>I think this is all rather silly. Try as we might to use sex-neutral
>language, there are times when generic terms like "man" are unavoidable.
>Would you slam Gould for using a title like "The Mismeasure of Man" for the
>same reason?
Gould used "Man" in the title to make a point. He did not use "Man" as a catch-all word for "People" or as a word for "Humankind":
"My chosen title did get me into some trouble, but I make no apologies and relished all the discussion. "The Mismeasure of Man" is an intended double entendre, not a vestige of unthinking sexism. My title parodies Protagoras's famous aphorism about all people, and also notes the reality of a truly sexist past that regarded males as standards for humanity and therefore tended to mismeasure men, while ignoring women. I stated this rationale up front, in the original preface -- so I could always use unthinking criticism as a test to see who liked to mouth off without reading the book first -- like Mr. Dole criticizing the violence in movies he has never seen, and would not even deign to watch." [Gould 1996, The Mismeasure of Man: Revised and Expanded edition, p. 20-21]
I cannot recall exactly the original reference Gould made to the use of "Man" in the title, published in the preface to the original 1981 edition of the book (not included in this new edition). In my very short and very rough version of it, he argued that the book intended to show that, beyond the issue of the sexism or racism inherent in our language and in how we think about and act in the world, we couldn't even measure what we trying to measure in men correctly. Those trying to find differences inherent in groups of human beings from the onset looked, generally, at only half of the world's human beings, and then mismeasured the hell out of that half.
Did anyone see Ken Burns's "Baseball" a few years back? I never knew Gould had that good a voice (he sang part of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame"). I'd wager Chomsky can't sing to save his life.
In solidarity,
todd
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Todd M. Freeberg Department of Biological Sciences Lilly Hall Purdue University West Lafayette, IN 47907 (765)494-9654
"...language is both a living thing and a museum of fossils of life and past civilizations."
-- Antonio Gramsci "I do not play no rock and roll"
-- Mississippi Fred McDowell