Re: Writing Systems and Biscriptal Children

> nicole.eap@snet.net writes:
> >conlangers on the list, do you find
> >yourselves dissatisfied with these horrid male-dominated natlangs and
> >left brain alphabets, and is this why you conlang - and, do you make
> >your conlangs/concultures/conworlds female dominated?  It's funny, China
> >was so male dominated and their women came up with Nu Shu, but Chinese
> >uses ideographs...hmm.
Even though I'm a feminist (and an anarchist and probably a communist
too), I don't find myself bugged by "male dominated natlangs."  I make an
effort to use inclusive English and that's that.

Hatasoe does not discriminate on the basis of gender.  In fact, evidence
that humans are cruel and dangerous was provided by both a man *and* a
woman, (two great generals, who practically destroyed their people before
finally throwing down their weapons and declaring -- in passionate poetry,
if you believe the lays -- that authority was inherently evil, that the
will-to-power was a mental illness, and that they would forevermore wear
black robes and spend their lives fishing and providing the food to the
people, asking, always, for forgiveness for having dishonored so many
ancestors through their violence) and thus so was the cultural framework
that established the Hataso anarchy as it now stands.

The blackrobes still exist among the Hataso -- they spend their time doing
menial tasks and begging for forgiveness for past wrongs.  They also are
the only people who use weapons, although they never refer to those
weapons by name (only as satape = "killing tool").  They use these weapons
to keep order -- in fact, this is the only police force.  As we might call
a fireman if we need help putting out a fire, a Hataso might call a
blackrobe.  Either a man or a woman may become a blackrobe; all it
requires is giving up everything that one owns (and that isn't much, since
most property is communal, belonging to voluntary collectives) and putting
on a black robe.  The worst shame in the world is having one's black robe
stripped from one.  This occurs if a blackrobe ever uses a satape to kill
unjustly or unnecessarily.  He or she is then usually exiled to one of the
outlying islands or given the option to commit honorable suicide.

There are two gendered terms fo address, roughly equivalent to our "Mr"
and "Ms".  They are "sho" for a man and "tano" for a woman.  They come
after the name and mean, simply, "man" and "woman."  (specifically *adult*
man and woman, something not taken for granted when one turns eighteen)

--Pat