[TheForge] PC-ness Grammatical Pet Peeve Rant - Way OT

[Mike Spencer]

> "Gender" is NOT a synonym for "sex."

Merriam Webster said the contrary in 1958. Way to early for PC
influence. Said it again in in 1973.

> With all the overt sexuality in this society, why did
> "gender" ever get plucked out of the dictionary as a
> euphamism for the word "sex" that even the Victorians
> freely used?  

"...black divinities of the feminine gender."  -- Charles Dickens (a
certified "Victorian", at least for part of his life.)


Much more gratifying to resist the disappearance of adverbs or the
increasing  construction of nice old irregular verbs as if they were
regular.  Or how about attacking wanton word highjacking such as
"proactive" which was turned into a meaningless buzzword by marketing
droids in the 80s? Or the major corporations which, in personnel
want ads, use "incumbent" as if it were the opposite of "outgoent". :-)
Or the signs in the supermarket isles that say "can vegetable" and
"can meat".

But forget about "gender".  The usage you denigrate is long
established and the pedantic cabal that demands it be used only in
grammatical discourse is doomed.


ObMetalwork: 

There seems to be a burst of furnace replacement going on, at least in
my area. Looks to me like the cylindrical steel fire-boxes that are
being thrown out would make great gas forge shells if what you happen
to have found is a bit too small for your needs.  I lugged one home
today to that end. Got a nice squirrel cage blower from the same
(scrapped) furnace.



- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^