[1503] in testers
It can't be called "Ombudsperson" either...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Dec 19 13:13:33 1990
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 90 13:12:51 -0500
To: ahat@MIT.EDU, testers@MIT.EDU
From: Richard Basch <probe@MIT.EDU>
OmbudsperSON - again, there is a bias "SON"
OmbudsperdaughtER - ER is a masculine ending
Ombudsperdaughtress - well, now we are biased the other way...
Ombudsperchild - well, PER has ER, but it is a different root,
so maybe it's ok.
While we are at it, we have to throw away the operating system that
Athena is based on. After all, we have the "man" command. Then, people
might be insulted by some of the comments in the manual page...
You can tune a filesystem but you can't tune a fish
What about the animal lovers? How about all those people who hate puns?
Now, to continue... we have to throw out the English language... it is
heavily biased towards the masculine roots. Even the feminine words in
the language are based on masculine words (eg. woman).
The point of all of this is that the choice of "Ombudsperson" is silly.
Yes, the language is biased towards the masculine roots, but there is a
difference between bias and harassment/sexism. This change is basically
trying to appease everyone and has caused quite a few comments from
various people who know English... thus, my previous comments that this
might be taken as an insult to various people's intellects.
-Richard
PS: I love flaming on my birthday...
