language is sexist

[RainingSkies]

Originally posted by Rosa Lichtenstein@October 16, 2007 10:59 am
Language cannot be sexist, since for every sexist sentence you can think of, I can write its negation.

It is the users of language that are (or are not) sexist.

True IMO, it's the way how the users "use" their language which in the end results in what we called "sexist".

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Rosa Lichtenstein@October 16, 2007 02:59 am
Language cannot be sexist, since for every sexist sentence you can think of, I can write its negation.

Languages cannot be sexist, but the argument you provided is not valid.

Evidently, a sexist sentence like

Women are inferior to men.

gives us a non-sexist sentence when negated:

Women are not inferior to men.

But the negation of a sexist sentence like

George whines like a woman.

is still sexist:

George does not whine like a woman.

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:

George does not whine like a woman.

The negation is:

It is not the case that George whines like a woman.

Which does not contain the suspicious (conversational) implications you seem to see here.

[Luís Henrique]

No, it doesn't sound correct.

The problem is that an statement like

George whines like as a woman.

is in fact built of two independent assertions:

1. (implicit) Women whine;
2. (explicit) George whines (like one of them).

Either your proposed negation and mine only address the explicit assertion:

It is not the case that George whines like a woman.

is still sexist:

1. (implicit) Women whine;
2. (explicit) It is not the case that George whines (like one of them).

To attain an anti-sexist sentence it is necessary to negate the implicit clause:

Women do not whine.

which doesn't sound as a negation of

George whines like a woman.

Language isn't sexist, because language can be used to express anything, including oppression and resistance to oppression (and is only useful as long it is - Susan Haden Elgin's efforts were useless, after all).

But resistance to oppression is not the logic negation of oppression.

Luís Henrique

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+October 16, 2007 01:59 am--> (Luís Henrique @ October 16, 2007 01:59 am)

1984

@February 21, 2006 06:01 am
Humm... in Portuguese and other latin languages the plural of substantives and the usage of pronoums is somehow sexist, for instance, let's take a bunch of people. Four women and one man. The correct reference for them is "Eles", a masculine pronoum, even if there are more feminine components in the group. We only use a feminine pronoum "Elas" when the whole group is composed of feminine substantives.

No. It's the way you interpret it. If a matriarchal society spoke Portuguese, this fact would be interpreted as meaning that one single male "pollutes" a collective.

In a strictly grammatical and historical view, it only reflects the well know fact that in Latin the "neutral" and the "masculine" gender colluded into one.

Luís Henrique [/b]

The point is that things like this in the language are not the cause of sexism.

Turkish has no gender, no gendered pronouns (She/He/It='O&#39, and less gendered nouns than Western languages (The equivalent of the word 'sibling' is used instead of Brother, or sister for example).

However, this does not mean that Turkish society is significantly less sexist than Portuguese society.

Devrim

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:

is in fact built of two independent assertions:

That is what we call a 'conversational implicature' which is why I said:

The negation is:

It is not the case that George whines like a woman.

Which does not contain the suspicious (conversational) implications you seem to see here.

The negation wipes these out.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Devrim, thanks for that.

My professor of logic (who apparently could speak about 10 languages&#33 pointed this out to me -- it is nice to have it confirmed.

[Batko]

Language isn't sexist, mofos. Sure "****" is an insult but so is "cock", bright sparks. Enough with the feminist bullshit for fucks sake...

[Jazzratt]

Originally posted by Batko@October 16, 2007 11:46 pm
Language isn't sexist, mofos. Sure "****" is an insult but so is "cock", bright sparks. Enough with the feminist bullshit for fucks sake...

Thank you for that insightful contribution. <_< I especially loved this bit

Enough with the feminist bullshit for fucks sake...

Which convinced me that you&#39;re completely innocent of anything like intellect.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by devrimankara@October 16, 2007 02:39 pm
The point is that things like this in the language are not the cause of sexism.

Turkish has no gender, no gendered pronouns (She/He/It=&#39;O&#39, and less gendered nouns than Western languages (The equivalent of the word &#39;sibling&#39; is used instead of Brother, or sister for example).

However, this does not mean that Turkish society is significantly less sexist than Portuguese society.

Devrim

Exactly. Though a huge part of Anglo-saxon prejudices against Latin-Americans is based in the misunderstanding of the role of gender in Language, together with a flawed theory (Sapir-Whorf) of how linguistic facts affect social structures (Latin-Americans "must" be sexist because their language is sexist, and their language is sexist because it has two genders, the "masculine" appearing to "predominate" over the "feminine" because neutral plurals take the "masculine" form).

