[WikiEN-l] WikiWomen (was Partial deletion)

Fri Jul 18 01:58:52 UTC 2003

This may be taking it over the edge, but my female English teacher in
high school taught me this: The correct grammatical way to refer to
someone of unknown sex as he.  When asked if this bothered her, she said
"no, it is just proper English."  While I personally agree with this
philosophy, it is quite evident that some people in the pedia think it
is sexist, and are bothered by it.  I will make every effort to address
someone by their true sex, or use their name, but when it come down to
it, I will use the grammar I was taught, since there will never be a
consensus on this, since any  method is non-NPOV.

--
Michael Becker

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Vicki Rosenzweig
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 2.30
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WikiWomen (was Partial deletion)

At 03:38 PM 7/16/03 -0400, Erik wrote:
>Based on standard english practice, I address someone who's gender I do
>not know, using masculine gender.  I assume others do the same.  There
is 
>a page, http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWomen, which can be utiliZed
if 
>you wish to be identified as female.  It doesn't appear that most women

>care though.

Standard English practice is to address people--whether I know their
gender or not--using the second person singular, which is ungendered.

What I think you're actually saying is that you *refer to* people whose
gender you don't know as "he". This has never been entirely standard,
and will annoy quite a few people at this epoch. Using full names,
"they", and workarounds like "that person", is probably a better idea.

-- 
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org

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