linda@mks.com (Linda Carson) (10/25/90)
In article <1990Oct25.030752.6568@watdragon.waterloo.edu> eafournier@lion.uwaterloo.ca (Wade Richards) writes: >In article <1990Oct23.211651.10227@contact.uucp> rrwood@contact.uucp (roy wood) writes: >>And as an interesting side note, I'd like to point out that my original >>message made no mention of the sex of the person I was trying to convince, >>yet *everyone* assumed that this person was male. In fact, she is very >>much female. I suppose this is an interesting demonstration of a strong >>bias or stereotyping among us. Does anyone want to do a thesis on the >>subject? > >Does this have to be a bias or a stereotype? Why can't we just notice >that there are more males in the CS field than there are females, and >make the statistically most likely correct guess? > "Statistically", Roy has noticed that 100% of the people who responded to his message *assumed* (without any evidence one way or the other) that his boss was male. Roy described more of a manager than a computer scientist. (Roy would not be teaching anyone "in the CS field" about recursion.) If I were looking for indications of bias, that number would be pretty impressive -- not conclusive, but then Roy just suggested it might be a place to start studying. >It's far too awkword to use (s)he, and for some reason both genders seem >to object to the gender-neutral `it'. > We could use the colloquial "they" exactly the same way we do in our day-to-day spoken language: "I don't know what your boss studied at school, but they might be more convinced by a data processing argument (like sorting & searching) than by arithmetic functions (like factorials)." >Sexual stereotyping seems to be such a popular catch-phrase these days >that everyone wants to hang that label on anything. Personally, I think >that stereotyping is slightly less common than many people would claim. > As a man working in a male-dominated field, you're not in the best position to witness sexual stereotyping first-hand, of course. *I* think stereotyping is a great deal more common than most people would admit. We have different viewpoints. The idea that you can guess or assume the sex of a person based on their job, hobbies, accomplishments or professional standing (that is, "sexual stereotyping") is common to 100% of our sample here, and you offered a popular rationalization for the practice: statistics. We don't have to argue about how common it is, Wade. I'd like to talk about some reasons we might like to stop doing it. Comedies are full of excruciating moments when the protagonist discovers they've embarrassed themself mortally by *assuming* someone's boss is male, or their secretary is female. While I look forward to the day when my nephews ask me why that ever used to be funny, it's still pretty awkward to be caught in that situation today. One could embarrass oneself severely. One could embarrass oneself in a professional setting, as you can imagine from the case in point. If I submitted my resume to Roy's boss, beginning with the salutation "Dear Sir", it doesn't matter if statistics are on my side. It may be an unlikely event that Roy's boss is a woman, but it's not impossible, and she probably stopped finding the situation funny after the first year or four. She may well have lost all sense of fun after the first several times someone mistook her for her own secretary. I can expect my resume to end up in the circular file, fast. So sexual stereotyping could embarrass us or damage us professionally. For anyone who works in sales (and in some ways, we *all* work in sales), sexual stereotyping costs customers. If a company's promotional material, for example, is all addressed exclusively to the largely-male market base, it alienates women. (It also alienates men who are sensitive to sexual stereotyping in advertising.) Telephone solicitors who call a single father at home and insist on speaking to "the woman of the house" are never going to sell that man their grocery service, no matter how much he could use it. Sexual stereotyping could cost us clients. The "politically-correct" reasons for avoiding sexual stereotyping are less concrete, and we may not agree on them. But many people believe (and I am one of them) that pervasive sexual stereotyping of careers (such as referring to nurses as "she"...) is a self-fulfilling prophecy. There are more men than women in computer science in part because we expect computer scientists to be men and we reinforce that expectation *every time we use a pronoun*. Girls don't see women in the field. They know, because we talk about "him" and "he", that women can't enter the field. If they take that as a challenge, we continue to exclude them once they enter the industry; they may be "she"'s and "her"'s as individuals, but the general case is still male. Sexual stereotyping limits women and men to those stereotypes; it tells all of us what we *cannot* be rather than what we can be. Sexual stereotyping