[ExI] Gender-Neutral Side Note

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of John Clark via extropy-chat
Sent: Friday, 7 November, 2025 5:05 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>; Ben Zaiboc <ben at zaiboc.net>
Subject: Re: [ExI] Gender-Neutral Side Note

 

 

 

On Thu, Nov 6, 2025 at 2:06 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 

We can re-instate words like 'chairman' instead of 'chairperson' (or
even 'chair', which I've heard a lot recently. A chair is something you
sit on, for christ's sake!),

 

>…And a chairman is a man who is sitting on a chair, a bum on the subway for instance….  

 

What if the subway bum has XX chromosomes?  

 

>…Another word that I think should be retired is "Indian" when referring to Native Americans, it's an insult to Indians and an insult to Native Americans and it's just dumb. We only got that word because Columbus was so stupid that when he landed in the Bahamas he thought he was in India. …John k Clark

 

 

 

So we are told.  However… that region where Columbus landed, the Caribbean Sea was called the West Indies at the time, and still is sometimes referred to that way:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Indies

 

Columbus had no way of knowing about the Pacific ocean, but he was a sailor, so he knew approximately the circumference of the globe.  What if there had been no Pacific, but was land all the way across there, with people from the West Indies to the East Indies.  For all Columbus knew or anyone in Europe knew, there was a big-ass continent of Indie, the east side of which one could reach by sailing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

 

If Indie was content spanning or filling in the Pacific basin and spanning Asia, the Pacific and the Americas, then the people Columbus encountered would be the inhabitants of Indie, which would make them Indians.

 

In that scenario, Columbus wasn’t stupid.  He was the NASA of his times.  Furthermore… the people he called Indians likely didn’t know about the Pacific Ocean either.  How would they know?  They didn’t sail much.  They might have thought one could walk west indefinitely.  If you go back a few thousand years, they would be right: you could walk across the Bering Strait, which was frozen.  They wouldn’t know they were not Indians.

 

Indie would be one hell of a continent, ja?  I don’t think Columbus was stupid.  Sailing west across the Atlantic was a cool achievement for his time.

 

spike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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