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Stop Sexist Language!

To the Editor:

Your statement about changing the charter to become gender neutral was shocking to an old feminist who spent years of her life bringing awareness to educators about the harm that gender bias in language does to young children just learning the language.

Our language indicates what our belief system is. The state law was changed in 1972 to eliminate sexism in act and language. The laws were changed to eliminate all gender bias. If the city took over 27 years to comply with the ERA by erasing gender bias and becoming gender neutral, then so be it. As long as they were cleaning up other parts of the charter, it certainly was time to eliminate sexist language as well.

My book about feminism has a whole chapter on Sexist Language and the research that proves that it is influential in our culture. Whether you think it is simply frivolous window dressing or not, it has an impact on everyone who sees or hears such language. It's time to eliminate sexist language anywhere it lingers about.

--Georgie Bright Kunkel, via e-mail

Foreshadowing I-695

Maria,

By the time you are able to print this letter, I-695 may already be law in Washington. Thanks for the clarification as to what it exactly is. I did not get the impression that it was a clone of a similar law we have here in Colorado from a first reading of Geov's Seattle Weekly column a couple of weeks ago. Now having read your endorsements for the November 2 elections and having re-read Geov's column, I have a better understanding of I-695. There is a good reason for the backers of I-695 to not want the voters of Washington to know what it is really about. Colorado voters passed a similar initiative called TABOR. It requires voter approval for all hikes in taxes for municipal, county and state governments. If you want a good example of how such a law works in practice, then visit Fort Collins some time. Fort Collins is arguably to most ill-conceived city in the history of city planning. The city government is so defunded that is can not even the $4 million needed to update the city's outdated traffic light system. Marketing these kinds of laws as "tax revolts" is a convenianant way to deflect attention away from what these laws are really about. They are about transforming municipal, county and state governments into little more than rubber stamp parliaments for business, especially developers here in Colorado. In short, they are making sure that public funds are not used for public purposes, but rather for furthering of private power. Gone will be what little remains of basic social services and regulatory restraint on big business if I-695 becomes law. Damn it! Part of my motivation for wanting to move Seattle is that there might be enough of a public transportation system to give me some rest from having to get around on my bike everywhere. Looks like I will be spending more time on my bike than I want to when I make it to Seattle. Obviously, don't expect any leadership from politicians in dealing with the budgetary restrictions put in place by laws like I-695. Of course, there is plenty of bitching about TABOR from local officials here in Colorado but that has not kept them from championing an array of tax hikes that will go into the hands of developers and their corporate sponsors. For example, Larimer County, the county Fort Collins is located in, does not have enough revenue for maintenance and expansion of its road system to keep up with its fast growing population. So what is on the November 2 ballot for the county? A second vote on a 20 year tax hike for a new county fairgrounds and yet another goddamn money-losing events center. You have all seen this movie in Seattle before, haven't you?

--Rick Giombetti, Fort Collins, Colorado

George W. Bush Has a Ways To Go

ETS!,

I thought you might find this amusing and wish to include it your paper. I put it together for another project but we didn't use it.

WORLD'S DEADLIEST GOVERNMENTS Executions per 1 million residents #1 Congo 44 #2 Saudi Arabia 2.42 #3 Virginia 2.12 #4 Texas 1.19 #5 Iran 1.18

figures are for 1998 and are compiled from Amnesty International and the New York Times Atlas

--Peter Hodges, via e-mail