On 26-7-2010 10:20, John Haltiwanger wrote:

Then again, I'm a fringe member of a fringe discipline (new media), so perhaps what I can do/what is expected linguistically is irrelevant for the majority.

Well, new trends have to come from your dicipline I guess. (Or maybe some new shortcut boils up from the sms universe some day.) I think that this he/she issue is a nice example of something that a lot of brainpower is put into ... each writer (male of female) at one point has to think about it ... btw, thinking of it, 'the reader' sounds quite neutral. In education using 'you' is common which also avoids the problem. Anyhow, an interesting thread and a nice topic for a discussion at the context conference when we discuss manuals and manual writing. Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

Hi,

what an interesting discussion!

My personal point of view is that the so-called "political correctness" is something I actively fight against, by means of NOT using "they" or "Afroamericans" or other such strange inventions.  These new words somehow remind me of Orwell's 1984...

So what do you write instead? Negro? 'Political correctness' can be onerous, and often contradictory to my anti-authoritarian nature, but in the end it is not "the Man" who issues requests for language changes so much as the marginalized groups that take issue with existing phrasing. Afroamericans, for instance, was deprecated sometime around that year 1984.. It all boils down to whether you care about what the people concerned are saying, which is why I note the author's position when I encounter it. (Rather than throwing their paper away, ala Khaled). This is always a contentious issue when software/coder types are involved, one of the serious reasons why female participation in IT (in general) and FLoSS (in particular) are so low: many men in these circles will not, or can not, give room to critical complaints. The problem always originates in the person complaining---they need to be less serious, no one around here cares so stfu, etc. This is a serious issue, and this is probably one of the least contentious starting points for encountering it. That theory would be thrown away because it attempts to consciously address real gender inequalities is a depressing thought. I for one have always thought it would be interesting to develop a Unicode character that provides a symbol representing a neutral gender pronoun. Then, anyone reading can insert he/she or another option to their own taste.

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Hans Hagen wrote:

On 27-7-2010 3:06, John Haltiwanger wrote:

I for one have always thought it would be interesting to develop a

...

Unicode character that provides a symbol representing a neutral gender pronoun. Then, anyone reading can insert he/she or another option to their own taste.

Interesting ... if we can come up with a nice symbol that we can agree on it should be doable to get it included in quite some tex related fonts (the group involved in maintaining them is not so large) ... and then we can set a standard. After all, symbols like copyright and registered made it into fonts and those are used (if at all) only a few times in documents and in unseen places.

Maybe arthur knows if there are scripts that have such a symbol. Of course then there is the issue of how to pronounce it.

U+26A7 MALE WITH STROKE AND MALE AND FEMALE SIGN ? -- luigi

On 07/27/2010 03:26 PM, Procházka Lukáš wrote:

... When I remove "+" and "/^" from general gender symbols

O +

and

^ / O

I get simply "0", so why not use this for (wo)man in general :)

This actually exists as Unicode character U+26AA, but its purpose is to mark 'sexless' which is not the quite same as gender-neutral. Best wishes, Taco

P.S. Both "homme" and "on" in French comes from the Latin "homo".

Yes, and the derivation of “on” from “homme” was apparently inspired by the Early German construct Mann -> man (that was maybe not spelt that way at the time). Ironic, that now some advocate the use of “mensch” in German to replace “man”... Arthur

I for one have always thought it would be interesting to develop a Unicode character that provides a symbol representing a neutral gender pronoun.

Unicode encodes scripts, not languages, so that's outside of its scope. Even if you were to develop a new character that would function as a neutral gender pronoun in English or other languages, it would still be attached to one (or several) language(s). You're of course free to advocate its use in all existing languages with a written standard, but that would take some time ;-) And even then, it would leave out the vast majority of languages, those that are only spoken. Arthur

I don't see how this applies: there are plenty of characters provided by Unicode that can be used regardless of which language I am writing in..

Yes, but they're symbols, not letters (nor ideographs or characters from a syllabary, etc.); and they're even less words. Are you suggesting we replace some pronoun(s) by a symbol? I don't see how that would work. And even if it was adopted in writing, it would inevitably be used in speech, too, and would just as inevitably gain some particular pronounciation in actual language(s).[*]

such as the male/female symbols already mentioned.

But those are symbols; they do not replace the English words “male” and “female” nor their translation in any other language.

So in this case, it would be a symbol for the 'language of the internet', not simply for a single language.

