LAWS@SRI-AI.ARPA (04/02/85)
From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws <AIList-REQUEST@SRI-AI> AIList Digest Tuesday, 2 Apr 1985 Volume 3 : Issue 44 Today's Topics: Linguistics - Sexism in English, Opinion - Sexism in AIList, Psychology - Imprinting & Humor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 Mar 1985 1952-PST (Sunday) From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan) Newsgroups: net.women Subject: Hofstadter on sexism in the English language [Forwarded from net.women by Miriam Blatt <blatt@Glacier>.] [Excerpted from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] The most interesting work of writing I have seen on sexism in the English language is by Douglas Hofstadter (writing under the name William Satire) and is called "A Person Paper on Purity in Language". It can be found in his wonderful book "Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern". Hofstadter is strongly in favor of removing sexism from our language and writes about it in this paper using biting sarcasm. Included at the end of this message is an excerpt from the paper (included without permission -- I don't think Hofstadter would object). Doug Alan mit-eddie!nessus Nessus@MIT-MC [I presume that this message is socially acceptable and of some relevance to an AIList issue on the psychology of sexism. It has to do with AI only in that it touches on linguistics and psychology and was written by Doug Hofstadter, so I have reduced the extract to a single representative paragraph. Anyone thinking of replying to this message should bear in mind that sexist language was discussed for many months in Human-Nets a couple of years ago; I am unaware of any single issue resolved by the debate. -- KIL] Most of the clamor, as you certainly know by now, revolves around the age-old usage of the noun "white" and words built from it, such as "chairwhite", "mailwhite", "repairwhite", "clergywhite", "middlewhite", "Frenchwhite", "forwhite", "whitepower", "whiteslaughter", "oneupswhiteship", "straw white", "whitehandle", and so on. The negrists claim that using the word "white", either in on its own or as a component, to talk about *all* the members of the human species is somehow degrading to blacks and reinforces racism. Therefore the libbers propose that we substitute "person" everywhere where "white" now occurs. Sensitive speakers of our secretary tongue of course find this preposterous. There is great beauty to a phrase such as "All whites are created equal." Our forebosses who framed the Declaration of Indepedence well understood the poetry of our language. Think how ugly it would be to say "All persons are created equal.", or "All whites and blacks are created equal." Besides, as any schoolwhitey can tell you, such phrases are redundant. In most contexts, it is self-evident when "white" is being used in an inclusive sense, in which case it subsumes members of the darker race just as much as fairskins. [...] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Mar 85 21:54:10 est From: BostonU SysMgr <root%bostonu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa> Subject: Sexism, censorship and degrees of reaction I have resisted thus far but now I give in to an opinion on the Sexist Joke issue: I for one am offended by such public displays of locker-room humour. On the other hand, I am offended by censorship. The obvious solution to such a situation like this comes from the realization that one cannot utilize as powerful and hard to apply instrument as the 'law' for obnoxious and 'potentially' dangerous behavior (the law is always very cautious when words like potentially have to be used.) The 'law' I equate here with the moderator being asked to filter such jokes. The error comes from the desire for authoritative revenge, either from the police or a moderator. In a situatiion like this you are quite powerful enough as human beings to correct this situation. I simply suggest that it be left at the level of: 1. If something offends you tell the offender and, if appropriate, the net audience. 2. Remember the individual involved. Next time something comes up about that person you will know their character is probably suspect, or at the very least, their sense of judgement. I for one would feel severely punished if someone so seriously suspected my character. An entire audience like this would be crushing. Never doubt your power as a human being, nor that the power of your words and opinions are at least as powerful as the ones that offended you. Don't look so quickly to others for solutions. [Before the flames start I am not advocating this for something like a violent act like rape...call the cops and have the beast caged, they're paid to do that.] -Barry Shein, Boston University I ain't afraid o' no paradox ------------------------------ Date: 28 Mar 85 12:18:15 PST (Thu) From: Jeff Peck <peck@sri-spam> Subject: linguistics, humor, the subconsicious, pathogenic 'memes' The meta-message of pollynomials... The humor (if any) in this story is based on the differences between the syntactic level (mathematical language) and the semantic level (a story about rape). This story allows one to write, publish, and read this story and always say, in the back of the mind (at the other level) "this only a play on mathematical terms", and therefore one can talk about, think about, accept and even enjoy this story about violent rape without having to expose oneself as a sexist psychopath; it is (was) socially acceptable. Now, there are some people who don't yet understand why this story is objectionable, they see it as just a harmless little play with words. And perhaps