Re: [Pan-users] Re: updated info

[walt]

On 08/04/2010 02:01 AM, Duncan wrote:

<Interesting grammar info snipped for brevity>

Thanks, Duncan.  I always learn something interesting when you ramble off-
topic.  (Which you do very rarely, of course.)

I think being forced to pick between he/she when referring to any arbitrary
person is simply a bad design decision by whoever invented English.  Can you
imagine including a spec like that in your new programming language?  Your
thesis chairperson would suggest you repeat your freshman year and try again
after he/she retires.

> That said, I suppose partly because the FLOSS coding community is
> comparatively devoid of female presence, I do tend to assume male unless
> there's reason to believe otherwise.

I just assume I'm wrong until proven otherwise.  My wife taught me that
important lesson.

> Looking at the whole thing from a different angle, nursing used to be a
> male dominated profession in which women weren't accepted, and women who
> went into it were considered strange,

Very interesting.  I work in the field myself and I wasn't aware of that.

> at minimum (gays/lesbians weren't
> accepted at all in those days, and a female nurse's sexuality was
> suspect).  How that changed, tho well before me, as at least since I've
> been around, the profession has been so overwhelmingly female that "male
> nurse" is often used when one is specifically referring to a guy,

Tragically, there is a large influx of superbly-trained male nurses and techs
following every every war the US elects to wage.  There may be just as many
women, maybe even more, I don't know the numbers, but the men are simply more
noticeable in our female-dominated nursing profession.  Makes me very sad to
think how all those talented men and women earned their expertise.

> to
> prevent the otherwise female assumption.  Could/will that some day happen
> to computer coding?  I don't know.

It's already happening.  I tune in occasionally to the video streams from
M$ and Sun/Oracle and Adobe to listen to the geek-talk, and the number of
women participants keeps climbing as the years go by.