Spinspeak Letter

Product Spin Scores Again: Hear that �Big� Engine Roar

2009-06-21T11:34:00.002-04:00

In the PC world of Obama Motors and green cars, Ford is pioneering a way to continue selling muscle cars and simultaneously keep the greenies in the White House happy. Ford�s secret weapon: product spin

To play on the President�s Big Green Team, Ford will have to dump the powerful V-8 engine in its popular Mustang. No problem! When Ford rolls out the four-cylinder Mustang, it is reported ready to install a new sound tube that amplifies engine sounds in the car cockpit giving the driver the feeling that he is still on a NASCAR track or the autobahn to Berlin.

The Engine Sound Amplifier is product spin in the great tradition of such engineering marvels as New Car Smell Spray which enables car dealers to �improve� what once were called used cars but now are upgraded via the magic of spinspeak to being �pre-owned vehicles.�

Incidentally,if you like New Car Smell, get it quickly. The Ecology Center, an environmental group in Michigan, says that New Car Smell is "toxic at any speed." So far, it is not clear what the Engine Sound Amplifier does to your eardrums.

Anonymity for the Unauthorized: spinspeak�s new �reliable source�

2009-05-06T12:03:00.003-04:00

As many a wounded pol and other masters of the universe have learned, spinspeak when attributed has always carried a deadly virus that can infect the attributor upon exposure to bright sunlight.

Once upon a time the stealth solution of choice for the pols and other masters was to attribute their spin to an unidentified �reliable source.�

But �reliable source� proved eventually to provide insufficient cover particularly when it was obviously POTUS or more probably some doorman. It gave way to the identifiable and easily disposable �spokesman� and subsequently neutered �spokesperson� whose comment could always be denied.

Now, as this gambit has become increasingly tattered through terminal abuse, deeper stealth is required. The new operative mechanism for spreading spinspeak as gospel is to quote �people� or �persons� who were �granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.�

Who might the grantors of anonymity be? The Supreme Court? The FBI? ACLU? ICE? POTUS? We are not told.

Who refused to authorize these ghostly folk to speak publicly? Did they ask for the authority? Are they simply freelancing their biases? Are they enemy agents? We are not told.

Not to worry! Here�s what they said. You can take it to the bank if it�s still in business.

Obama Lookspin in Araby: the Non-Bow Bow

2009-04-10T09:26:00.003-04:00

The White House wants you to know that President Obama�s deep bow from the waist to the Muslim King of Saudi Arabia was not a bow at all.

A White House �aide� says the photo showing the President doubled over in what appears to be an act of unprecedented obeisance for an American Chief of State is being misunderstood. According to the spinspeak from aide, the President �grasped the King�s hand with two hands� and had to bend over because �he is taller than King Abdullah.�

Spinspeak You Can Count On

2009-03-30T10:45:00.003-04:00

Early on the promised new � transparency� of the Obama Administration is providing you with new spinspeak that you can count on. Some major examples:

man-caused disasters = fogwords for what the relatives of suddenly dead civilians call terrorism. The White House says the new term is broader, presumably to cover such events as worms in hamburgers. Feminist note: Fails to take into account women suicide bombers.

overseas contingency operations = cosmeticspeak for war on terror. Lowers status of WOT to being merely one of many �contingencies� such as plague, high water and outbreaks of salmonella.

private sector partners = temporary wet kiss bizschoolspeak for financially successful citizens whom the Administration and Congress normally refers to as greedy, Wall Street bandits but briefly seeks cooperation (money) before leveling on them new confiscatory taxes.

legacy assets = fuzzball for lousy subprime mortgages and other dodgy loans known as toxic assets that the Administration would like to have private sector partners (see above) take off the hands of �greedy Wall Street� bankers.

now is the time = cry-wolftalk for never mind reading through that 30-pound bill in a worldwide, unprecedented, catastrophic, deepest ever, doomsday crisis, just pass it.

The Touch of the Spinspeak Leper

2009-02-13T15:06:00.003-05:00

GOP Sen. Judd Gregg�s decision to withdraw as President Obama�s nominee for Commerce Secretary in the alleged Cabinet of �rivals� for which we have been waiting fully confirms the corruption and vacuity of the phrases �in a bipartisan way� and �reach across the aisle.�

�Bipartisan� and �reach across the aisle� are clearly spinspeak for �you do it our way and you get to pose with us all smiles on TV.�

To be reached at across the aisle, as Sen. Gregg has made manifest, is truly to extend the touch of the leper and those doing it should be forced, as lepers were in the Middle Ages, to wear numerous little warning bells and be garbed in colorful identifying leper apparel.