could cost us fellow professionals. It could cost our sons and daughters equal opportunity. >By the way, here are some more "sexual stereotypes" that fall into the >same catagory: when I refer to a nurse whose gender I don't know, I >assume female. If I don't know the gender of a sumo-wrestler, I assume >male. > My uncle Reg, the nurse, would like to show you a photograph (from A Day In The Life Of Japan) of female sumo wrestlers. >And no, I don't have any stastical data to back up my assumption that >there are many more males working in CS than females, just my own >perception and informal head-counts. > You're right. There are more men than women in CS. Most educational institutions and government organizations feel this is a problem and are working on a number of constructive ways to address it (such as school visits by women in the sciences and engineering). One of the things I'm sure they'd all appreciate would be for the rest of us to stop making things even more difficult than they are. It takes an effort to strip sexual stereotyping from language. But it's not rocket science, folks. It's important, and it's worth the effort. Linda Carson
bruce@mks.com (Bruce Payette) (10/25/90)
In article <1990Oct25.145511.13202@mks.com> linda@mks.com (Linda Carson) writes: >In article <1990Oct25.030752.6568@watdragon.waterloo.edu> eafournier@lion.uwaterloo.ca (Wade Richards) writes: >>In article <1990Oct23.211651.10227@contact.uucp> rrwood@contact.uucp (roy wood) writes: > >>It's far too awkword to use (s)he, and for some reason both genders seem >>to object to the gender-neutral `it'. >> >We could use the colloquial "they" exactly the same way we do in >our day-to-day spoken language: > "I don't know what your boss studied at school, but they might > be more convinced by a data processing argument (like sorting & > searching) than by arithmetic functions (like factorials)." > > >Linda Carson Good heavens Linda, take care lest the League for Language Purity hunt you down and burn you at the stake. How dare you propose such a thing! Leading an innocent language into decadence! Tsk! Seriously, this doesn't seem to to be a unreasonable approach to the problem. The English language currently does not have an asexual singular pronoun. The other common approachs in written English: using '(s)he', or continually altering the sex of the pronoun either can't be used in the spoken language or are simply unwieldy. Using 'they' as both a singular and a plural pronoun seems to be the best solution. There is even a 'precedent' in the language. If I remember correctly (trivia-mode on) 'you' is/was the plural of 'thee' however it has been common practice to use 'you' to address either a group or an individual for a (very) long time. -- --Bruce Payette, Mortice Kern Systems Inc., 35 King Street N., Waterloo, Ont. Internet: bruce@mks.com UUCP: ..!uunet!watmath!mks!bruce
arpepper@watmath.waterloo.edu (Adrian Pepper) (10/26/90)
In article <1990Oct25.155754.16065@mks.com> bruce@mks.com (Bruce Payette) writes: >Seriously, this doesn't seem to to be a unreasonable approach to the >problem. The English language currently does not have an asexual >singular pronoun. The other common approachs in written English: using >'(s)he', or continually altering the sex of the pronoun either can't be >used in the spoken language or are simply unwieldy. Using 'they' as >both a singular and a plural pronoun seems to be the best solution. >There is even a 'precedent' in the language. If I remember correctly >(trivia-mode on) 'you' is/was the plural of 'thee' however it has been >common practice to use 'you' to address either a group or an individual >for a (very) long time. People quibbling over this problem often fail to note that there are two parts to it. The asexual singular third-person pronoun is "he". But there are complaints from some people that this language construct infers other politics. People who use "she" to refer to an unknown secretary or nurse are obviously making biased assumptions. And, in each individual case of the use of "he", one cannot really tell whether the user is making biased assumptions or not. Myself, I think it would be a more powerful solution to continue the use of masculine names and pronouns, making it clear that they should not be construed as making assumptions about the actual sex of individuals involved. When I was very young, I had no problem with the concept of "female postmen", for instance. Changing names to other things does not fight the basic problem. Neither "nurse", nor "secretary" would appear to indicate the sex of the person, for instance. And I have seen at least one woman insist on being referred to as a "chairman" ("not a 'chair', not a 'chairperson'...") But I guess other people have different opinions, and, in general, I do use "they", (or change the point-of-view and use "one") where I feel my statements may be misconstrued. Adrian. P.S. 'spell' doesn't appear to recognize 'asexual'.
