From: mec6@quads.uchicago.edu (Rini Clarkberg)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Freshm*n
Date: 11 Sep 92 14:45:10 GMT
Reply-To: mec6@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations

mcline@terapin.com (Matthew Cline) writes:
> spzkny@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov (JAMES ZAKANY) writes:
                                    
>>Centuries of use and convention have neutered the male pronoun.  Its usage 
>>is clear and concise - nothing else is.
>>                                                  James S. Zakany
>
>What I was saying. or at least what I meant to say, was that even though "man"
>is *understood* by everyone to mean neutered humans, it is not always
>*interpreted* that way.  

I have to agree with Matthew.  I'm not big into the language issue, and
I call the women I know "girls", "guys" or "dudes" and I often use the
generic "he" (laziness, I think), but let me tell you this story.

One day, I was making Gingerbread men (cookies).  I didn't have a store bought
cutter, so my husband and I made one from a cross section of a tin can.
So I cut out a few little cute 'men' and then I said that now I wanted to
make some Gingerbread *women*.  At this point, my husband said, "Well, that's
not really a *man* -- it's just a neutered human.  It could be male or
female."  But then it all came washing over me --  it's not like no one has
ever made gingerbread *girls* before -- I've seen them.  And what are they?
They're dress shaped cookies, cookies with bows and curls and lipstick.  While
the male version of the cookie remains "generic, neutered human."  He
may wear a few buttons, but that's all -- everything about him is sexless.

Now this suddenly brought forth for me the cookie cutout shapes that
identify that male restroom and the female restroom.  What is the sign that
we all so intuitively identify as 'male'?  Does it have a dick?  A beard?
NO!  It's just a good damn, generic, neutered _human_, pure and simple.
And what is the sign we know as 'female'?  Not generic at all -- hourglass
figure with a skirt.  

So what does this imply to me?  Not only is pretty true that "man" means
male human, but fucking "human" -- generic human with no curls or no dress --
means "man" too!  It's like "man" is the default value for "human".

Now this interpretation is way too repulsive for me, to think that our
society has the generic human standing there to indicate the "male's"
restroom.  As a form of denial, I have adopted a new interpretation that
seems to make more sense.  The generic human restroom is for all of us,
man and woman alike.  The restroom where the human wears a skirt is for
people who wear skirts.  Now doesn't that make more sense?

rini 



the study that I was talking about showed that when
>chapters of a history book were entitled "Political Man", "Industrial Man",
>etc., that in the minds of the readers that images of males were enduced more
>often then when they were entitled "Political Humans", "Industrial Humans",
>etc.  This means that, in the minds of the readers, that "humans" is more
>neutered that "man" is, despite centuries of use and convention.  Thus,
>"humans" evokes the image of neuterage (if that's the correct word) more
>effectively than "man" does, inspite of the fact that everyone knows that "man"
>means a neutered person.  In my view, this means that "humans" does its job
>better than "man", and this is why I think that "humans" should replace "man".
>
>Now this doesn't apply to phrases like "police man" and "fire man", which
>should be used replaced by phrases that are descriptive, like "police officer"
>and "fire fighter".  And this does NOT apply to words like "manipulate",
>"manage", etc., because the "man" in the words does not refer to any person.
>
>Matthew Cline
>mcline@terapin.com