That there be a “language of the Internet” is a strange notion to me. I personally use 6 or 7 seven natural languages to communicate over the Internet, mostly in written form (that does not include HTTP or SMTP ;-) Whatever I read or write correspond to actual words that may be pronounced by speakers of those languages; if I were to use the symbol you would like to invent (and I'm not saying I wouldn't use it, if it existed), it would have to correspond to actual words in the respective languages, otherwise you would just have invented a way of making people mute. In other words, you cannot invent a new symbol if what you want is a new word. They're just two different things. Of course, you may want to invent both at the same time. (I should really have asked for Saussure's _Cours de linguistique générale_ for my birthday as I originally intended. I would have much more insights on the subject. Instead, I got a grammar of Etruscan :-)

Some symbols are available regardless of the general language used, correct?

Of course, you may use any Unicode character you want in your texts. It may make no sense, though.

Granted, I know next to nothing about font encodings, so I'll defer here to the knowledge of others.

This has nothing to do with font encodings, really. It happens at another conceptual level. The issue at hand here is not technical. Arthur [*] It's admittedly a very specific example, but this is exactly what happens with the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, for example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragrammaton)

On 27-7-2010 4:10, David Rogers wrote:

In academic writing especially, it's necessary to weigh the effect of this distraction before using anything other than standard constructions. Sometimes this kind of focus on the writer's personality and politics may be welcome, or even necessary; but in some situations it is not.

so what do copy editors of scientific publications do when they see mixed (or inconsistent) usage of he/she/etc? Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

Dne torek 27. julija 2010 ob 18:33:34 je David Rogers napisal(a):

I'm not a regular reader of any scientific publications. I suspect there are different de facto standards in different fields.

In legal texts we usually help ourselves with definitions in the beginning of the text: "landlord or landlady hereinafter referred to as 'bastard'" but this obviously doesn't work well in non-legal texts. Cheers, Matija -- gsm: +386 41 849 552 www: http://matija.suklje.name xmpp: matija.suklje@gabbler.org

Dne torek 27. julija 2010 ob 15:06:27 je John Haltiwanger napisal(a):

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Marcin Borkowski

wrote:

...

Hi,

what an interesting discussion!

My personal point of view is that the so-called "political correctness" is something I actively fight against, by means of NOT using "they" or "Afroamericans" or other such strange inventions. These new words somehow remind me of Orwell's 1984...

So what do you write instead? Negro?

Personally I feel that the political correctness has gone a bit too far, but where the line should be drawn, I don't know. I can provide a few examples of where political correctness *has* gone too far and can actually be even counter-productive: In Slovenia it is rude to call Bosnians "Bosanci", Albanians "Šiptarji" and Gypsies "Cigani" and the official political correct terms for them are: "Bošnjaki", "Albanci" and "Romi". With first two the problem is that they even officially call _themselves_ "Bosanci" and "Šiptarji" in their own language. With the so called Roma people, the problem is even bigger, since to my knowledge Roma are just one of the tribes. So by having to call _all_ gypsies Roma, you are effectively putting one tribe in front of the others and denying the existence of the others. I have nothing against any of those ethnic groups, I'm merely trying to point out a problem. Cheers, Matija -- gsm: +386 41 849 552 www: http://matija.suklje.name xmpp: matija.suklje@gabbler.org

Dnia Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 05:27:11PM +0200, Matija Šuklje napisał(a):

With the so called Roma people, the problem is even bigger, since to my knowledge Roma are just one of the tribes. So by having to call _all_ gypsies Roma, you are effectively putting one tribe in front of the others and denying the existence of the others.

We have the same issue in Polish. Until now I didn't know that the "Romowie" vs "Cyganie" (in Polish) has also this kind of problem. This particular example is even more interesting because of a few Polish words, originating from the word "Cyganie", like "cyganeria" (which means roughly "a group of artists, living (usually together) in a leisurely way"), or "ocyganić", which means "to cheat" (this one is rather old-fashioned"). I guess that maybe we (and groups like Gypsies) have just to live with that - even if we try to eliminate such words, another ones will emerge. For instance: I think that "gay" was first introduced by the LGBT lobby as a "positive" term, which now (at least in Polish) is beginning to be derogatory. Here, this works in exactly the opposite direction: it is not the language which shapes our thinking, but our attitudes which shape our language. In the "Gypsy case", instead of introducing a new word (Romowie), I would rather try to discourage using "ocyganić" in the sense of "cheating". BTW, I know of at least two derogatory terms concerning my nation: "Polak" (which is exactly what a Polish man is called in Polish) is considered rude in the US, and "polnische Wirtchaft" is very derogatory in German. I have to admit that I am not extremely happy because of these terms, but it's not a real problem for me. Regards -- Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.pl) Emacs: Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift.

