From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Subject: Not Getting It (Yet, Again, Ever?) (was Re: Liberty)
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 92 14:53:44 GMT

In article <1992Dec26.115250.21604@panix.com> mara@panix.com
(Mara Chibnik) writes:

>(Note the followups line, please.  If you really need to answer,
>send me email, but I should warn you that I'm about at the limit on
>this one.)

Please forgive me, Mara, for not letting it die just yet.
I want to try to shift away from the points you have made
(with more forebearance than I could have mustered), in
simply affirming them as we head off in a different sense.

What I'm after just now is to try to fathom why so many
people (if there women in this group, I'd be a little
surprised, so I think it's almost altogether men) go so far
to *insist* on preserving their notions of "correct" grammar
in English, despite the (to me, completely) obvious social
and personal defects of doing so.

Some of the posters, for example this last one, trouble
themselves enough to publish a completely irrelevant point,
almost as though they felt compelled to get away from having
to recognize and legitimize any aspect of the complaints you
articulate about exclusion by gender.

To put my thrust in simple terms: how *can* so many men be
such complete blockheads, so stiff-necked or tight-assed or
whatever the right phrase is, as to avoid *any* concession
or recognition of the *effects* of this exclusionary grammar
on the greater part of the population?  How can they not
*want* to concede this, how can they not *want* to do
*whatever* it may require to help offset the *clearly*
undesirable effects of the "correct" use of pronouns?

I don't think a person has to be all that clever to see ...

>I _did_ see a couple of women who complained that the
>so-called "inclusive masculine" didn't make _them_ feel included,

... this *obvious* fact, yet as you note ...

>men answering saw no
>need whatsoever to accommodate to the feelings of those women who
>say that the "inclusive masculine" excludes them.

Something is *really* wrong in the psyches of men who don't
get it, who don't get it instantly and easily, who don't
recognize *at once* the simple truth and move right away
to ...

>acknowledgment of the significance of women's reactions on
>this issue-- as a matter of course and as a matter more important
>than whether using "they" when the antecedent is "everyone" or
>"someone" grates on any particular ears, and second the
>acknowledgment that masculine pronouns do not include women.

It seems to me that the common failure to do so is so
startlingly, so overwhelming stupid as to signal a kind
of defect in the whole process of male thinking.  Something
*is* wrong with these men, and ...

>I don't think that this is a soc.motss discussion any more.

... gay men are in my opinion every bit as apt to offend in
this regard as the most clueless of straight men.

As part of the wrapup of 1992, I think I've reached my
personal limit on the dunderheadedness of little boys.  I'm
tired of the types who come on here and say "oh, we're
trying, we just don't know what bothers women so much, help
us learn." Bull*shit*, honey, if they call that trying.
They're not trying one damn bit.  With even a scintilla of
exertion, not amounting even to one complete thought, they
should be able to reach at least a little understanding of
the problem.  That they do not, that they continue to cling
to their cherished little notions, just annoys the hell out
of me, and far from coddling them in this, I think it's
about time the heat got turned up to incandescent, right
here in River City.

<> It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- 
<> it's one damn thing over and over.
<> -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
-- 
[Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin]
[Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson]
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