How come almost all the pictures in the gallery were birds or butterflies? Does gynandropmorphism ever occur in, say, reptiles?
Now **that **is an angry bird!
And another entry in the picture gallery is titled using the word “he-she” for good measure. :mad: There’s no context where that isn’t a slur.
But…but…it was a picture of a bee, man! A bee! It rhymes! You can’t let minor peccadillos like human decency get in the way of journalism!
Besides, they already changed that photoeditor’s caption for the photo of the B’nai B’rith bicycle marathon and his text accompanying the chart for their article on gigantism in African Americans. They had to give him something.
There is: when you are describing animals that are literally half male, half female, and have no preferred nomenclature for themselves. The fact that it would be extremely offensive to apply such a term to human beings is beside the point. There is nothing wrong with calling a cat a name you ought not to call a human being, either.
You just couldn’t resist playing the “rabies card” could you? I take great offense at such a blatantly hydrophobic slur!
I am not blatanly hydrophobic!:mad:
And it’s pronounced “sir”!;)
It may be one color on one side and another colr on the other, but I’ll bet it can’t do a killer Richard Burton imitation!
Oh, that’s ridiculous. They’re using the word for the animals because it’s a transphobic slur and for no other reason. There is ample vocabulary to describe such animals in a neutral fashion.
Angry . . . or confused?
No other reason except maybe it’s literally a he… AND a she? What would this alleged ‘neutral vocabulary’ be that would satisfy your indignant and amusing outrage?
I think I’m gonna side with matt_mcl on this one…although coming from a slightly different perspective.
Animal activists frequently complain about the use of the pronoun “it” to describe animals…especially in cases where a specific animal is the topic. In such cases, the sex of the animal is usually known, but some writers use “it” anyway, which the activists contend is the result of subconscious bias or even a conscious decision to objectify the animal, to distance ourselves from thinking of the animal as a living individual who might deserve consideration. The same goes for using “that” instead of “who.”
A quick perusal of the livescience site’s “animals” page doesn’t show many articles in which specific animals are discussed, but the article on outdoor cats shows exactly this pattern (bolding mine):
Note that although that’s a quoted passage, the editors supplied an additional parenthetical “(It navigated)” where they could have said “(He navigated)” or perhaps “(The cat navigated).”
So it appears that the site has in the past used “it” to refer to specific animals of known or unspecified gender, but switched to “he-she” for the article matt_mcl has questioned.
I wasn’t aware “he-she” had such connotations, but I conclude the complaint is justified.
No. St. Louis or Phoenix
You’re thinking of the Rangers or the Cowboys.