In <9301282240.AA11755 at net.bio.net> N052FG at TAMVM1.TAMU.EDU writes:
> By the way, I think s/he stinks! (IMHO) When I talked about a slash in my other
> post I was alluding to he/she, which I think was the original usage in the post
> by Erika that prompted me to start this whole mess! ;) I think s/he is just too
> weird... As Ben Jones said, how DO you pronounce that? :/
>IN THE ENGLISH NOTATION OF ONE OF THE BUSHMAN LANGUAGES (CENTRAL KALAHARI,
AFRICA) THE CLICKS ARE WRITTEN LIKE THIS, SO I GUESS THAT S/HE HAS A CLICK IN
THE MIDDLE OF IT. NICE IDEA, IMPOSSIBLE TO DO. Cheers, Tish
> I have never had a problem with the conjunction "or", though, as in "she or he"
> ;) I am willing to put up with a little choppiness in the flow here and there,
> because it makes me very happy to see my gender included in things, for a chang
> e, SCIENCE OF ALL THINGS!!! ;) Personal preference, of course.
>> Re: Ben Jones post
>> After paraphrasing my original statement to: "it will be a sad day when scienti
> fic literature accomodates an authors "political" views over its duty to educat
> ion and accuracy.", this was followed by agreeing that current usage is not ade
> quate. So should we continue to use "his, "he", in cases where a female person
> could be equally included in the context of what is being said because it read
> s better than "he or she"? That way the author's "political" views are not acc
> omodated over what the primary goals should be... Should we continue this pract
> ice until the scientific community agrees on what neuter usage it is going to a
> bide by? Talk about drawing a line, huh? My point exactly.
>> And about the erradication of sexism:
>> I feel that the random usage of either pronoun is still sexist. I see the intro
> duction of, for example, only the word "her" just as sexist as the usage of onl
> y the word his and I, too, (as I believe Ben Jones stated) find myself having t
> o stop and read back because it throws me off, though in some contexts it might
> work. Sexism can work both ways, and if one is wrong, then so is the other.
>> Neuter pronouns: (again, Re: Ben Jones post)
>> I think that feminists and chauvinists alike would dislike the usage of neuter
> pronouns such as "it" because it makes them feel like objects rather than human
> beings, which is the connotation "it" usually has, although maybe the more rad
> ical wings in both camps might dislike such usage for obvious reasons in addit
> ion to the object thing. I think it would certainly be a compromise, though, wh
> ich is what it should be all about, that way neither sex gets preferential trea
> tment while keeping with the desire to maintain good flow during reading. My na
> tive language is Spanish, in which it works out perfectly because we have the p
> ossessive pronoun "su" (pl.=sus), absolutely genderless. We actually do not hav
> e an "it", though, so when the pronoun is the subject of the sentence, things c
> an get a little messy from my perspective. ;)
>> My original anger stemmed from the referral to his/her political correctedness
> as "crap", although the string has now taken an interesting and informative tur
> n towards grammatical correctedness. It seems, though, that if there is one thi
> ng we have agreed on so far is that the subjeect (be it PC or whatever you want
> to call it) is far from being "crap".
>> Marivonne Rodriguez
