Hello Bram. Welcome to the mailing list. On 30/01/18 05:22, Bram Geron wrote: > I have only just subscribed to this list before you sent this message, but I > believe that the use of "he" as a neutral pronoun makes women subconsciously > feel like they are not really welcome in the community.
The claim that “women subconsciously feel like they are not really welcome in the community” is not _even_ wrong as some physicists would put it. The problem is that it is not falsifiable, because the “subconscious” is a vague concept on which anything can be claimed and nothing can be proved because the very concept of subconscious implies that it has no observable effect. Anyway, if we delete “subconscious” from your message we are left with a less vague claim. My reply would be this: If anybody feels excluded by the use of generic (w.r.t. grammatical gender) grammar is because he wants to feel excluded. By definition, generic nouns are inclusive of both sexes. > Participation of women in computer science is problematically low across the > globe, and I do think that small things like using "he" to refer to a group > including women hurts this cause. I think you'll find you get used to > they/them/their surprisingly quickly, and in a great number of > (scientific/industry) communities it is now accepted as the gender-neutral > pronoun. No, it is not “problematically” low. What “problems” does it bring for “computer science”? none; it may be against the ultraliberals' politcal agenda, but that is not computer science problem. Anyway, it is not just computer science but intellectual activities in general. Anybody can send a patch, publish computer software or a book about mathematics. Sex makes no difference. If one sex does so less often than the other, it is because of lack of capability and interest. This way of thinking seems to be a result of the push for “diversity” and “social justice”. Through history, men as group have shown higher intellectual success than women. The feminists cried that this was because of systematic oppression (this itself is an intellectual achievements, since men succeeded while women failed to achieve such oppression for their benefit). Well, society gave women a chance. Now (in nearly all of the world) women have either the same or more (there are social programs exclusively for women, but hardly any exclusively for men) opportunities w.r.t. knowledge than men, yet they still show the same poor performance as a group (I can cite examples if requested). They were given an opportunity and failed. Thus the claim that both sexes are “equal” with respect to intellectual capability has lost its credibility. This is to much disgust of the ultraliberals, because it undermines their agenda that includes making everybody believe that we are all “equal” (reality notwithstanding!). It is them who must accept reality, not the rest of us who must become oblivious to it. I refuse to become oblivious to reality and jump into the “we are all equal“ bandwagon. I urge you to refuse too.
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot
_______________________________________________ hol-info mailing list hol-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hol-info
