4 - Sunday, August 30, 1992 - North Shore News

The male dilemma: how to [arpacu HUNTER TURNER

change without losing face

THE SHAME. After all these years of feraciously oppos- ing the inherent totalitarianism of such groups as Media Watch, which monitor us newspaper chauvinists, I have been caught i in the act of kowtowing to feminist thinking

about language.

The pain. It would have to be my old buddy, Trevor Lautens, who nailed me. } might have slip- ped by, except for Trevor’s hawk eye. ©

The horror. it’s true. I wrote a sentence a while back that went like this: ‘‘After a person has been an elected politician for a while, you can’t get a straight answer out of them any more.’’

Oh well. It could have been worse. It could have been Doug . Collins who pounced on me, and he wouldn’t have settle for a gen-

‘(le razzing, as Trevor did. He would have gnawed off my writ- ing arm and thrown it to the fioor

of the boneyard of broken dreams.

- If you're going to be tortured in print; far better to be tortured by a fellow who sniffs roses than a °

_guy who helped dismember the German army.

Trevor's thrust went deeper, of course, than merely embarrassing a wordsmith who has lost his way. Mixing the singular and the plural is bad enough — it puts me almost into a category with Dan Quayle.

But the real salt-in-the-wound part is the reason for my gram- matical slip. It wasn’t that I didn’t know better (oops, a double nega- tive; see what heppens when you

lose your nerve?). Trevor correctly analyzed my failure as being a tilt

- in the direction of feminist Newspeak.

_ “A slip of this magnitude couldn't have come at a worse

. time, what with Doug Collins hav-

_ ing recently written the funniest

. piece Lhave read in years, tearing into a report issued by a commit- tee at the Vancouver Sun that tried to set new guidelines for the use of politically correct, gender- neutral language.

As fate would have it, another

old buddy of mine, Ran Riter,

"was On that committee.

Doug's final word on the matter . was: ‘‘Great stuff, girls. Have a «good gush.” Poor Ron. I Jaughed

- and laughed at his expense.

Until Trevor zapped me for the very same crime.

‘All right, backed into 4 corner, stung by Trévor’s sly barbs, numb with fear of Doug’s fangs crun-

’ . ching through the cartilage, I

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Bob - Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

might as well come out of the closet, as it were.

It’s true. For years, | have been secretly trying to inch away from sexist language, while nevertheless continuing to bluster in what I hoped was a manly and virile pro- se style. The deep-rooted fear of 2 pathetic schmuck like me was that I would get caught.

"Now that it has happened, there’s almost a sense of relief. The hiding and waiting is over.

Like the character Winston Smith in the novel 1984, even though I dared to defy Big Brother in my little way, in the end I knew they'd get me.

As for Big Sister, well, I was willing to go along with her vir- tually from Day One. | was raised by my mother. What do you ex-

t?

I didn’t have a father around to teach me an attitude about women. Had to work out my own _— and parts of it | obviously didn’t get right.

Like the part about sexist terms.

lagree, you see, with the feninists on this one.

Oh, jeez, Doug is going to urinate ali over me. Trevor will sneer sadly, tossing off 2 world- weary bon mot.

But it’s true, I’m afraid. Lan- guage is a critical instrument in the formation of thoughts.

But until you have it pointed out to you, you don’t automatically notice how loaded your language is. Once it’s

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pointed out to you, you have no excuse.

Over the years, I have had it pointed out to me often enough, thank you, frequently because of things I had written.

Intellectually, I got the point. But now I was faced by the an- cient male difemma: how to chage course without appearing to change course?

Face saving, we call it. Ah so. Essential to preserve male dignity. Never permit self to look like fool. Difficult to do, of course, if

one writes column.

So, quietly --- stealthly, if truth be known — I dropped the word ““aankind’’ from my written vo-

; cabulary.

“Humanity”? worked just fine. it was kind of a feel-good thing. I was doing my bit for the non- male part of humankind.

And besides, it's true, there are ali sorts of women in the human race, not just men.

I will not, however, say ‘‘per- sonkind.”* That goes beyond ge- neric into a void of technologese. ft looks ugly as a word. It’s icky.

Worst of all, its use signals that you are bowing to a certain ideology, as opposed to being a stubborn, iconoclastic, anarchistic and possibly even mildly atavistic. two-fisted, red-blooded macho guy like Trevor or Doug.

Ah well, there goes my image as a machismo-oozing hombre whose idea of foreplay is a snap of the fingers.

Reminds me of a Far Side car- toon: three wolves are peering out from the bushes at a Neanderthal campsite where a goofy-looking dog is squatting by the fire.

“It's Bob all right,’’ the pack leader says to the other wolves. “But look at that silly grin, the vacuous look in his eyes. He's been domesticated, I tell you!”’

Ah hell, might as weli come right out and say it: it is my belief that women should get equal

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There! That’s stirring, and disgustingly ingratiating, enough to make any serious hardcore male chavinist barf — although he’ll think I’m just doing it to get the chicks on my side, eh?

Humph. Can you imagine?

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