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Cattlepoop and Cowdung? Bullshit I say!

Thursday, July 31, 2008
"This is bullshit man!"
**beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!**
**Feminist wrath alert!**

So I Better change it to
"This is cowdung woman!"

**beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemp!**
**The politically correct are still protesting!**

Okay fine I'll settle for
"This is cattlepoop person!"

Happy now? Nice eh?

Sheeesh.
This is really irritating. Having to analyse every thing one might say just like that and weed it for 'gender specific language' and then change it to something more 'appropriate'.

I think the 'feminists' and 'politically correct' are lacking perspective here. Let me shed some light for them.

When I use a generic sentence, with 'he' in it referring to a generic person, then that's exactly what I am doing, viz. referring to a generic person.

As case in point, let me present to you a sentence which according to me is nice, innocent, generic, gender-unbiased sentence:

"What does a person do when he is fed up of some narrow minded folks not allowing him to use a sentence like this one?"

Some folks advice using both the pronouns:
"What does a person do when he/she is fed up of some narrow minded folks not allowing him/her to use a sentence like the first one above?"

"He/she"? "Him/her?"
How clumsy is that!!!

In that case some people suggest (or rather insist) on using plural pronoun 'they' in place of 'he/she'. Like this...

"What doe people do when they are fed up of some narrow minded folks not them to use a sentence like the first one above?"

But what if I want to talk about one person only, and not people? I think this just does not cut it :P.

Open your minds people. Humankind (see how I am cleverly avoiding 'mankind', since I haven't yet made my point) has been using 'he' as generic pronoun for centuries now. Does not mean all 'mankind' was made up of MCPs who insisted on using the masculine pronouns to make females feel excluded. In fact, aren't females supposed to be the language developers, the communicators?

Anyways, whatever secrets history has buried, this is my post-historic, present day take on it.
You see, women are special kind of men.

SHe is a Special kind of He.

WoMen-Could mean special Men who make other Men go Wooohooo!
WoMen-Could mean special Men who have Wombs.
WoMen-Could mean the special Men whom other Men Woo.

It is just like IBM RedBooks are nothing but a particular kind of books from IBM which traditionally had their covers all red and hence the name.

So which is more generic? Books or Redbooks?
When i make a general statement about books, such as

"Thick fat books are good for raising the level of your computer monitor.",

does it also not include the idea that
"Thick fat Redbooks are good for raising the level of your computer monitor."?

Similarly,
When I use 'he' in a generic way, it includes 'she'
When I use 'man' or 'mankind' in a generic way, it includes 'woman' and 'womankind'

I mean did you all not read about "Evolution of Man" in school?
Does it mean women did not evolve?

Even in hindi, we have the generic 'Insaan' for human. It is a generic word and yet 'masculine'.
So does it mean "Auratein insaan nahin hai"? (Does it mean "Women are not human"?)
Nope. Its not at all that way. Even though 'Insaan' is masculine, it includes men & women (kids too)
Similarly even though 'he' is masculine, it includes men and women (kids too).

And just think how many bytes we will be saving on the world wide web, if nobody insists on using 'they' (4 characters) or 'he/she' (6 characters) instead of 'he' (only 2 characters :))

And its not just storage. Every time those extra characters are used, they will need additional processing by the digital circuits. Think about energy crisis! Think about global warming!

OK Now I will rest this case.
Now I will rest this nutcase I meant.
I mean this nutcase will now go to sleep.
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7 comments :

  1. GAWD!

    What a thesis!

    Tag has been done.

    ReplyDelete
  2. //"This is cattlepoop person!"

    Hahahahahaha! Tum pathhar! :D
    ps: You rock! :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. OMG rest in peace gender specific language ...i agree with solitaire WHAT AN ENORMOUS THESIS ...we'll have to change the bible ..then it'll be he/she who craves another's wife/ husband shall go to hell/helen ..

    ReplyDelete
  4. "This is cattlepoop person!"
    "Let me shed some light for them." - enuf shed.

    ReplyDelete
  5. intelligently put...gent...man...see see???

    Scribblers Inc.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Though I use the they/their version much more often than othegs options, I don't find it right and it's actually grammatically wrong. I'd picked that habit from Bombay Times. But then I give females the benefit of right to take offence, 'cuz I've never been a female (in my self-opinion), so don't know how they must feel on reading 'he' as a generic pronoun.

    On one of blogs I follow--'Atheism: proving the negative' (at the bottom in the favorite blogs list), I've seen a new trend of using she! The author is male of course, and I'd incorporated that trend in my post on 'worship'. :P

    ReplyDelete

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