[IndiChix] Chapter Name suggestions

[Nirbheek Chauhan]

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 7:30 AM, Hassath <hassath at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 12:50 AM, Atul Chitnis <mail at atulchitnis.net> wrote:
>
>  >  [...] This is
>
> >  probably not that obvious to women because the term is rarely used in
>  >  conversation when a woman is present, but in an all-male group, the term
>  >  is more likely to be used in a less-than-complimentary manner.
>
>  I guess that's an argument in favour of using an obscure Sanskrit
>  word. I can't think of any familiar terms that refer to women which
>  HAVEN'T been used in a derogatory way in all-male company, because the
[snip]

I feel I must add here that pretty much any word can be used with
certain verbs in such a manner as to form derogatory phrases. So the
set of such words doesn't merely include terms which refer to women,
but can be extended to a fair number of other words as well.

A second thing I'd like to add, is that those phrases/terms aren't
used in a derogatory way while referring to women, but while referring
towards men. Note the subject for the verb.
The word "pedophile" doesn't insult children, does it?

>  You don't even have to be in all-male company in North India to
>  regularly hear abusive terms based on the Hindi words for 'mother' and
>  'sister' used almost as punctuation, in public. Isn't that a problem
>  with the people rather than the words?

IMHO, that problem is completely orthogonal to the one we're talking
about here. What we're talking about is the general perception
projected in the minds of people for a single word when used to
*denote women*. Neither the insult caused by the unholy union of the
wrong verb with the wrong noun, nor the intent behind it.

>  But anyway, that seems a very pathetic reason to change a name.

No one's changing the name, aliases don't replace the original word :-)


-- 
~Nirbheek Chauhan