those people really are not tuned into hearing it at its true semantic level. That is no excuse, because the semantic message of the story can still be learned subconsciously. [There is a second level of meaning which says "it is ok to write, publish, and read this type of material without comment, under the guise of 'humor'."] The objectionable elements of this story center around the rape myths which are expressed quite blatently. These myths are: "She wanted to get raped", "She deserved to get raped", "She had no choice but to allow the rape", "She enjoyed getting raped", "The rapist is not to be blamed", "The rapist is to be admired". And the moral of the story states quite clearly that rape and fear of rape should be used to control freedom. For those who contend that stories such as these are really harmless, please consider this: The story was written to be harmless mathematical/linguistic humor, and yet, all these myths are expressed in the story, without even trying; obviously THE AUTHORS KNEW ALL THESE MYTHS, AT LEAST AT A SUBCONSCIOUS LEVEL. And I suspect that they did not pick them up in a textbook or a course on rape myths; THEY WERE LEARNED BY READING OR HEARING STORIES JUST LIKE THIS! And now, a few words about humor and censorship. As I mentioned above, the humor (socio-linguistic survival value) of this story is based on the switching between levels of meaning. The masquerade of mathematical/linguistic wordplay allows this story to easily enter the social--literary--cognitive system. (and it is a masquerade, just try publishing this under the subject line: "rape humor"). A vivid analogy comes to mind; this story (and others like it) interact with the system much as a virus interacts with biological systems. [This analogy is similar to the "memes" presented in Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene"] The story is wrapped in a double protective cover of humor and mathematics so it can slip past the usual antibodies of sensitivity or sensability. But underneath this coating is a cognitive "DNA sequence" (meme) which when injected into and nutured by the host, produces attitudes and behaviours which protect and perpetuate both the pathogen (the story) and the disease (rape and fear). Those who are surpised by the flaming about the publication of this story, perhaps don't realize that over the past twenty years, parts of our societal organism have developed antibodies for this particular virus. So, should it be published? Maybe, but not as humor; it should be quoted (mention vs use) as an example of vicious pseudo-humor. If must always be presented in the context of its reality, its disguise must be removed. The alternative is to publish it naively, and as in the case of the AIList, it may become a relatively innocuous "vaccine". The flurry of commentary is, in fact, nothing more or less than the swarming of antibodies to this virus, to engulf it, and label it as the pathogen that it is. And now, maybe a larger segment of the population will be able to detect the antigens of rape myths. There are those who will fight for the rights of viruses to reproduce and otherwise express themselves, but in this case, I think it can be shown that the organism as a whole will be healthier if this infection can be eradicated. Jeff Peck (peck@sri-spam) PostScript: For those who still claim that Polly Nomial is not a story about rape, please reread the first paragraph: "our heroine is accosted by villain..." Even without this statement of the plot, anyone who refuses to accept that this is a story about rape is simply failing to acknowledge the distinction between syntax and semantics, the use of allegory and metaphor. This story was not generated just by conjoining mathematical phrases, it was clearly written to use all those phases to describe a rape. That is an important point, this story did not spring from the pen (or keyboard) of "anonymous", it was written by a person, or more likely, a team of persons, who thought that it would be funny. This story reflects the attitudes and enlightenment of those people at that time, in that society; and they clearly believed that rape was humorous, justifiable [!!! -- KIL], etc. In today's society such attitudes must be exposed and identified as sick. [Very cleverly put, but under the syntactic sugar is a questionable premise: that anyone who enjoyed reading the story (even if female?) is a "sexist psychopath". I found humor in the word play and novel semantic mappings in spite of the subject matter; perhaps I am just more sensitive to linguistic patterns than to social concerns, at least in the intellectual context of AIList peer discussion -- that doesn't mean I'm "sick" (I hope). I think there is general agreement that the plot of the item (as opposed to its "message" or "intention", perhaps) concerned rape, that rape is abhorrent and a serious social problem and not a joking matter, that any message with intent to denigrate, subjugate, or offend is offensive, that the piece had little to do with AI, that it would have been more palatable if run with a commentary discussing its linguistic merits and decrying its subject matter, and finally that it would have been better for all concerned if I had kept it out of AIList. A reasonable amount of protest, or "sensitization", was in order. That having been done, let's get back to the theme of this list. AIList is a forum for discussion of AI and information science; it has little capacity for social subversion or reform. -- KIL] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1985 03:11 EST From: MINSKY%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA