Wow.
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Mar 20 20:56:40 MST 1995
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(IMA Internet Exchange v1.04) id f6e4db90; Tue, 21 Mar 95 15:53:29 +1200
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 15:52:48 +1200
Subject: re: women\wymn
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Someone posted the following (i deleted who it was) and I just wanted
to comment:
>The language does need to be changed to help fix up the problems.
>Psycological studies were done on young children, they were asked
>in cases where man was used as a generic (like in fireman, postman
>etc)
>what they thought of. They all thought of men. This excludes women
>from these jobs before they start as everyone thinks of the person
>as being a man. It is very hard to imagine a women being a fire
>fighter
>if you always assume fire fighters are men....
Do you think the results would have been any different if they'd asked
about fire-fighters,posties, salespersons etc? I bet the kids would
still have thought of men. And I bet they all assumed that nurses and
secretaries were female and that engineers were males too. Do little
kids even hear the word "man" on the end of the word? (Actually,
maybe in the US they do! In NZ we would say foiremn'n...). I know
that when I was little, in the alphabet song I thought that L-M-N-O...
was a word "elemeno" so I doubt that as a kid, I heard the word
fireman and with my very limited spelling experience was able to
interpret the "word" as a MAN who fights fires.
But anyway, I'm all for non gender specific language. It's just a
friend posed the above comment which made me think that perhaps
combating language problems is less effective than I imagined.
Combatting gender stereo-typing in story books and pictures, TV
advertisments, and in pre-schooling and parenting might be more
important for setting for children, equally probable life pathways.
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Mar 20 21:05:04 MST 1995
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 23:05:12 -0500 (EST)
From: Jayne S Docherty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Dancing Hummingbird /aka Joy Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hmmmmm...
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9503201821.A26479-0100000@netcom3>
Joy,
Your thoughtful posting is so rich in ideas and passion, I do
not know what else to say right now, except "thank you."
Jayne
