gendercide

[Jonathan Lighter]

On CNN just now: "Did you know that 100,000,000 women and girls in China and
India are the victims of gendercide?"

This came at the end of a segment devoted entirely to the
allegedly widdespread practice in Afghanistan of dressing little girls as
boys, and encouraging them to "act as boys," so that a family may avoid
shame by pretending to strangers that it has at least one son.

But that's an Afghan custom.  What about China and India?  I don't know.
Not a word was said. But Wikipedia restricts "gendercide" to actual killing.
It includes "femicide" and "viricide."

Have 100,000,000 people been murdered in China and India for being
female?  Or is "gendercide" now also "the deliberate hiding or erasure of
gender distinctions"?  Or what?

JL

..
--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org