Am 2010-07-28 um 01:10 schrieb Marcin Borkowski:

BTW, I know of at least two derogatory terms concerning my nation: "Polak" (which is exactly what a Polish man is called in Polish) is considered rude in the US, and "polnische Wirtchaft" is very derogatory in German. I have to admit that I am not extremely happy because of these terms, but it's not a real problem for me.

While I know "Polacken" as a derogatory word for Polish (or other Eastern European) people, I never encountered "polnische Wirtschaft". Similar cuss words are "Itzig" for Jews (originally just a form of Isaak), "Molukker" for any black people (originally Dutch Indonesians), similar "Kaffer" (originally used as a rather neutral name for Xhosa in the German colonies, but meaning "unbeliever" in Arabian and "farmer" in Yiddish), "Kanake" for arbitrary Southern foreigners (originally Polynesian "human" and a positive name of German sailors for their Polynesian colleagues) etc. Of course there are a lot of prejudices against several groups that lead to derogatory words, in German e.g. türken ("turk") = to counterfeit (probably based on a chess playing machine fraud) (herum)zigeunern ("gipsy (around)") = to leisurely wander, also sexually Schwulitäten ("homosexualities") = difficulties spanisch ("spanish") = dubious ("das kommt mir spanisch vor" = that is/ sounds dubious) Schotten... ("scottish") = cheap (e.g. "Schottenpreise" = Scottish prices) More on our gender topic is herrlich ("lordlike") = great dämlich ("ladylike") = stupid Or some words that changed their meaning over the centuries: Weib = shrew/broad (used to mean just "woman", while "Frau" meant "lady") So, as several other posters already said: It's not the words who are to blame, but the speakers and their mind sets... Grüßlinge vom Südsee! Greetlings from Lake Constance! Hraban --- http://www.fiee.net/texnique/ http://wiki.contextgarden.net https://www.cacert.org (I'm an assurer)

Dnia Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 01:06:27PM +0000, John Haltiwanger napisał(a):

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

...

Hi,

what an interesting discussion!

My personal point of view is that the so-called "political correctness" is something I actively fight against, by means of NOT using "they" or "Afroamericans" or other such strange inventions.  These new words somehow remind me of Orwell's 1984...

So what do you write instead? Negro?

And what's wrong with "Negro"? AFAIK, it means "black", so it just describes the reality. This is what a word should do, right? And btw, the term "Afroamerican" doesn't really make much sense to me: what would you call a Negro, born in France, and living in Germany, when you wanted to distinguish him from a white man? (Please note that by "man", I mean "a human being of any sex";).) To be more serious: I accept that there might be a problem caused by the fact that I am not a native speaker of English. I suspect that somehow the neutral term "Negro" started being used in a derogatory fashion, and that it might be unpleasant to black people to be called Negroes. And that's why I usually say just "black people".

'Political correctness' can be onerous, and often contradictory to my anti-authoritarian nature, but in the end it is not "the Man" who issues requests for language changes so much as the marginalized groups that take issue with existing phrasing. Afroamericans, for instance, was deprecated sometime around that year 1984.. It all boils down to whether you care about what the people concerned are saying, which is why I note the author's position when I encounter it. (Rather than throwing their paper away, ala Khaled).

Well, "onerous" might not be the best word. "Scary" might be better. You see, I am quite convinced that trying to manipulate language "by hand" is a very bad idea. Maybe this is partly because I live in a former Communist country (Poland); we have seen such things in the past. Another reason maybe that it seems to me that one of the first groups to talk about "political correctness" (maybe even coining the phrase, I don't know) were feminists, who did so much more harm to women in general than we usually imagine.

This is always a contentious issue when software/coder types are involved, one of the serious reasons why female participation in IT (in general) and FLoSS (in particular) are so low: many men in these circles will not, or can not, give room to critical complaints. The problem always originates in the person complaining---they need to be less serious, no one around here cares so stfu, etc. This is a serious issue, and this is probably one of the least contentious starting points for encountering it. That theory would be thrown away because it attempts to consciously address real gender inequalities is a depressing thought.

I am not sure that I understood your point, but I am quite convinced that the low percentage of women in mathematics or IT is caused primarily by the simple fact that an average female brain is not well fit for this particular purpose. (Of course, we all know notable exceptions. Also note that "better/worse fit for one particular purpose" is completely unrelated to "better/worse in general".)

