From: J. Michael Diehl <mdiehl@triton.unm.edu>
Date: Thu, 20 May 93 22:18:07 PDT
To: poier@sfu.ca (Skye Merlin Poier)
Subject: Re: Crypto constitution
In-Reply-To: <9305210044.AA04138@malibu.sfu.ca>
Message-ID: <9305210517.AA08527@triton.unm.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> One suggestions for improving the constitution: change all occurances of
> "Men" or "man" to "the people" and make all pronouns gender-neutral.

I would suggest that we don't use "people," but instead use "Mankind."  Or,
better yet, lets use "Earthlings," since this will cover people who haven't 
yet declared their gender.  And as far as gender-neutral pronouns, this is also
a problem.  To many, "chairperson" immediately implies "female-chair-man."  This
obviously won't work.  Well, I guess we could use "he/she."  But that won't work
either since it gives precedence to (gasp!) "HE."  Clearly, we need to come up
with a new word in order to satisfy everybody.  (I use the word "everybody" to
mean "the people," and not just because it has the word "body" in it, which 
would be the stereotypically-male thing to think about)  So, I propose that 
we, Cypherpunks, adopt my favorite Politically Correct term for "person:"

"Generic-Colorless-raceless-carbon-based-bipedial-inhabitant-of-the-third-
spherical-object-from-the-bright-mass-in-the-center-of-the-solar-system"

As far as I've been able to tell, this term doesn't discriminate against anyone,
so I feel this is a good substitue for "man," "men," and "the people."

:Satire Mode Off.
:Reality Mode On.

> If this is going to be a constitution for the new age, lets have the wording
> reflect the ideals we hold.

I've always thought that fighting over this kind of trivia was kinda childish.
It used to be that when someone said, "...and one giant step for mankind...,"
that we understood this to include EVERYBODY!  Lets pick our fights better 
than this, shall we?  

Sorry, just couldn't resist..... ;^)

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