On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 8:47 AM, Marcin Borkowski <mb...@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl> 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. ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________
