On 07/10/2015 at 08:52 AM, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 08:40:48AM -0400, Bob Bernstein wrote: > >> On Fri, 10 Jul 2015, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote: > >>> Agreed. FWIW I do agree with you 100% -- I just wanted to raise >>> some compassio/understanding for the "perpetrators" (I'm >>> probably one of them many times). > >> Oh no Tomas, compassion and understanding go right out the window >> when a militant's vital signs bump up a few points and she >> declares a microaggression emergency. > > I don't really understand. Are you saying Lisi is a "militant"? I > don't perceive her as such. She has a point, and "in content" I fully > agree with her. From my perspective, jumping so harshly on a single use of a superficially masculine-only term which was not even directed specifically at her as being actively "rude" _does_ look like an aggressive, socially "militant" thing to do. That reaction seems at least as rude, to me, as the original greeting can have seemed to her. It would probably have been at least as effective, and have avoided the derail and this discussion of rudeness vs. counter-rudeness, to have had a comment like "(Gentle hint: Not all of us here are male. You might want to say something like 'Sirs and/or madams' in the future."), and to have followed it up by being as helpful as possible (which, given the limited available information, may admittedly not have been very much) in the rest of the E-mail. (This isn't even getting into the question of whether or not usages such as the one being objected to _are_ rude, or - to phrase the same thing differently - can legitimately be called rude. I appear to disagree strongly with Lisi's apparent position on that question, but I don't really feel like investing energy in an argument on the subject, and this would definitely not be the place for it even if I did...) >> [...] BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE HERE FOR. (...as this points out.) -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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