[UbuntuWomen] [Bug 272826] Re: "Ubuntero" inappropriate for female contributors

[Firas Kraiem]

On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:00:37 -0300, Flavia wrote:

> but when you talk about one person in particular
> you have to distinct the gender

No, you don't. This is a fundamental (but sadly very common)  
misconception of the notion of gender in grammar. In most  
indo-european languages (including Spanish, French and many others),  
there is absolutely no correlation between the grammatical and  
biological genders. In fact, calling the grammatical genres "feminine"  
and "masculine" is improper, and they are more accurately called  
"marked" and "unmarked" genres : the latter may be used to represent  
elements of both "natural" genders, while the former is restrictive  
and can be used only to represent feminine elements.

In short, saying "This person is an Ubuntero." is no more incorrect or  
disrespectful when referring to a woman than to a man. In fact,  
History has shown that when feminine terms have been artificially  
created as derivatives of existing masculine terms, they have mostly  
been used in pejorative ways.

Firas


-- 
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated ~desu

GnuPG public key: http://fkraiem.org/gpgkey
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