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From: rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Hey, boys and women!
Message-ID: <844@opus.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Sep-84 15:36:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: opus.844
Posted: Thu Sep 27 15:36:43 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Sep-84 03:21:44 EDT
References: <366@ism780.UUCP>
Organization: NBI,Inc, Boulder CO
Lines: 73

The man/woman/guy/gal/... discussion has been going on an amazingly long
time without a few particular points coming out.

When you're talking to someone, you're communicating (hopefully) and you do
that by a (more or less) mutually understood protocol, which is to say you
speak the same language.  Obviously you have to get to some common ground
to start out...
	"Habla Ud. espan~ol?"
	"No.  Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
	"Nur ein bisschen.  Englisch?"
	"Yes.  Let's speak English then."
But you're still liable to have minor problems.  What we (in the U.S.) call
a cookie is what many other English-speakers call a biscuit.  If you'll
ponder that situation a moment, you can use it to get a handle on how to
deal with the (similar but emotionally charged) woman/girl choice.  You
have to agree on which word to use or how to understand each other.  For a
while, you'll allow the Australian (say) to say biscuit for cookie, but if
he's going to live in the U.S., he's probably going to have to change just
to avoid the ongoing communications failures.

By the same token, if it's accepted to call an adult human female a woman,
it's best to do so to avoid the communications failures--let alone to avoid
getting wrong emotion-laden connotations.  Conventions change:  the
evolution of "Ms." is a good example.  Twelve years ago (or so), you were
making a significant social statement to use "Ms." as a title.  Today
you're making a significant statement NOT to use it.  The transition period
is interesting but uncomfortable, and people who are dogmatic or pushy
about (either side of) a convention in transition are deluding themselves
about their own importance.  Remember that you're trying to communicate;
the process involves both speaker and listener equally.  Also remember that
the words are only symbols for ideas; they're not the ideas themselves.

That leads to another point:
It's a serious mistake to try to change people's attitudes by changing
language.  That's getting the causality backwards, and it's no more likely
to work than trying to cure a cough by duct-taping your mouth shut.
Language may have to change as a PART of changing attitudes.  We develop
new words as we try to associate them with new attitudes, and we try to
shed old words along with outmoded attitudes.  In different periods within
the past few decades, the terms "colored person", "negro", and "black" have
all held the position of being the polite/accepted way to people of the
same race.  (It's also interesting that the NAACP retained its name through
all three.)  Another example--"chick" is a particularly poor choice to use
in referring to a woman because it implies so many value judgements.

Evolving meanings and evolving language make it precarious to use a
dictionary--and particularly the etymological section of it--to understand
current significance of a word...
 > It may interest those who believe that "gal" is a better word
 > than "girl" when speaking of/to women that my Webster's New
 > Collegiate says that "gal" is a direct alteration of "girl".  So,
 > in a technical sense at least, gal is as bad as girl.
This ignores any connotations associated with one word but not the other,
so it's not fair to make the "one is as bad as the other" judgement.

There are some principles you can use in choosing words for people.  One
(mentioned in another posting) is that if you're concerned about equitable
labeling of sexes, choose words that are paired.  "Man" and "girl" are NOT
a pair, obviously.  How about:
	woman	man
	girl	boy
	gal	guy
	lady	gentleman
	female	male

If, as speaker, you use a word and ignore the connotations placed on that
word by your listener, you'll have a problem communicating.  If, as a
listener, you hear a word and narrowly apply only your own connotations,
you'll have a problem communicating.  This carries beyond just the
"woman/girl" matter.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Cerebus for dictator!