From: Richard Steven Hack (richardhack@pcmagic.net)
Date: Sun Mar 03 2002 - 12:33:26 MST
At 05:20 PM 3/3/02 +0100, you wrote:
>On Sun, 3 Mar 2002, the animated silicon love doll wrote:
>
> > Those aren't gender neutral. We're in the business of creating ourselves
> > and becoming whatever we want to be, here, and some of us don't want to
> > be a he or a she.
>
>1) you're a human being still
>
>2) you're talking to still other human beings, most of whom are unfamiliar
> with new terminology, especially pointless new terminology
>
>3) posthuman beings either never spoke human languages, or rapidly stop
> using languages and concepts as they radiate away from the founder
> species
>
>This considered, especially 2), seem to suggest to stick to vanilla human
>language. (For time being; for most of us, with the possible exception
>of gargoyles).
I tend to agree that new pronouns are pointless. That said, I suppose it's
alright if some people want to compromise their ability to communicate for
the sake of personal image management. What I don't understand is why we
need S's and 'v''s and Z's - what's wrong with simply dropping the
consonants from him, her, herself, himself, etc. and saying "er", "im",
"erself", "imself", etc.
Then it just sound like a speed impediment to normal listeners. You could
interpret the "e" in some of these as "Extropian"...
Another possibility would be "g" for "gender-neutral" - ger, gim, gerself,
gimself. Unless the gays want to keep the "G" for themselves.
I doubt there's going to be a standard for this - too few people care.
On this list, I think it's just another intellectual puzzle for people to
play with. That's fine - if boring to me. I can just filter the header :-}
Richard Steven Hack
richardhack@pcmagic.net
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