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Subject:Re: Help Systems & Gender Differences From:Karen Kay <karenk -at- NETCOM -dot- COM> Date:Sat, 9 Apr 1994 14:17:00 -0700
As a linguist, I always wondered about gender for words in Latin
and French. And then in graduate school, I found out that these
were ascribed arbitrarily, that they could have used numbers in
the way that Bantu languages do (w/ 17 noun classes or so, you'd
run out of genders real fast, even if you're a trekkie). That
helps me to put what Brad said into perspective. It's an arbitrary
classification system.
Brad Mehlenbacher said:
> Masculine: Culturally-determined and socially-educated perspectives
> towards life (e.g., hierarchical values, competitiveness, economic
> orientation, scientistic, aggressive, and so on).
> Feminine: Same definition as Masculine (e.g., collaborative, holistic,
> social, intuitive, subtle, passivistic, and so on).