Post by progressiveelement on Sept 18, 2019 19:06:19 GMT
From MelonFarmer's Censorship Watch
Nearly 30,000 people have signed a petition calling on Oxford University Press to remove entries that discriminate against, and patronise women
Launched this summer by Maria Beatrice Giovanardi from the feminist group, the Fawcett Society, the petition claims that Oxford dictionaries contain words such as bitch, besom, piece, bit, mare, baggage, wench, petticoat, frail, bird, bint, biddy, filly as synonyms for woman.
Sentences chosen to show usage of the word woman include: Ms September will embody the professional, intelligent yet sexy career woman and I told you to be home when I get home, little woman. Such sentences depict women as sex objects, subordinate, and/or an irritation to men, the petition says.
Signatories are calling on OUP to eliminate all phrases and definitions that discriminate against and patronise women and/or connote men's ownership of women, to enlarge the dictionary's entry for 'woman', and to include examples representative of minorities, for example, a transgender woman, a lesbian woman, etc.
In response, OUP's head of lexical content strategy Katherine Connor Martin pointed out that the content referred to in the petition is not from the scholarly Oxford English Dictionary, but from the Oxford Thesaurus of English and the Oxford Dictionary of English, which are drawn from real-life use of language, Martin said:
Launched this summer by Maria Beatrice Giovanardi from the feminist group, the Fawcett Society, the petition claims that Oxford dictionaries contain words such as bitch, besom, piece, bit, mare, baggage, wench, petticoat, frail, bird, bint, biddy, filly as synonyms for woman.
Sentences chosen to show usage of the word woman include: Ms September will embody the professional, intelligent yet sexy career woman and I told you to be home when I get home, little woman. Such sentences depict women as sex objects, subordinate, and/or an irritation to men, the petition says.
Signatories are calling on OUP to eliminate all phrases and definitions that discriminate against and patronise women and/or connote men's ownership of women, to enlarge the dictionary's entry for 'woman', and to include examples representative of minorities, for example, a transgender woman, a lesbian woman, etc.
In response, OUP's head of lexical content strategy Katherine Connor Martin pointed out that the content referred to in the petition is not from the scholarly Oxford English Dictionary, but from the Oxford Thesaurus of English and the Oxford Dictionary of English, which are drawn from real-life use of language, Martin said:
If there is evidence of an offensive or derogatory word or meaning being widely used in English, it will not be excluded from the dictionary solely on the grounds that it is offensive or derogatory.
Nonetheless, part of the descriptive process is to make a word's offensive status clear in the dictionary's treatment. For instance, the phrase the little woman is defined as 'a condescending way of referring to one's wife', and the use of 'bit' as a synonym for woman is labelled as 'derogatory' in the thesaurus.
Nonetheless, part of the descriptive process is to make a word's offensive status clear in the dictionary's treatment. For instance, the phrase the little woman is defined as 'a condescending way of referring to one's wife', and the use of 'bit' as a synonym for woman is labelled as 'derogatory' in the thesaurus.
