usage 'development' offends women contextually

Fri, 09 Aug 96 16:24:53 CDT
Daniel A. Foss (U17043@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU)

I have just received an intemperate, in fact deliberately insensately
enraged, message from Mara Jane King (surname English for Wang) of Career
Online Magazine, to the effect that the use of the word "development" is
insulting to women unless "economic" is specifically mentioned. The reason
given is the meaning in sexist discourse, "hypertrophied mammae," if women
or a woman be mentioned in the same sentence. I explained that the text in
question was sent to her to illustrate polite sociological discourse, and
that her objection was entirely irrational. She replied that she had a
perfect right to be entirely irrational, as a survivor of the People's
Republic of China, wherein women have for a thousand years been traded
as slaves, this practice commencing at the same time as footbinding and
contiunuing to this day under only nominal illegality. What was more,
many women do not survive in that society, assuming they were so lucky
as to be permitted to get born in the first place. And, it was after
working hours, she was not in academia, and was entitled, as men are,
to throw a rage fit. Specifically, in this context, she mentioned a
war movie, where rage fits in the context of genocidal massacres of
"ragheads" were entirely laudable, and heroic when committed by a woman
in male-emulation mode. Only slightly less admirable, she said, is the
type of rage-fit called "management." She denied that this occurred at
her place of employ, however.

Condensing as much as possible, she insisted that either "equality"
and "human rights" were indivisible or, uh, fake. And wasn't going to
get out of one sinkhole to get obliterated at a slightly higher material
level in another one. Terror against women is routine, she said. So terror
against men is inevitable, and this was it; the Asian shrew will horrify
the world.

Daniel A. Foss