a) chicks don't exist. I know, everybody but me keeps getting this wrong. Some people even think they are females. But trust me, I know better. If women actually existed, I'd have to feel bad about my life because I don't actually know any. But life is worth living, therefore women are imaginary.
b) in some theoretical twilight zone where "women" existed, it would be kind of rude to not acknowledge them. Even if they didn't game at all, that doesn't mean gamers have to be dicks to them.
c) People keep talking about injecting politics into their speech as though its a bad thing. Do I say it's bad when you inject air into your lungs? It's not like one's politics are some arbitrary set of rules that one subscribes to for no particular reason. Everyone's politics are an inherent part of them, as is their language; I have reasons for having the politics I do, and those reasons are present with me every moment of every day. Of course they affect the way I speak. They also affect the way I act, the way I think, they way I relate to other people, etc. Just like all of those things in turn affect my politics. Part of my politics involves accepting other people, even if they think they're a unicorn, or a sasquatch, or a woman, or a dragon. Since a significant portion of people seem to prefer being referred to as "she," I think including that in a sourcebook's language is reasonable measure. If I was an RPG writer and knew a bunch of people that suddenly said to me "Jackass, I would prefer you refer to me as 'it' from now on," I would change the language in my RPG to include things like "he/she/it."

It's a right-wing talking point, though, is the thing - in fact, a very politically useful one. Pretty much the only people who ever use this phrase are either social conservatives, or people (like libertarians) who are basically carrying water for them, and part of the tactic is to make their politics invisible, or somehow transcendently "above" politics - and thus all the more politically dominant.

Basically, if you run into someone who believes into the whole ridiculous notion of "oppressive political correctness" and trots that myth out in an argument, it's pointless to try and engage them on the issue, because like you say, they're committed to the fallacy that their speech somehow isn't political, like the idiots in this thread who were insisting that only using male pronouns is somehow politics-free and completely neutral. Most of the 90s hoopla about "censorship" and "PC witch-hunts" was drummed up by people like Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh and injected into the discourse to rile up people who, for various reasons were cranky at having it pointed out that their speech was, you know, offensive or patronizing, and maybe they should stop.

This thread makes me happy, because I've never seen anyone on the internet other than myself defend "political correctness."
"

This is an important thing to remember. Also recall that the word "politically correct" was created as a modern phrase by those very same right wing speakers during the early 90s. And when they first trotted out the concept it was as a way to modify their talking points. So the "politically correct term" for fighting against abortion was "pro-life," the "politically correct term" for fighting against homosexuals was "pro-family," and so on. It was only later that the right wing political ideologues realized that they could accuse their opponents of doing it as a major talking point.

Remember folks: first the Christian Coalition wanted you to be politically correct in order to use friendly sounding names for their positions. Only later did they trot out political correctness as something that should be fought against. And even then, only when going after the positions that other people championed such as gender equality.

-Frank

Teal Deer? Is that Nisarg's Blue Rose Magic Deer? ;D

...

I will admit that when the books use a female pronoun to refer a player, I occasionally have to remind myself that the sentence or rule refers to any player and is not referring to some specific woman. I have grown accustomed to being sure that "she" is gender specific and that "he" could be either neutral or masculine. I am not opposed to continuing to learn otherwise, but it will be a retraining for me. Unfortunately this completely fails to acknowledge androgyny with which, to the best of my knowledge, I have no experience. 2 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

it's even worse for us germans, because the player is in german actually a male kinda thing . .

Yeah some times German genders for words don't make scene to me. But nor does a lot of German ( I can speak and read a bit but I'm still a non-speaker in my books)

German has three gendered nouns (das, der, die) (English being originally a Germanic language also had gendered nouns). Gendered nouns are not sexist they are a construction of language. In French gender is so important that it when changed you can actually be referring to a different noun.

However, sexism is intertwined in that traditional feminine objects become associated with the feminine noun and masculine objects with masculine noun. This does not always hold true at least in Old English as there is also weak and strong forms of nouns (often associated with feminine and masculine forms respectively).

If you are interested I recommend looking in an etymology dictionary on the changes that go on between the gendered nouns of King, Queen, Man, Wif (existing in English in the narrowed form waif and wife), & Wifman (later on meaning woman).

