From: chuckies@cs.mcgill.ca (Charles J. Savoie)
Newsgroups: soc.men,alt.feminism
Subject: "Reverse" Discrimination (was Re: Mysogynist Bullshit)
Date: 8 Jan 93 06:59:53 GMT
Organization: SOCS - McGill University, Montreal, Canada

In article <1993Jan7.162425.10223@llyene.jpl.nasa.gov> julie@eddie.jpl.nasa.gov (Julie Kangas) writes:
>In article <1993Jan7.020139.3171@netcom.com> payner@netcom.com (Rich Payne) writes:

>>My point is that the very way we describe this horrible crime is biased
>>and sexist, and it colors our perceptions.
>>[...]

>Look, women have been discriminated against by men in the past.  If women
>now start discriminating against men, then isn't that a "reverse?"  It
>doesn't make it any less disgusting and horrible.  

I'll bite on playing a semantic game.  People, unfortunately, think
in words.  If you change what words they use and what people feel
when they think those words, you can change opinions, thus votes,
thus the world.

It's not a reverse, it's a reversal.  It's also a "backlash", but that
word has a (IMO incorrect) negative connotation now that it describes
mainly actions of anti-feminist men.  "Backlash" would be a perfectly
acceptable term for reverse discrimination, according to you, right?
Since it's an *accurate* term.

But we don't use "backlash", because "reverse discrimination" can
conjure up two useful images.

1) Somewhere in the average person's head is a pattern of synapses which
   equates: SEXISM = BAD.  Put "reverse" in front of it and you get:
   		reverse(SEXISM) = reverse(BAD)
				= GOOD

   I'm not suggesting that people actually think this way... but I'm
   almost certain that by putting "reverse" in front of a Bad Thing(tm),
   you make the "reverse" thing seem at least "not as bad", perhaps
   on a subconscious level...  Just a thought.

2) Think of the phrase "role reversal".  In this sense, the word
   "reversal" has a sense of "outside of the norm", or "not occuring
   often".  This is another convenient thing.  It would seem that
   as soon as one sees "reverse discrimination" he/she gets the
   impression that it is the exception, the fluke.

   I'm not going to listen to arguments of the sort "but it IS the
   exception" because a) that's ridiculous, and b) that's not the
   point anyway, if people think something is an "exception" they
   are less likely to get upset about it.  I'm talking about the
   use of words to control thought, which is what political
   correctness has always been about.

>You can play all sort of semantic games.  To me reverse discrimination
>is discrimination and putting a 'reverse' on it doesn't make it any less
>nasty.  Unfortunately, the term has permeated modern speech.  

I agree with all this.  But I had to make the point that semantics
are important.  From webster:

Word: semantics
se-man-tics \si-'mant-iks\ n pl but sing or pl in constr
3b: the language used (as in advertising or political propaganda) to
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     achieve a desired effect on an audience
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Whoa! Spooky... This is just what I was saying.

Charles

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