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posted by [identity profile] maviscruet.livejournal.com at 12:23pm on 02/04/2007
Just so you know - I agree with your reading of the document. In fact it was such a strong arguement it got em thinking. The reason being the two married ladys I was visting are very strong on certain issues and read the document as attacking the idea of gender neutral langauge.

They appear to have done the racist/sexism mapping the article expects you to do - and then accepted the person writing the article meant the things he was writing - when if he'd wanted to do that he could have just writen the article 'natural' like.

And judging by some of the comments on my blog - there not alone in doing that......
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] bugshaw.livejournal.com at 12:41pm on 02/04/2007
The first few paragraphs had me thinking he was mocking gender neutral language by drawing such extreme parallels - of course we can't change the language, that would be silly!

But further on, I started to identify more as a minority (or less powerful) group and how that language would make me feel. Now I'm horrified at how deep rooted it is, and how it affects so many aspects of society.I've been an apologist for it for many of the reasons Hofstadter draws out, because I've been living in it for so long and there isn't an alternative. And how did I take so long to notice? Arg!

When I use "men" to mean "men", or "men" to mean "all humans", it does trigger a different part of my brain, I think. We are used to interpreting words like dear(expensive), dear(darling), deer(animal) or Deere(tractor) from context, I imagine I do the same with chairman(authoritative designated leader), or mankind(all members of my species). I also imagine other people do the same, so this linguistic remnant should not have anything to do with society. But I might be wrong.
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