Stephen wrote:
> I think that I'm a feminist as I believe in the doctrine advocating social,
> political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. I'm not offended
> nor is my wife who could never be described as anything other than a feminist.
> What you are saying is trivial and a smokescreen making it more important to do
> little rather than actually treat women as if they had the same rights as men. 

	I'm not sure to what extent Tim was joking/exaggerating, but what seems
trivial to you may not be so. It has often been argued that language and
choice of words does often dictate people's perceptions, and that at
times changing them has changed those perceptions over a matter of
decades. I haven't studied it in detail, but I'm not sure the argument
is without merit. It may well be that the very argument about the choice
of words makes more people aware of the issues and that's what effects
change - not the actual change in wording.

	Either way, seems like a win/win situation. As I said, I see no harm in
either adding a third person pronoun that is gender neutral (has the
shift from using "humanity" instead of "mankind", or "businessperson"
instead of "businessman" damaged anything?), or allowing both he and she
to be used as a gender neutral pronoun of someone whose gender is not
specified.

	I've seen "she" used frequently by people (some were women, and then I
stopped bothering to check) in this regard. I don't know if it was
naturally or with this in mind, but it didn't at all seem awkward except
the first two times or so.

	Languages are dynamic, and I'm rarely sympathetic to those who want to
keep them static for the sake of being static.

-- 
Whose cruel idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have a "S" in it?


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