pacolley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Colley) (10/26/90)
In the following, I'd like to address the issue of language, more than the assumptions and preconceptions people may have. In article <1990Oct25.145511.13202@mks.com> linda@mks.com (Linda Carson) writes: >Comedies are full of excruciating moments when the protagonist discovers >they've embarrassed themself mortally by *assuming* someone's boss is >male, or their secretary is female. While I look forward to the day when >my nephews ask me why that ever used to be funny, it's still pretty >awkward to be caught in that situation today. One could embarrass oneself >severely. Everyone I've talked to has assumed that my supervisor is male, until told otherwise. I haven't noticed anyone thinking that it was funny or embarrassing, just that it was a mistake. Maybe progress is being made. The universal assumption that my supervisor is male is a separate issue, one that I'm not intending to address with this reply. I wish to discuss the "mistake" part of the assumption. In other words, traditional English forces a choice to be made between "he" and "she" when talking about someone. Some other languages force this choice when talking about objects also. Since there is a 50% chance of getting this wrong if the proportions are equal and there is no other information, nobody should be embarrassed by the mistake. The mistake is the fault of the language which forces a choice, not a fault of the person using the language. Changing a language is tough, since most "correct" language use is defined by how people actually use the language, not by some authority. I suspect that many people would object to being referred to as "it", and "(s)he" isn't in the form of a valid English word. I'd favour the use of "they", but the distinction between plural and singular has its uses. What I think I'm trying to say is, part of the problem is the _importance_ that readers place on the words "he" vs. "she". To pick an analogy, "color" is correct American spelling, and "colour" is correct British spelling, but nobody gets upset at "color" vs. "colour" (at least here in Canada). By making a big deal about it, you seem to be saying that your gender is important. If your gender didn't matter in the current context, you wouldn't be so upset. For example, the following quoted text seems to be saying (to me) that Linda thinks the gender of a boss is important: > If I submitted my resume to Roy's >boss, beginning with the salutation "Dear Sir", [...if Roy's boss is a woman...] >I can expect my resume to end up in the circular file, fast. While I expected that Linda's point is that the gender of a boss should _not_ be important. Incidently, I wasn't aware that "Dear Sir" was a male salutation. I've used that salutation when I _know_ the recipient is female. For example, in accepting job offers; both of my work term employment offers were from women. I always thought it was a term of respect. Webster's says, "2a) Used as a usu. respectful form of address b) used as a conventional form of address in the salutation of a letter." Thus I'd say Webster's is somewhat ambiguous as to whether it is exclusively male. Regardless, my job opportunities didn't end up in the circular file. Fortunately. I guess I'm just doing my part to remove the gender bias of the phrase "Dear Sir:" Anyone with a more authoritative dictionary or usage guide wish to comment? > Telephone solicitors who call a single >father at home and insist on speaking to "the woman of the house" are >never going to sell that man their grocery service, no matter how much >he could use it. This doesn't have much to do with the topic at hand, but I can't resist: I had a telephone solicitor phone recently and insist on talking to my _mother_! I guess I sound kind of young on the phone. The T.S. wouldn't take "she doesn't live here" and "I'm married" for an answer either. >Sexual stereotyping could cost us fellow professionals. It could >cost our sons and daughters equal opportunity. I agree, this is a very serious problem. > [...] number of constructive ways to address it (such as >school visits by women in the sciences and engineering). This is one of the best ideas I've heard of. I also like the posters that the Engineering faculty was using back in 1984 (?), "I want to be an Engineer, just like my mom". - Paul Colley pacolley@violet.waterloo.edu or .ca "Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of" - Ken Burnside
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (10/26/90)
But is it bias? (in the negative sense?) Assuming that one is referring to a person of unknown sex, and one is one of those conditioned not to use asexual pronouns, is there an evil in taking the best guess? Perhaps, but it is not the evil one would normally associate with the word bias -- where people might assume that a woman should not or could not be a manager/programmer/etc. People who don't know Linda probably call her Mrs. Carson or even Mrs. Gardner from time to time. I get phone calls for "Mr. Hardman" myself. One does not assume that these people are doing this for any bad reason, just that they are making a wrong guess based on ignorance. If somebody insisted on calling you Mrs. Gardner after they knew your name is Carson, that would be bad. (Footnote of course. Most of the people who call or write to any of the above names *are* evil, since they're usually trying to sell you something. But they are evil for the solicitation, but because they don't yet know the form of address you like. So I am usually rude to anybody who calls me Mr. Hardman.) -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473