Subject: Imprinting and Humor I don't think rape-jokes are a good idea, either. In fact this is discussed tangentially in Chapter 294 (seriously -- the chapters are only 1 page long) of my almost-finished Society of Mind book. ***************************************************** TIME-SPANS of MEMORIES Contemplate the plight of a mother with a new infant! The baby will demand her time and attention for many years -- and sometimes she may wonder why. ["Why must I do all this?" "How could this baby justify such sacrifice."] Then various answers might come to mind: ["Because it will repay you some day,"] or ["This is to carry on our race"]. But these are not the arguments that end the questioning; all cultures recognize that mother-love is far from rational. Instead, an instinctive attachment-bond is formed, which then protects itself from change. The final reason to keep nurturing that child is simply, ["Because I love it."] The problem is still a real one, and there are frequent, secret, tragedies in which a mother's frustration and strain overwhelms those attachment bonds and all the other personal pleasures and social compulsions that come with rearing a child. But rather than stray off to talk about those other matters; let's focus on the nature of the mother-child bond itself. I'll argue that it's based upon a special kind of memory. We often think of all our memories as much the same in character, and all stored in the same huge container. But certain kinds of memories [ought] to be less changeable than other kinds. For example, because human infants are so utterly dependent on their parent's sustenance, our species had to evolve attachment-bonds which last at least for several years. This is seen in many other animals as well, in the form of what psychologists call "imprinting" -- the kind of learning in which an infant animal learns to recognize its parent. These special memories are very swiftly formed -- and then they're very slow to change. It can be very difficult to get those babies to transfer their attachment to foster-parents. On the other side, there are similarly rigid constraints of parents' attachment to their babies. Many adult mammals will eject alien babies from their nests, if they have not been involved in the normal process of attachment shortly after birth. The parent-child bondage, too, forms rapidly and decays slowly. These are not our only long-persisting person-bonds. There are many animal species in which an individual will choose a mate and then remain with it for all the rest of life. Many people do that, too. And of the ones who don't do that, something rather similar instead: they keep on changing person-mates but choose from those of similar appearance or character -- as though they cannot change some underlying stereotype. And on a shorter scale of time, many persons find themselves enslaved by unwanted infatuations and one-way bonds that can't be made to go away -- because the parts of the mind which do not desire those attachments are unable to control the parts of minds which made them. It's little use to complain about this; the slowness of those memory-systems evolved to suit our ancestors' requirements, not our own. We all know, too, the seemingly inexorable time-span of mourning. It often takes a year or more to manage and accept the separation or loss of those we love. This, too, could be a product of the slowness of attachment-change. Perhaps this, too, explains the prolonged, mourning-like depression that follows sexual or other forms of personal assault. No matter that the unwelcome intimacy of violence may be brief; it nonetheless affects one's attachment machinery, however much against one's wish. And then, because those agencies are do inherently slow, recovery involves a profound and prolonged disturbance to ordinary social relations. And since that happens inside agencies we can't control, it does not help very much for the victim to view the incident "rationally" -- since that can only slowly bring those sluggish mechanisms back to their normal states. It is the worst of injuries, to lose the use of precious sections of one's mind. ------- Then a chapter on Freud's theory of jokes and censors concludes: Why does humor seems so humorous when it is actually concerned with unpleasant, painful, and disgusting subjects? There's nothing very "funny" at all about most jokes - except, perhaps, in the skill and subtlety with which their dreadful content is disguised; the joke itself is often little more than ["look at what happened to somebody else; now, aren't you glad that that wasn't you"?] The censor theory not only explains this, but also why jokes are usually not so funny when heard again. That is because, each time, those censors learn a little more, and become harder to fool. Then why do certain kinds of jokes, particularly those about forbidden sexual subjects, seem to remain persistently funny to so many people? Our theory suggests that the censors in that area area must be peculiarly inept at continuous learning: the peculiar robustness of sexual humor means that the censors of sexuality are among the "slow learners" of the mind, like retarded children. In fact, we could argue that they literally [are] retarded children -- that is, frozen remnants of our earlier selves. But why should these particular censors stay unchanged so long? We saw, in [S257B] one reason why it could be good to stop some agency from learning more, and we'll see more such arguments in [S295]. There are good reasons why our sexual censors should be slow to change their ways. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************