[156822] in North American Network Operators' Group
guys != gender neutral
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jo Rhett)
Thu Sep 27 14:10:52 2012
From: Jo Rhett <jrhett@netconsonance.com>
In-Reply-To: <20120927162055.GA75762@reptiles.org>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 11:10:09 -0700
To: Jim Mercer <jim@reptiles.org>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Sep 27, 2012, at 9:20 AM, Jim Mercer wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 12:12:50PM -0400, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
>> Many. Although in fairness, some people use "guys" in a =
gender-neutral manner.
>=20
> some people use it in a globally-neutral manner.
> "those guys over there" pointing at a rack full of servers.
Guys seem to think that it's gender neutral. The majority of women are =
used to this, but they have indicated to me that they don't believe it =
to be very neutral. Using "guys" is not gender neutral, it's flat out =
implying the other gender doesn't matter. *
Given the lack of truly neutral terms in english, I have taken to =
alternative my pronouns interchangably when I write.
"Those guys are chewing on that, but these gals are doing the vector =
calculations." (pointing at different racks of gear)
Or when actually referring to persons of mixed gender, here's a quote =
from something I posted in a private forum (my own journal) which is =
safe for export:
> Because frankly, we're all in this together and honestly everyone =
loves the competition. The guys I race with often come find me =
afterwards and tell me where they got past me, or ask me how I kept =
passing them. The really fast girls rarely want more than a beer to go =
out on the track and give you a detailed breakdown on what you are doing =
wrong. We all help each other.
In this situation I'm leaving it up the reader to grasp that I'm not =
saying that the girls are all faster than the boys, but I believe it's =
understood in context as the topic was about how peers help each other =
out.
I really wish that english had better pronouns for this.
* As evidence of the nasty side effects of this, the bible was =
translated from a language which understands gender neutral terms to =
english, and was in translating reduced it to "man". Which is now used =
by only-english-speaking preachers to justify the "proper placement" of =
women in society.
If for no other reason than that the use of a single gender pronoun =
confuses less intelligent types to assume that women aren't important in =
technology (and god knows this completely baseless assumption is widely =
held) do your part to mix it up!
--=20
Jo Rhett
Net Consonance : net philanthropy to improve open source and internet =
projects.
