> I have read most of the article, and I do not agree with the > manipulation done in the article. ... while "man" is no less > sex neutral than "person". What next? Use "huperson" and > "personkind"?
Alon, you have a point. After all, the word woman itself comes from Old English wifman, made up of wif `female' (> wife) + man `person'. So for etymological reasons one should either accept man as meaning `person', or else eschew woman together with all the other -man compounds. But language ain't etymologically pure. If women perceive -man compounds as offensive/exclusive then they are so, even if there's no etymological justification. And words that are perceived as offensive should be avoided even if the writer sees no reason why the word should be perceived as such. Regarding Hebrew, a lot of the gender-specific language in instructions and such comes from the obligatory marking of gender in the imperative and second-person pronouns. Fortunately, these can usually be put in the plural, where Hebrew has practically lost its gender distinction, with the [na]/[en] forms dying out and the [u]/[em] forms being used for both genders. So go for it; what's there to lose? > In the case of Haifux, where the overwhelming majority of the > populace are, maybe regretably, male, the logical decision is > to use the masculine form. Here I strongly disagree. The Haifux majority is what I would consider an *accidental* majority---there's no principled reason for it (unlike, say, in a men's basketball team). Aiming your language at such an accidental majority just serves to enhance the gender bias. > The W2L series is not abotu changing the gender composition of > Haifux. Maybe women will respond better, but also the other way > around, and as the vast majority of the target populace is > (regretably) male, this will have a negative impact on the > total number of participants. What?! We're talking about making the site gender-neutral, not gender-specific. I don't see men getting upset at this. I don't see them even noticing this. Those of you (men) who cook and do laundry, doesn't it annoy you to find on packages instructions like `tagni beshemen amok' or `hosifi pkak ekhad le-liter mayim'? Well, it annoys me, and I'd rather see `tagnu ...' or `yesh lehosif ...'. I don't see a reason why instructions for formatting a disk should be any less neutral. -Ron. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
