me what
    "gender" means, I already know and I don't care) from our
    language. When I use "He/him/his" I'm talking about men and when I
    use "she/her" I'm talking about women. And such language is
    perfectly OK by even the most radical Berkeley feminist I have yet
    encountered. If you think that's what the issue is about, you are
    attacking a dead relic of the 60's, a "strawperson" -- you are
    blowing your hot air out the wrong orifice. 
    
    The real problem is a very simple and practical issue, namely,
    what to say when the sex of the person in question is unknown, and
    most importantly, in formerly sex-defined contexts where one wishes to
    let it be known that no particular sex is intended, such as in a
    job description: 

       Paperboy wanted to handle Fecal Heights and surrounding
       vicinity. He must be prompt, courteous, and trustworthy.

       Cosmic Defrangibrators Corporation needs a Salesman with
       mumble mumble.. Applicant must demonstrate his knowledge ..

    ...or in casual conversation:

       Sam: Will you please get tell Mr. Finklestein's secretrary to
            get her ass up here?
       Joe: Err.. I AM Mr. Finklestein's secretary!

    Now I am perfectly aware that, with thought, the language in
    these contexts can be carefully reworded, so don't waste your foul
    breath telling me so. This is in fact the direction that job ads
    have been taking, although even today one still encounters job ads
    with "he" and "-man" with depressing frequency. But even THAT'S
    OK, since such language is a dead giveaway that the company in
    question is run by male chauvinist pricks who wouldn't hire any
    woman, let alone a feminist, for the position in question.

    So there's still the centuries old problem of casual speech, and
    it IS centuries old as anyone who refers to the OED can easily verify
    by checking under the entry for "he". The natural solution is now
    and always was to use "they/them/their" whenever an anaphoric
    reference needed to positively AMBIGUATE gender. ("Who was that?"
    "I don't know, but THEY sure as hell left THEIR crap all over
    the place"). Personally, I am convinced that this usage would have
    become standard had it not been for the influence of latin-crazed
    normative grammarians shoving their artificial latinate
    constructions upon the English language. Anyway, "he" worked pretty
    well back then, and one reason it worked was because there were
    very few important contexts centuries ago where gender-ambiguity
    was truly required -- people who fought fires were always men,
    people who took care of babies were always women, and it really
    didn't matter whether you misread maleness into generic "he" or
    not because the only people whose opinions and actions really
    counted were the men anyway. This is not to say that the so-called
    "sexism in the language" CAUSES "sexism in society", nor is it to
    say the converse (my personal belief that it has gone both ways is
    simply irrelevant to the issue at hand). If it makes you feel
    better, the truth is that by sheer accident we have no generic 3rd
    person singular anaphoric pronoun, and we made do with "he"
    instead (which worked pretty well when our society was overtly
    sexist). But now that our society is shedding its sexism, I, and
    many others, are not just convinced that we need something better,
    we are openly employing the natural solution -- they/them/their.

    The fact is that a very large number of us who were unimpressed by
    what they fed us in grammar school still feel there was something
    wrong with generic "he" -- I remember thinking it was funny, awkward, and
    confusing as far back as I can remember, which was  L O N G
    before the controversy was raised by feminists in the sixties and
    seventies. The problem with generic "he" is that it does say what
    I want it to say. "he" refers to those who go to the men's room,
    who wear men's (or boy's) clothing, and have penises. To pretend
    otherwise is to risk being misunderstood, or worse, to be
    understood an authoritarian minded person who would hide their
    antagonism towards the women's rights behind flimsy and obsolete
    19th century normative grammar. 

    Why do we "need" this change? We don't -- the change already happened
    centuries ago -- and to any prescriptive grammarian who might tell
    me my language is incorrect, they can go shove where the sun
    doesn't shine... 

> [I have a not-yet-published paper on this, entitled: "The Neutering
> of the English Tongue: Reflections on Current Trends in `Nonsexist'
> Usage." Limited preprints are available on request, but you have to
> supply the postage.]

    Utter crap. If you had published it 15 years ago, maybe somebody
    would have cared.

-michael