Re: [RUME] Removing the straightjacket

[Harel Barzilai <harel@BARZILAI.ORG>]

   > Quick thought experiment:
   > WHAT will people say in 8,000 years?  "He or she"? "Her or his"? I
   > think not..

   [even assuming] there *will* be people 8,000 years from now.  (Will
   we call that 10,003 CE?)  Why would anyone think that English (or
   any other extant language) would still be around?

I not only don't predict English will be around, in fact I place the
probability rather near zero.  (particularly, having learned it as a
second language and, while it was quite easy at age 6, appreciating
its quite considerable level of irregularity) that English (as we know
it) will exist. (We may communicate by pure brainwaves, but that does
not bear on the thought experiment)

The purpose of a thought experiment in "8,000 years"
is certainly not prediction, indeed as I noted,
"Certainly I wouldn't predict.." but rather what? To
force oneself to ask "When we're ironed out at least the
main screwups of today's society" what, roughly, at
least in broad outline, will we arrive at? "Clearly,..the general
direction of sanity" is that suggested by Spivak. One can have a sense
of direction without having additional specificity for any kind of prediction.

We don't say "wuh-he is a nice person" and "buh-he is a nice person"
for "White" and "Black" persons.

And the very notion of being saddled with such hypothetical pronouns
seems absurd; and rightly so.

Using "wuh-he or buh-he" -- or "wuh-she or buh-she" -- would certainly
be less offensive in such an imaginary society, I agree, than either
"wuh-he" or "wuh-she" being the generic used for all people.

But, we still wouldn't consider a society "ok" or even remotely sane
for that matter, which always says "Each student learns calculus when
wuh-she or buh-she understands.." and "picks up wuh-his or buh-his
ruler to measure.." -- clearly such a society has some "issues"

The above hopefully is sufficiently vivid to offer a new look at
how we treat gender in our real, existing society
(mind you, without a doubt, our society today has "issues" with racial
discrimination that are just as huge even without such language, so
that language gives Sufficient, but not Necessary, conditions for
detecting problems in society)

The buh-she/wuh-she or buh-he/wuh-he world sheds light on "disruption"
as well. I would agree that i. "he or she" is a positive disruption for a
reader stuck in "he = generic" and that ii. "she or he" is a positive
disruption (for women, not just for men) in a "male always comes first
in the 'X or Y')

Consider however that for many of us "he or she" or even "she or he"
does not provide positive disruption because it's preaching to the
converted. Admittedly, there are far too many who are not yet
"converted" to true gender-solidarity/empathy/siblinghood.

However, if the *same* language -- a la Spivak -- can provide positive
disruption for us and for the unconverted -- then why not use it?

I also like Sybilla Beckmann's citation of "they" and their as an
intermediate between "she or he" and the gender-free Spivak pronouns.
(Alas, when I shared a draft math education manuscript with a
colleague and used "they" and "their" in the first person
gender-neutral, e commented, in fact, he commented, that he doesn't
like it and prefers "he or she" and "his or her" [sic]) Evidence of
stages of comfort?

Charle's point is also good about historical example with formal "you".

As noted for me it's sticking how in e.g. Spanish there
is more gender diffentiation than English, and as noted, in Hebrew
even more so than Spanish ("yo quiero" for "I want" in Spanish,
but in Hebrew "Ani Rotzah" for women and "Ani Rotzeh" for men) which,
like comparative social analysis often does, sheds light on the arbitrary,
unnecessary, and gratuitous nature of the less extreme (yet
no saner than "buh-he" and "wuh-he") nature of the English language's
"he" and "she" when we only wan to say "I met a person at the subway
and e was also a GNU/linux fan!" and care not about gender, race, etc.

To argue against myself:

It might be argued that the situation is like with "Goddess"

Flashback to 1986, Dartmouth College, and a wonderfully eccentric and
friendly person, John Finn, for whom the word God was unambiguously
FEMALE. And he much preferred that after all "a mother figure..never
gets *reaaaaly* mad at you and forgives your mistakes". (I'm not
revealing anything private; this was public with anyone and everyone
and well known)

Typical conversation:

John: [making a number theory point] "So if you wake God up and ask
her to name a number at random,..."

Harel: [Who knows John and knows God is female, but is surprised by
something else]: Huh? God *sleeps*???

John: [without skipping a beat] Haven't you *noticed*? [He was making
a point about the state of the world/politics, in case that isn't
clear..]

Etc. John also used "Actor" as gender-neutral feeling "actress" is
patronizing...This must have been his attitude about "Goddess" and in
any case it was God, period, as female.

Now we can imagine "God" someday being gender-neutral. However
today it is *so* ingrained as male that I think it's a *good* argument
to say, no, maybe someday, but today if we just say "god" it will make
people think "male" so we want to use "Goddess" too. And I think that's
cool.

HOWEVER, neither I nor Spivak has been advocating "he" to be
gender-neutral. That would be like using the traditionally male-only
word "God" as gender-neutral and claiming that solves everything.

So this does not argue against the Spivakisms.

Rather, as the example of replacing gender with race shows about our
pronouns, we can have new ones which don't add gratuitous information
about gender any more than we do about race. We can still say "He
was a tall black man with a friendly smile that immediately
put her at ease" and specify, but "he" doesn't force us to specify
race in "She was eating a wonderful quinoa-and-almond vegan dish"
nor need it specify gender: "E was eating a wonderful..." while an
author is free to specify gender "a medium-built woman with a friendly smile
was eating a wonderful.." but not forced to.

Harel

Postscript: BBC ran a few stories some years back on research on
genetics. We all know "Even came from Adam's rib" is fiction..but, in
fact, as it turns out, from a genetic point of view, it's pretty close
to Adam coming from Eve's rib [sic] -- and "homo spiens is essentially
female" as BBC added in followup to the research.

I mention this not for 'generic male-bashing' (which is as unhelpful
as verbally abusing 'all Caucasians' and which I view as no better),
but it may help de-alienate woman and men. More than a few 'radical'
feminists seem better aware that it's not a zero-sum-game, than
liberal establishment feminist of either gender; ironically, the
former often understand the meaning of male liberation, and oppose the
emotional mutilation of boys by society as much as anyone else.

Take that "homo" spapiens is fundamentally female with a
smile. Indeed, it appears that being lactose *tolerant* was an
adaptive, "abnormal" deviation, not the converse, and there is at
least something to that effect that can be said about the Y
chromosome.  Not only that, but from another BBC science section fact:
there are bird species in which the female, not the male, has a Y
chromosome. In such species, the female lifespan is shorter, not the
male's. Yet there is evidence that male babies cry more than female
babies (last factoid), and we are as much or more psychology, nurture,
and culture, than genetics. A different and radically humanistics sort
of upbringing of male babies and boys can lead to very different
adults, and a world in which each person can be all e wishes emselves
to be -- in which they can be not this half, or that half, but Whole.



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+  Harel Barzilai, Ph.D.                                   +
+  Department of Mathematics and Computer Science          +
+  Salisbury University                                    +
+  Salisbury, MD 21801                                     +
+                                                          +
+  hxbarzilai@salisbury.edu = harel@barzilai.org           +
+  WWW:                 http://barzilai.org/               +
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