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Comment by transman | Hacker News Reader

I would suggest "green people", however, that would be speciesism, and according to another HN headline, we should probably avoid that [1].

To be very clear, as a transman, I'm particularly sensitive to gendered words. I think it's very important to take context into account. For example, I took great offense at the recent "corporate democratic whore" comment [2]. On the flip side, sometimes people can be a bit too sensitive! Personally, I really got a chuckle out of your edit!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108 [2] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/14/speaker_at...

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I'm glad you read the EDIT with the humor that was intended ... and in regards to speciesism, I wonder how the dolphins would feel [1].

I'm from the US where we've used the male pronouns as gender neutral for a long time but I'm really getting tired of arguments over gender, arguments over race, arguments over class. I've been thinking that it would be wonderful if we could ignore our differences, accept each other and simply refer to ourselves and our species as "us". (I know we're a long way from that now, but it's Sunday so I can do some dreaming).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108

>I know we're a long way from that now, but it's Sunday so I can do some dreaming.

I have that same dream regularly! I'm old enough to have seen some progress, and I look forward to seeing even more before I'm done. To that end, I think it's vital to be able to have respectful dialogue and a little humor from time to time.

Isn't "whore" gender neutral?

No. Hence the term "man whore" was invented as the male equivalent. Plus you can always get a good idea of how regular young people define a term:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whore

I'm old enough that when I learned what "whore" meant it was only in reference to a female prostitute. "Gigolo" was the term for a male who had sex for money, but it's never had the same negative connotation as whore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution

Sort of. You might see a headline that says "CONGRESSMAN CAUGHT WITH MALE PROSTITUTE", but never "CONGRESSMAN CAUGHT WITH FEMALE PROSTITUTE"--it's one of those concepts that is understood to be female by default.

I'm trying to think which gender i'd guess if I read: CONGRESSWOMAN CAUGHT WITH PROSTITUTE.

I honestly think i'd guess male prostitute.

Yes, but it is insulting to the non-whores. Its also insulting to non-people. We need a gender neutral, species neutral, personhood neutral word to describe "corporate whores".

Corpratists.

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