Re: Gender

NikTaylor42: "Lots of languages place infants in non-human categories.  For
that matter, I've even heard native English speakers refer to infants as
"it".  And unborn children are often called "it", especially by
pro-abortionists.  It's all a matter of where you consider the quality of
"human" to begin.  The Kassi consider that to begin with the acquisition of
speech.  In our culture, most people consider it to begin either at birth or
some point before birth."

Incidentally, this issue is one I wrestle with constantly, as I am what, in
Chip Delaney's "The Einstein Intersection", could merit the name-prefix LE
(LO male, LA female, LE [unrecognised in English]).

Our species may have evolved as a bisexual set for reproduction, but we
aren't all blessed with clear gender. As it is, the American and Western
gender rules are, in Chomskyan notation, [MALE +/-], where [MALE +] is MAN
and [MAN -] is WOMAN.

I may be [Male -], but I'm not WOMAN, so to heck with all these gendered
pronouns. Call me she and leave it be, I suppose. Or 'scrat' - if it's good
enough for the Devil ("Old Scratch" a reinterpretation of archaic term in
"Old Scrat"), it's good enough for me. Just don't call me 'he'.

Anna J. Johnson
Mystif & Scrat Inscrutable
*************
Somtyme one of mankynde is both man & woman & suche ... in englyssh is
called a scrette.
- Caxton, Trevisa's Higden (1482)

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