I for one have always thought it would be interesting to develop a Unicode character that provides a symbol representing a neutral gender pronoun. Then, anyone reading can insert he/she or another option to their own taste.

Regards -- Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.pl) Emacs: Escape-Meta-Alt-Control-Shift.

Dnia Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 10:00:09PM -0700, David Rogers napisał(a):

* Marcin Borkowski [2010-07-28 00:57]:

...

Dnia Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 01:06:27PM +0000, John Haltiwanger napisał(a):

...

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

...

Hi,

what an interesting discussion!

My personal point of view is that the so-called "political correctness" is something I actively fight against, by means of NOT using "they" or "Afroamericans" or other such strange inventions.  These new words somehow remind me of Orwell's 1984...

So what do you write instead? Negro?

And what's wrong with "Negro"? AFAIK, it means "black", so it just describes the reality. This is what a word should do, right? And btw, the term "Afroamerican" doesn't really make much sense to me: what would you call a Negro, born in France, and living in Germany, when you wanted to distinguish him from a white man? (Please note that by "man", I mean "a human being of any sex";).)

To be more serious: I accept that there might be a problem caused by the fact that I am not a native speaker of English. I suspect that somehow the neutral term "Negro" started being used in a derogatory fashion, and that it might be unpleasant to black people to be called Negroes. And that's why I usually say just "black people".

Precisely. Some people began to use an ordinary word in a derogatory way. After that, the word came to be recognized as ONLY a derogatory word, and lost its status as an ordinary word.

It then seemed that the best thing to do was to find a neutral word to replace the derogatory one, so that people could speak without being rude. But the new word became dirty as well, so a third word had to be brought into service. And so on.

Part of the problem is that the meaning of a word can be changed by the intention of the speaker. Here's an example:

I know a woman who moved here from another country. Іn the country where she lived before, there was a group of people she hated. When she says the name of that group, it is a dirty word. When I say the same word, it is neutral. And if we teach my friend a new word for that group of people, she will change our new word into a dirty word as well. Changing the syllables she utters does not change her intention.

Good point. I would bet my money that "Afroamerican" would be rude in some 10-20 years if it were a shorter word... I suspect that it will be shortened to "Afro" or "Afroam" or something like that and only then will become derogatory...

...

...

'Political correctness' can be onerous, and often contradictory to my anti-authoritarian nature, but in the end it is not "the Man" who issues requests for language changes so much as the marginalized groups that take issue with existing phrasing. Afroamericans, for instance, was deprecated sometime around that year 1984.. It all boils down to whether you care about what the people concerned are saying, which is why I note the author's position when I encounter it. (Rather than throwing their paper away, ala Khaled).

Well, "onerous" might not be the best word. "Scary" might be better.

You see, I am quite convinced that trying to manipulate language "by hand" is a very bad idea. Maybe this is partly because I live in a former Communist country (Poland); we have seen such things in the past.

In many cases, marginalized groups do request language changes, but very often those requested changes then receive very strong support from "the Man". Without that institutional support (mainly from government agencies and schools), probably some of the new words would stick; others would not. Some new words may be perfectly appropriate; others are difficult to understand or even contrary to the truth. (One example: in the area where I live, a person who requires treatment in a mental hospital is called a "mental health consumer" - yet mental health is not something that can be consumed. One of the local men, who has spent much of his life in mental hospitals and has become an activist for improving the conditions there, rejects such nonsensical labels and insists on being called a "crazy person".)

And that's both funny and quite reasonable. Regards -- Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.pl)

On Jul 28, 2010, at 11:29 AM, John Haltiwanger wrote:

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Marcin Borkowski

...

I am not sure that I understood your point, but I am quite convinced that the low percentage of women in mathematics or IT is caused primarily by the simple fact that an average female brain is not well fit for this particular purpose. (Of course, we all know notable exceptions. Also note that "better/worse fit for one particular purpose" is completely unrelated to "better/worse in general".)

I'd laugh at this if it wasn't the same shit that's been going around for years in the math/IT circles. Socialization is the cause behind this, not natural differences in brain structure. If the society has decided to accept and repeat this "fact" over and over, and men will generally act as if it is true (pushing out females who make the attempt), then it will come to "appear" as true. But that doesn't make it any less BS.

