NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/talk/bizarre/23491

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-26 | 1.7 KB

Xref: sparky talk.bizarre:23491 soc.culture.british:10685 alt.sex:25159
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,soc.culture.british,alt.sex
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!news.cso.uiuc.edu!uxa.cso.uiuc.edu!sabg9174
From: [e-mail] (Tolthrye)
Subject: Re: SEX
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Net Noise owner)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 04:10:09 GMT
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[e-mail] (C.W. Moseley) writes:

>> Are you suggesting that a man who dates women only and marries women
>> only is being sexist?

>most definitely!! sexism can be (partly) defined as the act of discriminating
>between people on the basis of their sex. The laws on discimination are always
>careful to explicitly state the areas where discrimination is illegal. This
>is because sexism is necessary: prisons, for instance must discriminate
>against one or the other sex, as mixed-sex prisons have too many problems
>(as far as I know!), similarly people doing strip-searches, rape counselling,
>etc etc.

   As an abstract definition, fine.  But in the original
   follow-up to the rugby-shower-raffle post there was a clear
   implication that the sexism in question was somehow wrong
   for making this gender-based distinction.  Although
   I find the point made by > above to be quite reasonable,
   seems like usually the term "sexist" implies some error or
   bias which is inappropriate, and so enlarging the term to
   mean any bias at all, whether appropriate or not, is sure
   to cause unnecessary confusion. Not to mention unnecessary
   waste of bandwidth in the resulting flamewars.

   Tolthrye