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  1. Xref: sparky soc.women:19957 alt.feminism:4725 soc.men:19592
  2. Path: sparky!uunet!haven.umd.edu!darwin.sura.net!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!ames!sun-barr!news2me.EBay.Sun.COM!exodus.Eng.Sun.COM!sun!amdahl!jsp
  3. From: jsp@uts.amdahl.com (James Preston)
  4. Newsgroups: soc.women,alt.feminism,soc.men
  5. Subject: Re: Practise what you preach? (was:what is sexist?)
  6. Message-ID: <6f8P03ZDbccz00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>
  7. Date: 19 Nov 92 23:26:32 GMT
  8. References: <MUFFY.92Nov16145244@remarque.berkeley.edu>     <1992Nov16.232907.27055@wam.umd.edu>     <1easf6INNb9@paprika.csv.warwick.ac.uk>     <1992Nov17.162445.28368@midway.uchicago.edu>     <1ebd05INNdch@transfer.stratus.com>     <MUFFY.92Nov17113118@anableps.berkeley.edu>     <22
  9. Reply-To: jsp@pls.amdahl.com
  10. Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA
  11. Lines: 25
  12.  
  13. muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
  14.  
  15. }However, the specific thing that I considered idiotic from you was when
  16. }I said "I'm not sure if I agree with this definition" (being the one
  17. }from your dictionary) and you came back with the (oh-so-non-nasty)
  18. }comment about "you don't agree with the dictionary definition" stuff.
  19. }Surely anyone who cites dictionary definitions could be expected to know
  20. }that different dictionaries define words in different ways, yes?  So
  21. }saying that I was just trying to "ignore reality" was both idiotic and
  22. }nasty.
  23.  
  24. My apologies if what I said came across as nasty.  I didn't mean it as
  25. such.  But what I said was not idiotic.  The phrase you used, "I'm not 
  26. sure if I agree with this definition" contained no qualifiers, so it
  27. was not unreasonable to interpret that to mean that you were dismissing
  28. the entire definition, rather than only questioning the necessity of one
  29. of its qualifiers.  And while it is true that different dictionaries define 
  30. words in somewhat different ways, there are rarely out-and-out contradictions.  
  31. So while someone may find a particular definition incomplete or unnecessarly
  32. restrictive, people usually don't disagree with the entire definition.
  33.  
  34. (Jeeze, am I getting pedantic, or what?  I've either been preparing
  35. too much for law school, or reading too much Mike Godwin.)
  36.  
  37. --James Preston
  38.