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Subject:Re: Grad school (PhDs) From:Brad Mehlenbacher <brad_m -at- UNITY -dot- NCSU -dot- EDU> Date:Wed, 27 Oct 1993 23:03:36 -0400
Alun-->A little harsh. Michael's point, I suspect, is that it's
presumptuous to assume that female readers are going to feel "included" in
Thoreau's quotation, as it reads orginally. As a result, M.'s applied
well-established citation practice to the quote to make that point without
elaborating upon it.
As for "the rest of us learned to spell and moved on to join the real
world"--Well, it must be terrific to romanticize being tooooo busy to
think about the way language influences our perception of the people,
events, and actions that surround us (e.g., if I manage a department and
describe my administrative support as "the girls," am I not making a bunch
of assumptions about that group that I mightn't make if I described them
as "my people?").
Or am I simply being PC, like Michael....? Hmmm. Signed, Constantly struck
by the anger that some folks towards folks who make attempts to be
inclusive, rather than presumptive....
> Michael Gos (but not Thoreau, who was not so politically correct) writes:
> "Most (wo)men lead lives of quiet desparation" (sic)
> ... whereas, the rest of us learned to spell and moved on to join
> the real world.
