gendercide

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:09 AM -0400 10/24/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>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."

The latter being much less prevalent, no doubt because so many of the
would-be perpetrators who are weak on their classical Latin
misinterpret it as the killing of viruses.

LH

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