From: baba@Tymnet.com (Duane Hentrich)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: Verbs and gender connotations
Date: 21 Jan 93 23:03:52 GMT
Organization: BT North America, San Jose CA.

In article <1jl21rINNlh1@gap.caltech.edu>, (Michal Leah Peri) writes:
|> baba@Tymnet.com (Duane Hentrich) writes:
|> 
|> >In article <1jibvcINNhdn@gap.caltech.edu>, (Michal Leah Peri) writes:
|> >|> baba@Tymnet.com (Duane Hentrich) writes:
|> >|> >In article <1jho7oINN96d@gap.caltech.edu>, (Michal Leah Peri) writes:
|> >|> >|> Because society deems it worse to fuck someone who's drunk than to be
|> >|> >|> fucked while one is oneself drunk.
|> >|> 
|>>|>>The above statement seems to make grave implications about the subject and 
|>>|> >object of the verb 'to fuck'. I propose that the implications (man fucks,
|>>|> >woman is fucked; man - active, woman - passive) are wrong. Either partner
|>>|> >can be physically passive during coitus and thus conception is not
|>>|> >predicated on men being active and women being passive, no matter the
|>>|> >social norms.
|>>|> 
|>>|> I don't see how you read that implication into what I wrote.  
|>>|> I was careful to word my statement to be gender-neutral.
|>
| >The implications are in the use of the verb "to fuck". Especially the
| >implication that to fuck is negative and a male action, whereas to be
| >fucked is negative, a badge of victimhood and a female action. These
| >are cultural here in America, and where I could believe many don't use
| >the term in this way it is a part of English.
| 
| >Sometimes gender slips into the back door.
| 
| Do other posters agree with the assessment that the verb "to fuck"
| irrevocably carries masculine gender?  Is it impossible for women 
| to fuck?  What about lesbians?

Do you understand the difference between "implication" and 
"irrevocably carries"? Of course there are exceptions. And secondary
implications. I would suspect that the connotations of the verb
"to fuck" would be different in lesbian circles than in the main 
populace. So?

| What other verbs carry gender connotation?
| 
| Some to think about:
| 
| "jack off"	hard to imagine how a woman would do this -- she
| 		would masturbate, no?

Primary linkage would be masculine. But as with "fuck" women can and do
"jack off". This secondary feminine linkage is weaker with the verb
"jerk off", from which the insult "jerk" comes.

| "be pregnant"	there was recently a discussion on misc.kids over
| 		whether it is appropriate for a couple to say
| 		"we're pregnant".  Is pregnancy something that
| 		only women do, or do male partners of the mother
| 		participate in a sufficiently active manner to 
| 		warrent use of the verb?

I can dig it. Personal take on this is that "She's pregnant and we're
having a baby." But this is the kind of implication I was talking about above.
Not an irrevocable carriage.

| "rape"		some have claimed that only men can rape and only
| 		women can be raped.  Until recently the laws reflected
| 		this bias -- perhaps in some states they still do.
| 		IMO the posters in this group have rejected the
| 		gender connotation of this verb.

We most certainly try.


An obsevation about gender implications of sexual verbs is that,
as a general rule, men do sex while women permit sex. While this
is, IMHO, not true now nor has it been true in the past, it is
one of the public messages of this culture.

-- 
d'baba Duane M. Hentrich	baba@Tymnet.Com

We have yet to learn that the thing uttered in words is not therefore affirmed. It must affirm itself, or no forms of logic or of oath can give it evidence. 
The sentence must also contain its own apology for being spoken. - R.W.Emerson
Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.women,soc.men,soc.singles