Re: [lojban] Gender, yet again.

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

Okay, to be philosophical, stereotypes are not necessarily derogatory and they are not categories.  They are correlations between categories: Xs are Y.  They are not even all false, for that matter, though the contrary cases are accidental.  "Imaginary category" is pleasantly ambiguous; I suppose you mean a category that doesn't actually categorize anything, but that is hard to do, unless you slide over to a category of imaginary things.  What you want is a failed correlation.

On the more general question of what the Hell gender is, while a final answer eludes me, the basic material to be dealt with are plumbing sex (and maybe sexual orientation thrown in) and societal expectations correlated with that.  How these all play out in different areas (not to mention different societies) is the problem.  I think that dealing with this interplay in more particular cases is going to be easier, especially given the inevitability of engineering solutions to word construction.  Artistic solutions might clear the ground a bit, but we just aren't artistic.

---

From: vitci'i <celestialcognition@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2012 4:23 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Gender, yet again.

On 07/13/2012 09:00 PM, Jonathan Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 6:03 PM, vitci'i
> <celestialcognition@gmail.com>wrote:
>> On 07/13/2012 04:57 PM, Jonathan Jones wrote:
>>> Stereotypes aren't imaginary. They're derogatory, insulting, and
>>> WRONG.
>>
>> What's the difference between something that's imaginary and
>> something that's not true?
>
> I will not be dragged into a philosophical debate.

I wasn't trying to be philosophical. Let me try again: would you please
clarify the nature of your objection to the construction "imaginary
category" to mean stereotype? It seems to me a fairly accurate description.


>>> Except that's not the way we do things. The meaning of the
>>> English
>> "gender"
>>> is so broad it covers /completely unrelated/ concepts.
>>>
>>> There is nothing wrong with having a word in Lojban that covers a
>>> wide berth- that's what the intention of the gismu is, after
>>> all.
>>>
>>> But we do /not/ have words that cover multiple concepts. That
>>> defeats the purpose of the language.
>>
>> What set of words do you suggest?
>
> As I've said previously, I don't consider any of the concepts
> important to /need/ a word, but I would suggest those of you that do
> to use the list John Clifford posted.

I think it's a bad idea to try to exhaustively list all the different
angles on this, because our idea of what the list contents should be is
likely to change. It would be better to have a single broad word that
captures what they have in common, and then tanru/lujvo down from there.


On 07/14/2012 12:23 AM, MorphemeAddict wrote:> On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at
8:03 PM, vitci'i <celestialcognition@gmail.com>wrote:
> Many kinds of things can be not true without being imaginary:
> opinions, sentences, stereotypes,

Opinions and sentences are generally na'e jetnu, neither true nor false
(though sentences often express propositions that are true or false).
Stereotypes, on the other hand, are generally to'e jetnu, factually
incorrect.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.