[156825] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: guys != gender neutral
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Thu Sep 27 14:38:52 2012
In-Reply-To: <E14AC703-27B6-427E-B245-23363F6DD924@netconsonance.com>
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:34:38 -0500
To: Jo Rhett <jrhett@netconsonance.com>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
When did "people" stop being an acceptable gender-neutral substitute for {gu=
ys,gals}?
Owen
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 27, 2012, at 1:10 PM, Jo Rhett <jrhett@netconsonance.com> wrote:
> 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 m=
anner.
>>=20
>> some people use it in a globally-neutral manner.
>> "those guys over there" pointing at a rack full of servers.
>=20
>=20
> Guys seem to think that it's gender neutral. The majority of women are use=
d to this, but they have indicated to me that they don't believe it to be ve=
ry neutral. Using "guys" is not gender neutral, it's flat out implying the o=
ther gender doesn't matter. *
>=20
> Given the lack of truly neutral terms in english, I have taken to alternat=
ive my pronouns interchangably when I write.
> "Those guys are chewing on that, but these gals are doing the vector calc=
ulations." (pointing at different racks of gear)
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> 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 ex=
port:
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>> Because frankly, we're all in this together and honestly everyone loves t=
he competition. The guys I race with often come find me afterwards and tell m=
e 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 de=
tailed breakdown on what you are doing wrong. We all help each other.
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>=20
> In this situation I'm leaving it up the reader to grasp that I'm not sayin=
g 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.
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> I really wish that english had better pronouns for this.
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> * As evidence of the nasty side effects of this, the bible was translated f=
rom 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.
>=20
> If for no other reason than that the use of a single gender pronoun confus=
es less intelligent types to assume that women aren't important in technolog=
y (and god knows this completely baseless assumption is widely held) do your=
part to mix it up!
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> --=20
> Jo Rhett
> Net Consonance : net philanthropy to improve open source and internet proj=
ects.
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>=20
