[lit-ideas] Re: Sex or gender?
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:39:14 -0500
After a story like this you don't tell us the punchline. So was he/she hired?
Maybe we can do a "The Killers" on this and write the rest of the story. As
the eyes of the department chair quitely followed the applicant down the hall,
the applicant walked into the restroom ...
----- Original Message -----
From: John Wager
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: 11/11/2005 7:32:19 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Sex or gender?
Judy Evans wrote:
<>. . . .I suspect any classification system will encounter problems of, well,
classification. My beef's with the endless questionnaire
GENDER: MALE or FEMALE
also with the way even some academics use "gender" as a substitute for
"sex". There was once some kind of reason given for that (not one I
accepted) but now I think people have just stopped thinking
Years ago, our department chair called three faculty members into a conference
room with an odd request. She was interviewing someone for a part-time teaching
job in psychology, and she said she had not been able to tell what sex (or
gender) the person was. The name was neutral, and the mannerisms were
completely opaque; there was a mixture of masculine and feminine. The chair
asked us all to come in for a minute just to introduce ourselves and make
small-talk so she could ask us if any of us could tell what gender / sex the
applicant was. None of us had a clue; we never did find out what sex/gender
the person was. (The person had not filled in the "sex/gender" question, and
the department chair was very uneasy saying something like "You missed this
blank; are you male or female?"
I didn't really care what kind of equipment the person had, or if they had two
X chromosomes or not.
--
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence and ignorance."
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John Wager johnwager@xxxxxxxxxxx
Forest Park, IL, USA
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