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Rosa Lichtenstein@October 16, 2007 07:46 pm
LH:

is in fact built of two independent assertions:

That is what we call a &#39;conversational implicature&#39; which is why I said:

The negation is:

It is not the case that George whines like a woman.

Which does not contain the suspicious (conversational) implications you seem to see here.

The negation wipes these out.

Maybe my English is the problem, but to me

It is not the case that George whines like a woman.

still seems to imply that women whine.

Luís Henrique

[Faux Real]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique@October 16, 2007 07:59 pm

It is not the case that George whines like a woman.

still seems to imply that women whine.

It could mean that, or that he wines similarly in style like a woman. I guess it &#39;depends on the context&#39; as is usually the case.

[Devrim]

Originally posted by Luís Henrique+October 17, 2007 02:56 am--> (Luís Henrique @ October 17, 2007 02:56 am)

devrimankara

@October 16, 2007 02:39 pm
The point is that things like this in the language are not the cause of sexism.

Turkish has no gender, no gendered pronouns (She/He/It=&#39;O&#39, and less gendered nouns than Western languages (The equivalent of the word &#39;sibling&#39; is used instead of Brother, or sister for example).

However, this does not mean that Turkish society is significantly less sexist than Portuguese society.

Devrim

Exactly. Though a huge part of Anglo-saxon prejudices against Latin-Americans is based in the misunderstanding of the role of gender in Language, together with a flawed theory (Sapir-Whorf) of how linguistic facts affect social structures (Latin-Americans "must" be sexist because their language is sexist, and their language is sexist because it has two genders, the "masculine" appearing to "predominate" over the "feminine" because neutral plurals take the "masculine" form).

Luís Henrique [/b]

German has three genders. I don&#39;t think that &#39;gender&#39; relates to sex in any real way. &#39;Gender&#39; means type. Other languages have different genders like animate, inanimate. I don&#39;t think that the genders in Latin languages are particularly related to male, and female.

Devrim

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by devrimankara@October 17, 2007 06:12 am
German has three genders. I don&#39;t think that &#39;gender&#39; relates to sex in any real way. &#39;Gender&#39; means type. Other languages have different genders like animate, inanimate. I don&#39;t think that the genders in Latin languages are particularly related to male, and female.

Devrim

In Dutch, apparently, the feminine and the masculine genders are merging into one, leaving the language with just two - neutral and "common"...

In Romance languages there is a relation, of course, when speaking of human subjects. But some people seem to fancy a magic relation, as if speakers of Portuguese would think that tables are female and bricks masculine - which evidently doesn&#39;t happen.

Genders are a grammatical resource of some languages, not a philosophical approach to reality.

Luís Henrique

[blackstone]

Originally posted by rev0lt+October 16, 2007 10:25 pm--> (rev0lt @ October 16, 2007 10:25 pm)

Luís Henrique

@October 16, 2007 07:59 pm

It is not the case that George whines like a woman.

still seems to imply that women whine.

It could mean that, or that he wines similarly in style like a woman. I guess it &#39;depends on the context&#39; as is usually the case. [/b]

How do women whine differently then men? They do a cuter pout?

[TC]

Originally posted by SmithSmith@February 13, 2006 06:47 am
Anyone notices how most insults and profanity are somehow related to females?

explain to me

no i haven&#39;t noticed. the premise of this thread is just, false.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:

still seems to imply that women whine.

Not so, for it denies that implication.

G1: "George whines like a woman"

is true if George and women both whine, and George whines like them.

In that case, it is the equivalent of this conjunction:

G2: "George and women both whine, and George whines like them."

The negation, on the other hand is true if one or other of those conjuncts is false, or they all are.

But, the first conjunct is false if women do not whine, and that makes the second conjunct (i.e., "And George whines like them") automatically false.

So, G2 is false if women do not whine.

But that makes the negation of G2 true.

And, if the negation of G2 is true, G1 is false.

[RGacky3]

Language is sexist? Then don&#39;t talk :P.

how about you just don&#39;t use sexist language if you don&#39;t want to be sexist, or you can switch it.

[Jazzratt]

Language isn&#39;t sexist, it isn;t even real :P

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Jazzy, thanks for using language to tell us that.