Re: Men vs Women on Conlang

From: "Joseph Fatula" <fatula3@...>

> Then there's the other situation: I'm a man, and I've never made a single
a
> posteriori language.  Never even been interested in trying.  Just another
> datum for you all...
>
> Joe Fatula
Yeah, I'm with you there.  What's the point?  What's so "masculine" about a
posteriori languages?  Or so "feminine" about a priori conlangs?

As for gender and conlanging, I think that more men in 1990 had access to
computers, but as that changes we'll see how many more women are drawn to a
public display of their inventions.  As for Jeff Henning's statistics, aired
a few days ago (showing how many invented languages were known to the
world), it seems so completely obvious to me that the great number of
conlangs he reports appearing in public after 1990 is directly due to the
formation of the Internet listservs.  When we didn't have that, how could
such a uniquely private art get aired except through novels or special
interest groups that happened to get some publicity?  (This observation is
in my on-line article)  So the five or the seven known conlangs that he
reports in this or that pre-nineties year may be no indication whatsoever
that private language invention was rare.  Even Tolkien met a fellow
"conlanger" in the army: "I think I shall express the accusative with a
prefix!"  He just couldn't get him to speak to him about it.  If JRRT bumped
elbows with another language inventor, then I can imagine the lonely pursuit
of this hobby in droves.  I started mine in the sixties.  I also drew
complicated maps of imaginary cities, and complicated floorplans of
imaginary palaces and houses.  The fact that SimCity was such a hit
indicates that a basic aspect of the human imagination is to imagine
familiar things unfamiliarly, and to engage in miniature or innovative
representations of them.  I have since spoken to people entirely unaware of
CONLANG who have admitted to me that they made up languages.  One was a
visiting professor a few years ago.  I would not be surprised to learn that
lots and LOTS of women engage in this rare art.  But women have been brought
up in a culture that even now encourages them to keep their private games to
themselves--especially if they can't be turned to domestic or public use.
Only recently have women wanted to go on-line and talk about their fantasy
inventions to mostly men.  Mau, Camilla, Heather, Nicole, Mia, Irina, go for
it.  Times are a-changin'.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."
http://www.media-culture.org.au/archive/0003/languages.html  or:
http://www.media-culture.org.au/0003/languages.html

I can't remember which one works.


Jan wrote:
> > > It's obviously true that the number of men on Conlang exceeds the
number
> > of
> > > women by far. What makes me especially curious, though, is why women
> seem
> > to be
> > > not involved at all into a posteriori conlanging; I don't know even
one
> > example
> > > an a posteriori conlang created by a woman.
> > >
> > > Jan
>

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