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

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...