Re: At peace with Debian (was: This is the last war...)
On Sun, 14 Jul 2002 19:01:30 -0700, Eric G. Miller wrote:
>On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 05:24:39PM -0700, David Wright wrote:
<snip>
>
>> Guess what: no matter how much you agonized over it when you were young
>> first discovered feminism, you can't eliminate the "generic masculine"
>> construction in English without distracting your reader or being wrong.
>
>BTW, I never "agonized" over the matter and I knew about feminism well
>before I ever started thinking about non-sexist writing. So, you can
>leave your condescending tone at the door.
I fail to see any sign of condescension there. In fact a large number
of people are distracted by the obvious gyrations and contortions that
writers sometime go through to eliminate any evidence of sexism. That
is condescending. Clumsy constructs as "se" and "he/she" (or if you
prefer, "she/he") are blatant pimping and much less effective than using
"he" or "she" more or less randomly. That, too, is condescending. I
will applaud the introduction of "Ms," to the written language, since in
the South, at least, the oral honorific of "Miz" has long solved the
question of the marital state of the lady you're addressing.
--
gt
It ain't so much what you don't know that gets you in trouble---
it's what you do know that ain't so.--unk
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