Re: Debian, lists and discrimination
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 10:21:54PM +0100 or thereabouts, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 12:22:05PM +0100, Helen Faulkner wrote:
> >
> > In my opinion no. In my opinion, debian does discriminate against
> > women, in ways that the debian-women project is trying to address. See
> > bug#263084 as an example of the kinds of positive action d-w people are
> > involved in, and the way in which debian as a whole is happily helping
> > with this stuff.
>
> #263084 is a joke, right? "Help, help, I'm being oppressed!"
It is not a joke. However, I hope I am to take the Monty Python
quote as a joke.
> I find it difficult to take this sort of thing seriously. It's like
> complaining about male and female connectors.
I do not believe that is the case. Style guides do not tell
you to avoid references to male and female connectors.
In a discussion about gender-neutral writing in January 2004,
I became curious and went through every style guide I have
in the house and a few more on the web, looking for best current
practice. The results were interesting. Six of the seven flatly
state that writing should be gender-neutral: the only discussion
is how best to achieve this.
(I didn't actually have access to the seventh and had to
rely on a review which mentioned it in passing, so I am
not sure whether to count it.)
Since I do not want to type all of the quotes in again, you
can read it at:
http://www.linux.org.uk/~telsa/Misc/style-and-gender-neutrality.txt
Telsa
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