Most languages in common use today are gendered, including all Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, and Romanian). Hence using "gender-sensitive" language is really infeasible.

Different authors handle it differently; common ways of getting around it is just alternating between uses of "he" and "she" whenever talking about ambiguous people, or in more formal texts using the ubiquitous "(s)he" or "he/she". Portuguese has less of a problem with that because all words are pluralized in their own gender. ("Parents" and "legal guardians", for example, can only ever be male; but "person" is female, as is "People.")

Political correctness applies only in situations with shallow people, who value more the form of the communication than its essence. What matters is what you mean when you say or write stuff, not what words you use to express yourself - writing "s/he" instead of "he" is stupid, so is "Native american" instead of "indian" or "vertically challenged" instead of "short". In the same way, if you say something insulting you're an arse even if you use politically correct wording.

There's an exception when people use swear words every other word in their sentence... but that's not really me disliking their communication's form, it's rather that the essence in this example was "I'm a shallow dick". (Feel free to censor the last word - but it's basically short for Richard)

There is a tendency now for instructional books to suffer from the "switching pronouns". Using she and he interchangeably in each example rather than the male gender which was the traditional method. Ironically, I encountered this during the 3e beta test.

I sort of flunked Spanish and French (I can't learn another language to save my life), but I remember both of those languages had "gender" prefixes, I think french had Le for Male and La for female when using "The" before specific nouns, but I never remember what the rules are for what's a female prefix and what's a male prefix, it seemed arbitrary.

I do believe people should be polite in their opinions, and that's where I think people who are against political correctness sometimes go overboard and make themselves rude and vulgar.

All nouns in Spanish/French/etc are either masculine or feminine. There's no genderless "the" pronoun like there is in English.

Which is why our language rocks. As we are more "gender neutral" than the others.

Anybody remember when French was supposed to be the International Language? Or Espiranto? Now it seems like English is.

When the hell was French supposed to be the international language? Definitely not in my lifetime. (English isn't exactly a great language but French is horrible. Guh.)

EDIT: And that she/he thing in the same text got really ridiculous in some of the 3E books. My friend from school got that forification-orientated one and the characters in the examples would change genders within the same paragraph...

Shiri, it was in the 50s or 60s or 70s. They were trying to make it the "universal language" of Europe and for travelers. I remember a line in an Episode of "The Prisoner" and there were some references in my old French book I think--course that was 1980 when I read that. I think the UN gives it special status along with English.

Anyway, one thing I hate is Wikipedia being used by people with an Agenda. One article irritates me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen

Note the name of the article when you load the page. The guys who compiled it, mostly people who like to use such drugs, believe in legalization, etc, have decided that somehow the word Hallucinogen, a word used for over 80 years or so, is somehow "wrong" and created a really awkward title for it. They claim that all the scientists, medical, and legal community is wrong and they are correcting the use of the language, and from what I've seen any time the word was mentioned they'd automatically change it to "psychedelic".

This seems to be the effort of one person. This has even made Google as the title of the page comes up when you search the word for that. I think that is an example of political correctness. I see nothing wrong with the title for that sort of drug. I think that's an example of how Wikipedia can fail when people with an agenda take it over.

It sounds better than English anyway. And yes, the genders of all "genderless" nouns are totally arbitrary. Which just adds to the fun... but if you know the word you can almost always make an educated guess as to what the gender is, and if you heard it being used, then you know.

Er, agenda?

The problem I see with that article is lack of references for that claim, not someone's "agenda". There's no need for assume it's pushing of political or moral belief even if it's wrong. By the way, the article on "Hallucinations" doesn't mention hallucinogens, so it's not necessarily untrue.

And your idea that it's "made Google"... Please, learn how Google works. The reason it's made Google is that lots of well-linked sites used THE VERY WORD "HALLUCINOGEN" to link to that website. There's no sinister junkie conspiracy acting within Google, gramps.

The agenda is the PDD group which uses a mushroom with a rainbow background and other drugs, so the people organizing all the information behind it are likely pro-psychonaut. I don't really care either way but I think there's problems with the article and it seems the reason why they are working on changing an actual definition. I'd have more respect if there was a scientific or medical group involved in the definition as well.

The reason why I mentioned Google is that Google usually puts Wikipedia articles up front--search for any subject. By changing the definition of "Hallucinogen" to "Psychedelics, Dissociative, and Deleriants" it is pushing an agenda to change the actual word and make people think the use of the word is wrong. I don't think they were "google-bombing", but there is a user on that page at the top of the comments who says "the word is wrong and we need to change it", in so many words.



My age has nothing to do with my opinions. I think some drug laws are ridiculous but I also think pro-drug users sometimes overemphasize the positives.

I disagree.