From: kkv@inel.gov (Jamie J Ferguson)
Subject: Re: PUBS: VIRTUAL REALITY, by Pimentel & Texeira (1992)
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 93 19:11:51 GMT
Organization: Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Idaho Falls, Idaho


In article <1jgan4INNd80@shelley.u.washington.edu> jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au (John Costella) writes:
>
>> From: Robert_Grant.LAX1B@xerox.com
>> 
>> I've just got one gripe about this book - the authors do not appear to be
>> enlightened about the importance of non-sexist writing. Throughout the text
>> references are made to he, his, him etc. I know that there are not too many
>> women involved in the technical side of VR (and this sort of thing will not
>> improve that), but there are sure to be many female users and a little
>> consideration goes a long way.
>
>I see Ken's post saying that the (female!) editors did this. The
>problem is to maintain consistency for the `hypothetical user': it's a
>little disconcerting to have them changing sex from one example to the
>next!  A good rule of thumb is to enforce democracy: examine how many
>people in the category you refer to are male or female, and make that
>your a priori arbitrary choice. Thus the `example' physicist is male,
>the `example' teacher is female, and so on. Not likely to please the
>raging feminists, but is a reasonable middle ground.
>

I tend to get irritated when books consistently use male references,
as opposed to male & female or neuter references.  I took a 
sociology class once where the authors stated in the beginning
that they felt that there was no need to even use such gender
references, and that they would not throughout the book.  They didn't,
and it was done (or not done, depending on how you look at it...)
so that the lack of gender references wasn't obvious unless you
were aware that they had been left out.

The "middle ground" discussed above may be more "democratic", but
things like that tend to combine and encourage the notion that
different careers should be chosen based on gender.  I know that 
isn't what was meant, but it does influence society whether it
should or not.  

In all fairness to the authors, I promise to try to not be
insulted when I read this book!  However, keep in mind that there
are people (male and female) who find things like this irritating,
and unless the editors have a really good reason you might want
to use male & female or simply neuter references, if possible.
This is, of course, my opinion, and since I haven't written any
books so far I won't claim to know how to deal with editors.


Jamie


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