The Spinspeak Restaurant

2008-10-06T15:44:00.003-04:00

Sen. Joe Biden, Democratic aspirant for Vice President, gets a Spinspeak Gold Star for his recent invitation to Americans to join him at Katie�s Restaurant in downtown Wilmington, Delaware, to learn about the problems of �the Middle Class.�

But Biden, who styles himself as �Joe Lunchbucket� as he wanders around his lakefront mansion, apparently hasn�t been in downtown Wilmington of late. According to the Wall Street Journal, Katie�s has been closed since the 1980�s.

Essential Spinspeak for Presidential Elections

2008-09-12T15:38:00.003-04:00

Three essential spinspeak definitions needed to understand the run up to the November presidential election of 2008:

kitchen table = nostalgiaspin referring to the oil cloth covered tables that large, folksy Norman Rockwell families sat around in kitchens braving the challenges of the Great Depression; widely used today to give a we-the-people flavor to economic programs by scriptwriters for politicians whose idea of a kitchen table is a $10,000 designer island with a built-in wine cooler.

lipstick = female medal-of-honor spin for 21st Century womanhood. A symbol improperly employed by any male politician at his peril.

lunch bucket = nostalgiaspin referring to the ugly metal receptacle packing the poor man�s lunch of an exploited workman plodding toward another endless day in the satanic mills; widely used today to describe the early childhood of wealthy Ivy Leaguers running for high office.

Spinspeak Catch-up Report for the Wary

2008-08-30T10:51:00.004-04:00

Polspin Division

Practicing spinspeak in the current presidential campaign season is rampant. The target, of course, is what the pols regard as the STPs (Standard Boob Voter). Here are some definitions to help deflect the onslaught:

come together: booberyspin for an objective you have no way to achieving even if you wanted to do so. A replacement for the tattered label �bi-partisan.�

across-the-aisle: goody-two-shoes spin for where you go when you seek to come together which you won�t unless it has something to do with picking up PAC money.

refine: happyspin for flip-flopspeak. You refine your position from yes to no or back the other way according to the polls which you insist you disregard.

hope: vintage gooeytalk for the totally empty Happy Days Gift Boxes that the voter gets to fill with whatever.

change: hoary plastertalk for whatever the STBs think is in the Happy Days Gift Boxes.

context: fogspin suggesting that whatever dumb, embarrassing or impolitic thing you said is really OK if put into the context reconfiguration blender (RFB).

snippet: category-shift for minimizing a blatantly clear pattern of deplorable behavior by suggesting that reports are providing only highly selected pinhole views of events.

Adspeak Division

my doctor: phony badgetalk for the copywriter who wrote the pharmaceutical commercial as in �my doctor says this cancer cure is right for me.�

branded entertainment: fogspeak for buying inclusion of your product in a TV show in a manner that seeks to make it part of normal script.

passion: totally generic (cars, aircraft, espresso machines, insurance, cheese) vacuumtalk for describing a corporation�s feelings about whatever it happens to be peddling.

Hillary the C. Follows John the K. down Derring-dotalk Slippery Slope

2008-03-27T14:58:00.007-04:00

Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton�s current �mistake� in her report of bravely landing in Bosnia under enemy fire that has proven to have been non-existent is an outstanding spinspeak case history on why derring-dotalk is such a slippery slope.

She might have learned from the derring-dotalk difficulties of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), whose own 2004 presidential campaign prominently featured so many colorful Viet Nam war stories including his imaginative Christmas boat trip to Cambodia.

Clinton�s actual "mistake" was not having the National Archives or some other government agency redact all newsfilm showing her accepting flowers at the landing ceremony rather than dodging bullets. Kerry adroitly had his own jungle film taken afterward, but forgot to burn the records and shoot all witnesses.

Spinspeak Rule 1 for successful derring-dotalk: Make it up out of whole cloth. Rule 2: No cameras. Rule 3: Be the only survivor.

�Estimate Language� from the NIE Spooks: A Spyspin Dictionary

2007-12-06T15:22:00.000-05:00

The new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) may not have made a major contribution to public faith in the reliability of America�s spy network but it has made a major contribution to the National Spinspeak Vocabulary (NSV).

