And how about: synthetic, artificial.... There are lots of words we can use
that are actual more accurate descriptors than the term 'man-made' (given
the rise in sweatshop labour, lots of things nowadays are more likely to be
women-made or children-made, but we cannot be certain, so terms like
'synthetic' seem more appropriate (and correct).
I've found that most people who use the term 'political correctness' are
really much more worried about the loss of privilege that comes with
changing the way we use language. Thus when someone says, "you're just
being politically correct", what they really mean, is "your use of language
highlights my own unmarked privilege, and I don't like it, so I'm going to
denigrate what you say by calling it politically correct..."
Lawrence
--
Lawrence D. Berg, D.Phil.
Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Diversity and Identity
Community, Culture and Global Studies Unit
Irving K. Barber School of Arts & Sciences
University of British Columbia
3333 University Way
Kelowna, BC, Canada, V1V 1V7
Voice: +1 250.807.9392
Fax: +1 250.470.6001
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.chrdi.org/ldb/index.htm
Editor:
ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies
http://www.acme-journal.org
On 3/30/06 9:04 AM, "Jon Cloke" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Humanity, human-made, even?
>
>
> From: Dr Hillary Shaw <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Geog - genderde language
> Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 04:21:30 EST
>
>
> This point may highlight a boundary that is hard to detect between true,
> and
> certainly correct, attempts, to eliminate discrimmination (by sex, race,
> disabliity, etc etc) and the sometimes-bordering-on-the-absurd ''language''
> of
> what has been termed political correctness. Yes, language itself can be very
> powerful - the 'Power of Naming', - but potential absurdity is ilustrated by
> the ultimate non-discrimminatory term for a female of the homo sapiens
> species
> - woperchild. Can't say wo-man, so wo-person, ooops 'son' is also sexist,
> so
> child instead.
>
> Here we may actually have a negative Power of Naming effect, such
> absurdities taking away from the worthiness of all anti-discrimmination
> efforts.
>
> So what should we use as shorthand for something that has been made by homo
> sapiens. Anthropogenic is a bit long, 'of human origin' is even longer
> still,
> person-made sounds silly, perchild-made even more so. 'Mankind' used to
> refer
> to all 6.6 bn people on the planet, tho admittedly potential sex-bias here,
> but should we now use personkind, homo sapiens, or what?
>
>
> Dr Hillary J. Shaw
> School of Geography
> University of Southampton
> Highfield
> Southampton
> SO17 1BJ
> _www.fooddeserts.org_ (http://www.fooddeserts.org/)
>
>
> In a message dated 30/03/2006 03:06:35 GMT Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> One would hope that by now, in 2006, at least we as geographers could
> refrain from gendered language - do people really still use the term 'man
> made'?? - point 4. Feminist geography has been around for a good while now
> - arguments about the power of language are not new.
>
> Tracey Skelton
|