[ExI] difficult (?) puzzle

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat



 

>…"Man" is often gender-neutral in old sayings.  These days, with more sensitivity to gender meanings (not to mention a greater understanding that female people can have just as much agency as male people), we might say "person", but in those olden times when they said "man", women were included in what they meant…

 

 

One wonders how far we can take this notion.  We wish to be inclusive, certainly a virtue with which none will argue,  but we are up against language constraints.  Sometimes we choose the pedantic “he or she” and “his or her” rather than do violence to the language by using the terms “they” and “their” for the gender non-specific singular.  However, there are more than two genders, and we wish to be inclusive.  

 

We haven’t even gotten to the various orientations that make up the letters of the rainbow, so that notion of finding a new word to mean gender and orientation non-specific singular is compelling.

 

Imagine for the moment the students who grew up in this modern western environment, learning Spanish for the first time, with the gender-specific articles.  It must all seem sexist to them.  How can the Spanish teacher possibly explain how a gender specific article really isn’t what it clearly is?

 

spike

 

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