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

[Peter Fels And Phoebe Palmer]

Yeah, those forms sure engender frustrations...pf

Bruce Freeman wrote:
> You guys surely don't deserve this rant, but I gotta
> vent somewhere!
> 
> (Climbing onto my soapbox, preparing to be pedantic.)
> 
> "Gender" is NOT a synonym for "sex."  (And "sex" is a
> noun, not a verb, that refers to a biological
> attribute, not to coitus.)  I am of the male sex.  I
> don't HAVE a gender.  
> 
> Pronouns and possessive adjectives have gender.  In
> many foreign languages the nouns have genders too. 
> But people and animals do not have genders.  
> 
> 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?  
> 
> I suspect it was a seconday error from the "he/she"
> fiasco.  "He/she" is not a grammatical construction
> and is totally unnecessary.  The proper pronoun is
> "he," NOT because we don't respect women, but because
> "he" includes women.  Why?  Because "he" is MASCULINE,
> not MALE.  
> 
> Masculine, in this sense, is a grammatical attribute,
> and has nothing to do with sex.  Anglophones may not
> appreciate that because "he" and "she" are so closely
> associated with the male and female sexes in English. 
> 
> 
> That's NOT TRUE in other languages.  "Madchen,"
> (literally, "little maid" in German) is NEUTER, but do
> a google image search on the word and you'll agree
> there's nothing neuter about the photos that come up. 
> But neuter is also a grammatical concept.  It has
> nothing to do with sex.
> 
> Therefore, it's perfectly proper to speak of one of us
> as "he," without disrepecting the ladies on theforge. 
> Properly, a baby or an animal is "it," not "he" or
> "she."  (That may be a stretch for new parents, but
> for diners in a restaurant where IT is screaming - -
> no stretch at all!)
> 
> (Climbing down from my soapbox.)
> 
> I don't know what set me off this morning.  One too
> many "he/she"'s, one too many forms asking my "gender"
> I guess! 
> 
> Bruce
> NJ 
> 
> 
> 
>  
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