Los Angeles: master/slave drives are politically incorrect

[Bill in SD, CA]

Does PCI stand for Political Correct Indifference?

And, if gay, is IRQ a statement?

And, conversely if asking the question would you say RUQ?



Bill

[Theophylact]

Also "male" and "female" connectors.

Here was the original query and answer (in Barbara Wallraff's Word Court column in the November 1999 issue of Atlantic:

Do you find the terms male and female offensive when used to describe such things as electrical connectors? A dongle, for example, looks like the plug at the end of a printer cable, but has no cable attached to it; it fits into the printer port on the back of a PC. One end of it is conventionally referred to as male, and the other end as female. As a technical writer, I discussed these terms with a co-worker, because we were about to include them in a manual. Although these are industry-standard terms, she found them offensive. I was surprised at her response, so I took a quick survey. Other women found them "possibly offensive." No men objected. We ultimately took out the references. Did we just cave in to political correctness?

Colin Barnett
Baltimore, Md.

Taking the questions at the beginning and the end of your letter in order, no and yes.

Maybe we can start calling them the innie and outie connectors?

[John Prophet]

America spends resources thinking of such inane issues..and THEN wants to complain about a million other things when the million other things could have been discussed while we were deciding a better name for electronic parts???

[osprey4]

Plumbers and mechanics, who could care less about computers, have been using the terms male/female, master/slave for decades. Why is it when you get to computers that suddenly someone cares?

Lots more computer manuals floating around that all sorts of people need to read, whereas in the vocations, you're usually only dealing with men, who are according to the above, not so easily taken back by the terms...

[Target]

In a related item, California has also moved to remove master and slave from other common descriptions.

Dog owners will no longer be referred to as "masters" and instead will be called "supreme domesticators".

Those toiling in jobs will no longer be referred to as "slaving away" and instead will be said to be "diligently toiling away at mundane tasks".

Self gratification is also no longer allowed due to obvious reasons (no not those reasons, because of the terminology...ok, and the blindness thing).

In addition, in order to avoid offending the dyslexic, salve will no longer be sold in stores after Jan 1.

Executives at MasterLock have refused comment, and are reviewing the matter with their attorneys.

[sbp]

Yeah I posted this on other forums and it is indeed true.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp

[RayH]

All societies have gone through periods of slavery. No ethnic group has a lock on such "scar." In war, the victors were the masters and the defeated were the slaves.

As for reparations, those who were victims of slavery were reparated after the Civil War!

[Pexster]

Not to mention the obvious -- that many, if not most, words have more than one meaning and have different connotations in different contexts. So some guy in L.A. was offended? Why the immediate action by the administrator? Why not let the complaint process proceed, and have somebody with a little more of a level head tell the guy, "Sorry, complaint denied. Next, please!"