The NIE report, recognizing the dumbing down of the voters, helpfully provided a special NIE dictionary of what it called �estimate language.� This special spyspin language is designed to �convey� to the unwashed �the probability� that anything in the report was true; also, �the level of confidence� the spooks have in their �judgment� of �the probability.�

Here is a synopsis of the new spyspin:

probably, likely, very likely, almost certainly = hopetalk for �there is a greater than even� chance that we know what we are talking about even considering our earlier opinion which was the opposite.

unlikely, remote = CYA-talk for less than a 50-50 chance something will happen but who knows, right?

we cannot dismiss, rule out, discount � hyperCYA-talk for we don�t think the worst will happen but consider yourself warned.

might, may = plastertalk for we really don�t know because someone decapitated our agent while he was on the phone.

high confidence = hopetalk for our information is �high quality� but you never know, do you?

moderate confidence = CYA-talk for our information is �credibly sourced and plausible� but you have to hedge your bets when dealing with these ragheads.

low confidence = hyperCYA-talk for you it�s OK for you to believe this garbage a little bit but we�re supposed to be professionals.

The Politics of �Politics of�

2007-11-03T11:42:00.000-04:00

Spinmeisters are proving that there is no subject or event that can not be immediately trivialized, demonized or exalted into nothingness with the fuzzball phrase �politics of.�

Latest example: When Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) was challenged for engaging in doublespeak by some of her competitors for the Democratic presidential nomination, she claimed that she was a victim of the �Politics of Pile-on.�

As every grade school good sport knows, �pile-on� is unfair. Add the phrase �politics of� and you have institutionalized it far beyond the school playground into an evil practice that can not be condoned, conveniently obscuring whatever caused the alleged pile-on in the first place.

Google now carries 97 pages of links to some kind of �politics of.�

There is, merely to skim the surface, the Politics of Hope, the Politics of Fear, the Politics of Culture, the Politics of Truth, the Politics of Slime, the Politics of Eavesdropping, the Politics of Meat and Dairy, the Politics of Narcissism, the Politics of Obedience, the Politics of Torture and the Politics of Arrogance.

Possibly the deep well of hogwash in the phrase has been best plumbed by Mothering Magazine which has explored the long, colorful history of the �the Politics of Diapers.�

So It Goes: the Pol Spinspeak Factory Grinds On

2007-09-24T10:15:00.000-04:00

Random spin from the presidential hustings:

shared responsibility = chameleonspeak for big government coercion: the government takes responsibility for giving you a service that it defines; you take responsibility for gratefully accepting whatever is in the package and paying for it in taxes.

choice = once plain English now converted to Trojan-horse talk for you get to choose as long as you to what I tell you to do but feel good about it because you have �choice.� Of course, if you don�t do what I tell you to do, you don�t deserve a choice.

thoughtful = chocolatesaucetalk for describing anyone of the opposite party who is suddenly providing you with aid and comfort.

carbon footprint = diabolictalk (unless mitigated with the adjective "low" for what those who refuse to buy into the global warning doomsday scenario are doing to the world.

center = Chinese-lunchtalk for a moving point somewhere between not quite the extreme far left and not quite the extreme far right depending on the speaker and the auditor. The word is essentially employed as a self-awarded Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. (see below: move to center)

move to center = phony badgetalk for where a pol runs to bamboozle the general electorate after bamboozling a hard liberal left or hard conservative right into winning a nomination.

Deluxespin Delivers

2007-08-20T16:52:00.000-04:00

A new book, �Deluxe� by Dana Thomas, makes a major contribution to the study of spinspeak by exploring the highly commercial art of deluxespin.

Thomas catalogues brilliantly the transmogrification of personally handcrafted true luxury products sold at very high prices to mass produced faux luxury products sold at even higher prices.

At one time, the needlecrafts workers of the ateliers of France and Italy produced haute couture designed by Chanel, Valentino. Balenciaga and Yves St.. Laurent. Generations of leathercraft workers produced luggage designed Louis Vuitton. Generations of jewelry makers and goldsmiths turned out limited masterpieces for Cartier, Tiffany, Bulgari. And Faberg�.

In recent years, unauthorized, illegal, discredited, knockoffs of these famous brands have been manufactured in the sweatshops of North Africa and China and peddled at bargain prices on the streets of Paris, Milan and New York.