No no, I've seen excellent scientific research on this question. It was in a German periodical of 1938. The article explained why women can't do math. I also gave a rigorous demonstration that Poles are genetically inferior to Germans and can only be plumbers or thieves... But seriously: Marcin, I would recommend you stop posting on this. All you show is your complete lack of intellectual awareness. You're embarrassing yourself, and that's all. Thomas

Dnia Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 09:29:49AM +0000, John Haltiwanger napisał(a):

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

...

Dnia Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 01:06:27PM +0000, John Haltiwanger napisał(a):

...

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Marcin Borkowski wrote:

...

Hi,

what an interesting discussion!

My personal point of view is that the so-called "political correctness" is something I actively fight against, by means of NOT using "they" or "Afroamericans" or other such strange inventions.  These new words somehow remind me of Orwell's 1984...

So what do you write instead? Negro?

And what's wrong with "Negro"?  AFAIK, it means "black", so it just describes the reality.  This is what a word should do, right?  And btw, the term "Afroamerican" doesn't really make much sense to me: what would you call a Negro, born in France, and living in Germany, when you wanted to distinguish him from a white man?  (Please note that by "man", I mean "a human being of any sex";).)

To be more serious: I accept that there might be a problem caused by the fact that I am not a native speaker of English.  I suspect that somehow the neutral term "Negro" started being used in a derogatory fashion, and that it might be unpleasant to black people to be called Negroes.  And that's why I usually say just "black people".

So what is your issue here then? You are already working by the rules I proposed:

using the words that the group wishes to be called by (or at least not using the words which they don't).

I guess the difference lies at least in one point: "black man" is something that *means* a black man. "Afroamerican" means nothing or something different. I prefer to use words in *their* meanings. And (though I am not sure about it at all) I think it might be the case that the introduction of "black people" instead of "Negroes" might have been more spontaneous, and "Afroamericans" seems to be supported by some governmental/lobbyist groups.

BTW, 'Negro' is definitely not a term to be used for referring to black Americans. IIRC, it is a positive term in Brazil. The point is to be aware of these things and to respect people's wishes regarding them, rather than blithely pretending that any name you use should automatically be fine simply because, well, YOU don't see the problem with using the term Negro (for instance).

The point is, is it the wishes of the people involved, or the wishes of some groups who *claim* to represent them?

...

...

'Political correctness' can be onerous, and often contradictory to my anti-authoritarian nature, but in the end it is not "the Man" who issues requests for language changes so much as the marginalized groups that take issue with existing phrasing. Afroamericans, for instance, was deprecated sometime around that year 1984.. It all boils down to whether you care about what the people concerned are saying, which is why I note the author's position when I encounter it. (Rather than throwing their paper away, ala Khaled).

Well, "onerous" might not be the best word.  "Scary" might be better.

You see, I am quite convinced that trying to manipulate language "by hand" is a very bad idea.  Maybe this is partly because I live in a former Communist country (Poland); we have seen such things in the past. Another reason maybe that it seems to me that one of the first groups to talk about "political correctness" (maybe even coining the phrase, I don't know) were feminists, who did so much more harm to women in general than we usually imagine.

I understand your sensitivity vis a vis Regime Imposed language tuning. You have got to be kidding me with that anti-feminist talk, though. I'm not going to go there with you, especially after your explanation below.

Well, you don't have to. Maybe it would be a good idea to mention that I know some women who have the same opinion as me on feminism.

...

...

This is always a contentious issue when software/coder types are involved, one of the serious reasons why female participation in IT (in general) and FLoSS (in particular) are so low: many men in these circles will not, or can not, give room to critical complaints. The problem always originates in the person complaining---they need to be less serious, no one around here cares so stfu, etc. This is a serious issue, and this is probably one of the least contentious starting points for encountering it. That theory would be thrown away because it attempts to consciously address real gender inequalities is a depressing thought.

I am not sure that I understood your point, but I am quite convinced that the low percentage of women in mathematics or IT is caused primarily by the simple fact that an average female brain is not well fit for this particular purpose.  (Of course, we all know notable exceptions.  Also note that "better/worse fit for one particular purpose" is completely unrelated to "better/worse in general".)

I'd laugh at this if it wasn't the same shit that's been going around for years in the math/IT circles. Socialization is the cause behind this, not natural differences in brain structure. If the society has decided to accept and repeat this "fact" over and over, and men will generally act as if it is true (pushing out females who make the attempt), then it will come to "appear" as true. But that doesn't make it any less BS.

Put out some science for that one, dude.

As I wrote a minute ago - I can't, and neither can you, I guess. Regards -- Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.pl)