Hi, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > To get back to something *concrete*, would anyone find it sexist if the > phrase was "So easy your secretary or your boss could use it"? This pairs > a stereotypically male and a sterotypically female profession, both > stereotypically clueless.
These words are also gender-neutral, so anybody who objects to "secretary" and/or "boss" on grounds of the words being sexist just shows that they have their own axe to grind here. My position is, however, that it's not necessary to resort to secretary/boss/grandma/whoever stereotypes in the first place. If we want to make task X possible for people in group Y who typically don't have background knowledge or experience Z, why not explicitly mention Z instead of resorting to group Y as an example? Additonal benefit: People still understand your argument even if their experience with persons from group Y differs from yours. -- Matthias Urlichs
