Re: Gender (was: Homosexuality and gender identity)

On Wed, May 28, 2003 at 04:17:59PM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> Note that this interdiction of using masculine forms to refer to women goes
> so far that while feminists in the English speaking world have fought for
> the neutralisation of occupation names (chairman becoming chairperson,
> etc...), French feminists fight for the *feminisation* of occupation names,
> i.e. the construction, if such word didn't exist already, of feminine
> counterparts to all occupation names which existed only in masculine form.
Thereby avoiding such circumlocutions as (if I'm remembering this
right) "la femme docteur", which means something like "the doctor-woman".
The noun "docteur" is masculine, so in order to form a feminine noun phrase
which agrees with the referent, the noun is replaced by "femme" ("woman")
and the "docteur" becomes a sort of modifier.

-Mark

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