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I was reminded of a piece from the book "Metamagical Themas : Questing for
the Essence of Mind and Pattern" by Douglas Hofstadter after reading all of
the emails on the "man-month" theme -- It's an essay called "A People-person
somethingorother..." wish I could remember it or get my hands on it.
In essence, to show how prevalent male-specific terminology is, he invents a
parallel universe where such things are based on race, and the suffix
"white" is assumed to include all other races. So a "chairwhite" could be a
person of any race, or actually a caucasian person.
It's interesting to see the impact when you look at it from that
perspective. And yes, as I recall the prevalence of the assumption that
people are caucasian was quite striking and very bothersome to me throughout
the article, though I generally have no trouble thinking of myself as
included in the term "man." Though some of y'all (on both sides of the
debate) might be interested in taking a look.