Gender for words don't have to make sense, anyway.
I don't have any specific knowledge in etymology, but I don't think that in French feminine objects are associated with feminine nouns. After all, vagina is a masculine noun. Maybe in some cases it is, but I think that most of the time it's more about how it sounds.

"This does not always hold true at least in Old English as there is also weak and strong forms of nouns (often associated with feminine and masculine forms respectively)."

Weak and strong have to do with association, in this example the French word vagin (nm) originates from anatomy and is considered more politically correct than the more vulgar form of chatte (nf).

Again gendered nouns are a linguistic construction but can be influenced by sexual roles. There are numerous other possible influences, but again language is a map of arbitrary rules and it could also be a fossilization of a fashionable expression of its time, or in the case of vagin could be as in the example of retaining its original neutral form from its Latin origin and because there are very few true neutral words in French it was a Tuesday so it took on the masculine form.

I know what your saying but some times it still makes me wonder why certain words are M or F.

On a side note I need to see if none Germanic languages are essayer for me to read and speak. Due to my disylxia and such Russian and Japanese are on my list along with Greek and Latin. My knowledge of Middle English is OK not as good with Old English. Finding the older meanings of words can be quite fun. As a 16 year old who didn't do languages at school because English is a pain for me (its the vowels that screw every thing up for me).

I don't think that Greek, Latin or Russian would really be any better for you, with dyslexia, since they all have alphabets which are similar to the english one, in that they're true alphabets, rather than a syllabary or logographic one. Japanese might be, though, since the characters do not represent letters, like in the greek, latin and cyrillic alphabets, but represent either syllables or entire words.

However- While learning those alphabetical languages, you may find them to be easier for you than English, because it is already necessary to devote a greater degree of care to your reading, due to its unfamiliarity, which may lead you to make fewer mistakes because of your dyslexia, as well. I think that, with an increasing facility with those languages, though, you would probably find that advantage to diminish.

well, as for japanese and chinese . . is it so much easier to learn a language which has more than 2000 signs in one of their "alphabets"? *g*

Oddly yes I do know a bit of Japanese its not as hard as it seams not much but enough to survive there for the 2 weeks I was there.



As I'm diagnosed with dyslexia all be it an odd sort I have found out that my mind is more capable in certain things such as design, programing and algebra. This shift in how my brain prossesses things and how the fact I'm also dyspraxic. Leaves me wondering about many things I think my linguistic weakness steams form vowels and there placement in words. I have found most non-English language easier than English apart from French. German was much easy for me same with Dutch my work with Russian I find it one of the easier language Ive tried. The only way I can work this out is my experimenting as I can't find any documentation on this idea.

But was "chatte" originally used to mean vagina? Can it mean a female cat?

Can we find a happy medium between you and Hocus Pocus?

I could just start sobbing quietly whenever someone says anything about alleged female gamers.

Dictionary.com's translator says that 'chatte' means 'she-cat' while 'vagin' means 'vagina'. Babel Fish agrees.

I imagine that getting these words confused can lead to some interesting hijinks.

I believe there's at least one other language that uses "cat" (or some synonym) to refer to the vagina. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sarcastic.gif)

But see, I'd argue that "chatte" could be a feminine noun because it refers to a female cat, and therefore it wouldn't necessarily be feminine because it can be used as a slang term for a berginer.

Ah, I see. On a tangent, I find the parallel to be interesting. I see no inherent connection nor similarities between cats and vulva.

Yes, "chatte" originaly means a female cat (the male being the "chat") and that's why it's a feminine noun. It is also a slang term for vagina and people probably choose that feminine on purpose. Another older slang word was "con" which was masculine, but was despisable since it's also an insulting slang word which, as Georges Brassens pointed out, is unproper to describe this exquisite part of the female anatomy.
We can also note that the most common slang word for the male's equivalent, "bite", is a feminine noun (but maybe because it comes from a quite unrelated feminine word).

Anyway, I still think that noun's gender are more often than not unrelated to what gender the object could be but are more related to that word's etymology and the sound of it.

Well also my understanding is that "con" is kind of an all round swearword in French. So for example if I'm confiding to you that I dislike someone, I might say, "Quel con, hein"?, which would translate to something like "what an asshole, huh"? It wouldn't really have much to do with genitalia, much like calling someone a "dick" in English wouldn't really have anything to do with genitalia.