A Person Paper on Purity in Languages

[pne]

An interesting article that John Cowan pointed out to me—using "black" vs "white" to talk about sexism in language (including, but not limited to, pronouns).

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

And an interesting viewpoint - using this strongly loaded contrast almost made me want to give up gendered language in English.

[ladyortyger.livejournal.com]

*nods* Indeed.. yergh.

I'm all for applying it when needs called.. for example calling a female in charge of an office a 'chairwoman' ... but wow, yeah, "ble" and "bler" ? way unecessary.

chairwoman

[pne.livejournal.com]

See, I think the point was that "chairwoman" next to "chairman" is needless marking of gender in positions where it's not necessary and that a neutral form such as "chairperson" should be preferred - since gender is typically irrelevant to most jobs.

(However, calling them a "chairperchild" because "chairperson" has the male word "son" in it is loony bin stuff.)

but wow, yeah, "ble" and "bler" ? way unecessary.

In that case, separate words "he" and "she" are also unnecessary.

Does it make sense to mark the skin colour of a person whenever you refer to them? If not, why talk about their gender? (Finnish and Hungarian get by just fine with only one word which means both "he" and "she", i.e. can refer to a man or a woman without pointing out the gender.)

Re: chairwoman

[ladyortyger.livejournal.com]

I think 'chairperson' sounds stilted. I prefer chairman and chairwoman, but by no means do I advocate always switching it all the time.. just if applicable.

It does seem needless marking of gender, but that's the way this language has evolved, and I don't see much point in changing it right now.

Traditions that are physically harmful to minority groups? Sure, let's get rid of them. Traditions that aren't? Let's keep traditions alive.

Re: chairwoman

[kake]

Hofstadter's reasoning is (very roughly) that using, eg, "chairman" as both the gender-neutral and the male-specific confirms the idea of the "norm" being male and the female being a special case. See also "male secretary", "male model". More on this in GEB.

Re: chairwoman

[ladyortyger.livejournal.com]

I understood the reasoning, but I don't think it confirms that idea unless you let it.

See also 'mankind' and 'humanity'.

Re: chairwoman

[kake]

I said I was explaining it roughly :) You're best off reading the original than my mangling of it.

Re: chairwoman

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

I agree -- I prefer gender-neutral terms to distinctions by gender, and I'm fairly likely to choose the traditional male term when there's no preexisting gender-neutral one. I don't feel very odd calling a woman a "chairman," and I call myself a "webmaster." After all, who objects to "author"? But that was originally a male term (the female equivalent being "authoress").

I'm often upbraided for this attitude, but I think the way to lessen the distinction is to use words as if it's not there; a chairman can be male or female, as can a secretary (re: someone else's comment below). To me, the ideal are terms that have no connection to the gender of the person being referred to.

Of course, this mainly works because English isn't a very gendered language anymore in the first place...

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

But then again, I think the text gives us a bit of a false impression.

I guess I'm just stating the obvious, but since we aren't familiar with the pronouns "whis" and "bler", everytime we see them we think of a clear distinction between "white" and "black". But that impression isn't crated so cleary when we hear the words "his" and "her", or especially words like "mankind", where the "man" bit certainly doesn't include a "male" meaning.

The article also gives me the impression that one should get rid of the distinction between "whis" and "bler" altogether. So, just like you, I can only come to the conclusion that following the logic of the article, one also ought to stop distinguish between "his" and "her". But feminists don't seem to want to get rid of the distinction between "his" and "her". You can speak of a girl as "she" and of a boy as "he", and nobody - neither males nor females - will complain. But speaking of a black boy as a "ble" and of a white boy as "whe" sounds weird, perhaps even offensive - at least to me. (Perhaps this is because talking about people's races is a bit of a taboo topic, isn't it? Nobody would object to sentences like "Do you know that girl?", but "Do you know that black person?" is less socially acceptable, if I'm not mistaken. So, if in that society peopel can talk about races more openly, the distinction between "ble" and "whe" may not be so shocking in the first place.) So, I think comparing "racism" and "sexism" doesn't work here very well.

Hmm, now that I'm thinking about it: shouldn't German-speaking children feel discriminated against if children are usually referred to as "du" and most adults as "Sie"? I mean in a lot of manuals and similar books only "Sie" is mentioned. Couldn't children feel excluded and ask the company why they think only adults will use their products? Sometimes in speeches people say "Sie und ihr" to clearly address both children and adults.

[pne.livejournal.com]

You can speak of a girl as "she" and of a boy as "he", and nobody - neither males nor females - will complain.

There are some people who will complain, though - especially those who can't (or don't want to) categorise themselves as "male" or "female". Or those who, for some reason, believe that gender is truly irrelevant and should not be mentioned.

Also, which pronoun do you use if the gender is not known? "Ah! I see that tomorrow Dr. Smith will be giving a lecture. I hope it will be interesting to listen to XXX (him? her? him or her? it? them? em? zir?)" Having gendered pronouns forces you to make this distinction.

Similarly with your "Sie und ihr" example - if you're speaking about a group of people: "Each participant must bring his/her/its/their/zir/eir/??? own notebook."

NB I tend to be fairly conservative on this point and use "he" if the gender is un-known, but wanted to point out that I've found that there are people who do not like gendered pronouns, and I think the above are some of the points that have been made.