Re: cladistics

[Vorompatra@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/23/01 3:57:41 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
StephanPickering@cs.com writes:

<< we need to remember that "woman" does not equal "gender" ...Donna Haraway 
has written, "gender is a concept developed to contest the naturalization of 
sex".>>

Perhaps we also need to remember that, strictly speaking, "gender" does not 
equal "sex," given its origin as a term for grammatical categorization 
(since, I presume, a word cannot be of a sex, but refers to things which 
are). I'm eternally grateful the English all but stripped gender out of the 
language, else we'd be in the same boat as the French, the Arabs, and a great 
many other "alloanglophones," forced to internalize the rules as to whether a 
pencil is "masculine" or "feminine". I'd opt for masculine in this particular 
case, given the etymology, but unless there ARE female pencils, it makes no 
sense, kinda like that inane contention that God is a man (the traditional & 
often-unintentional false assumption) or a woman (the recent & overused 
"witty" comeback). As for calling ships "she" and naming tropical storms 
after women: ah, the good old days...

But I digress: what in the world are you talking about? Is there REALLY a 
good reason to examine Paleontology qua Science as to cultural biases of the 
Past? Surely an adherence to a thoughtful, peer-reviewed inquiry will 
"gender-clense" the discipline if that is needed.

Chip
www.geocities.com/vorompatra/