From: greeny@top.cis.syr.edu (J. S. Greenfield)
Subject: Re: A gender neutral pronoun, was Fundamentalist Nightmare
Organization: Syracuse University, CIS Dept.
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 01:52:51 EST

In article <1992Nov10.135932.18547@deeptht.armory.com> rstevew@deeptht.armory.com (Richard Steven Walz) writes:
>>
>>>For example, if I call someone in a wheelchair a cripple
>>>or handicapped, then I am some sort of evil bastard that belittles those
>>>that are "physically challenged".  What's the difference?  Nothing,
>>>except some holier than thou organization decided that cripple and handi-
>>>capped were offensive, and physically challanged is nicer.  We have 
>>>become a society of euphemisms and connotations.  Take a word for what
>>>it means, not for what you think it should mean.  A person that is a
>>>cripple, that is handicapped, and that is physically challanged is still
>>>the same person, all the terms mean the same thing.              
>>
>>If you can't tell the difference between calling someone a "cripple"
>>as opposed to calling them "handicapped," then I doubt that you are
>>mentally-equipped to take part in any discussion of language.
>>
>>The difference is akin to the difference between calling somebody a
>>"pip-squeak" and calling somebody "short."
>>
>>Fine, we can agree that to become so concerned about negative connotations as
>>to switch to terms like "physically challenged" or "vertically challenged"
>>is to be ridiculous.  But if you can't recognize that terms like "cripple"
>>and "pip-squeak" are loaded terms, then you must be "mentally challenged"
>
>I remember giving money to the Crippled Children's Fund. It was a good
>enough term and not at all pejorative.

First of all, I doubt that it was "not at all perjorative."  Don't you think
that the management of the charity may have had good cause to try to make
you feel sorry for their poor, crippled children?

But in any case, saying that someone is "crippled" happens to be very
different from calling someone "a cripple"--at least where I come from.
Where I come from, calling someone "a cripple" is an extremely perjorative
term.  What's more, I have yet to find someplace where it is not.


>I think each generation of
>school kids must misuse the words on each other until by the time they
>are in college they want to make new words because they have so fucked
>with the original legitimate ones. Then given a state of being
>psychologically and intellectually "crippled" they turn to this PC
>nonsense. A cripple is NOT a retard. The word retard was made up by
>school kids as a mispronunciation of retarded. They couldn't even say
>it well enough to try to insult someone with it. Crippled is a
>perfectly acceptable english word meaning someone who has through no
>fault of their own incurred an event or injury which has left them
>less than fully mobile or coordinated in their movements. Physically
>challenged is simply too damned long. A person could get run over by a
>bus before you got their attention to save them.

I happen to agree, it is too long, and I have no interest in it.  I can
say the same for just about the entire paragraph above.


>The wheelchair people
>don't seem to have any trouble with "gimp". They use it to describe
>themselves.

Yes.  And blacks call one another "nigger."  Why don't you go to Harlem and
use that term some time?  Obviously, if they use that term for themselves,
they must not find it at all perjorative.


In any case, all of this has gotten quite far from having anything to do
with gender-neutrality.


-- 
J. S. Greenfield                                         greeny@top.cis.syr.edu
(I like to put 'greeny' here, 
but my d*mn system wants a 
*real* name!)                        "What's the difference between an orange?"
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