Meantime, Thomas writes, the famous deluxe brands have faced rising labor costs. Handsomely fat margins have been grossly squeezed. Accordingly, they too have taken up outsourcing to China and North Africa and other centers of cheap labor. The also have discovered ways to reduce costs through mass production, corner cutting and cheese paring..

Voila! Through the magic of deluxespin we have to meet the demand of a rich clientele, particularly a nouveau riche clientele, hungry for the luxury brand products of old, carloads of official, approved, brand-name knockoffs priced to prove that they are more deluxe than ever.

The question for students of deluxespin and the marketing arts: How thin can the deluxe in a deluxe product be sliced before the only thing deluxe that remains like the Cheshire cat�s smile in �Alice in Wonderland� is the brand?

Spinspeak Air Cleanser Award to Hillary Clinton

2007-08-09T11:12:00.000-04:00

Historians generally agree only President Richard Nixon, Commie fighter extraordinaire, could have opened up US relations with Red China.

Spinspeak experts in the future may be saying that only Sen. Hillary Clinton, darling of feminist activists, could possibly have dragged the hated word �girl� into the righteous haven of political correctness.

In her lifelong bid for the presidency, Ms. Clinton has told a rally of cheering union supporters �I�m your girl!� as opposed to �I�m your woman!� or �I�m your candidate person!�

Her current arch rival, Sen. Obama, did not immediately try countering her move by shouting �I�m your boy!� but the campaign in still young.

Pet Funeral Biz Gives Major Boost to Spinspeak Phylum Compassiontalk

2007-08-07T15:17:00.000-04:00

A Rhode Island dog and cat crematorium called Paws at Rest, doing business under the motto �We share your tears,� offers �home burial,� �marine burial,� and permanent display of �arbor emblems� bearing the name of the beloved one in a �memorial tree.�

The Shop at Paws at Rest offers biodegradable urns for the environmentally concerned and for the more affluent a �solid bronze doghouse.� For cats permanently �at rest,� The Shop offers �etched kitty urns� and an urn that looks like a ball of pink yarn.

Meantime, in England, a pet crematorium called Pets to Rest, pffers, apparently for those nostalgic for The Empire, bamboo coffins. They come in three sizes with prices ranging from 47 to 58 pounds including the VAT tax. Pets to Rest is located in northwest England not far from High Hesket in the Eden Valley.

Hospitals Introduce the Medical Obfuscation Procedure

2007-08-06T13:20:00.000-04:00

As anyone unfortunate enough to have to seek hospital care today quickly learns, all services no longer go by the simple names of yesteryear.

Someone operates on your heart, that�s a cardiologic procedure, presumably much more complex and more costly than an old-timey �operation.�.

Likewise, someone sets your broken finger, that�s an orthopedic procedure.

Likewise again, if you can get someone to bring you breakfast before lunchtime, that�s the early morning nutritional procedure.

And now, if they cut off your left leg when it was the right leg that was black from gangrene, that�s called the �wrong site procedure.�

Obscuring the Rockets' Red Glare

2007-07-26T16:02:00.000-04:00

Intensive linguistic analysis is essential to understanding the current political spinspeak drowning any rational discussion about the war in Iraq:

shift the mission, change direction, change course = all cosmetic boldtalk for �let�s quit now.� All also are uniquely solution free.

precipitous withdrawal = Halloweentalk for characterizing troop reduction no matter how vague let alone a date certain.

take our troops out of harm�s way, bring our troops home = gooeytalk for �let�s quit now or sooner.�

dwell time = extensive home leave between combat missions, the more extensive the better as a means to make conduct of the war impossible.

the surge = Pentagontalk originally for more troops but maybe not for long; now more troops for possibly several years really fighting the enemy directly as opposed to trying to get someone else to do it while avoiding casualties to placate the antiwar lobby.

support our troops = increasingly papier-m�ch� chatter employed vociferously by politicians primarily engaged in undercutting troop morale and the war effort.

worst president = hatetalk for the current White House incumbent favored by pols who can�t spell James Carter or James Buchanan for starters.

New Ethical Congress Takes Up Foodspin

2007-02-06T09:17:00.000-05:00

Voters should be happy to know that one of the first things that the new Democratic-controlled Congress has accomplished is to prevent wicked lobbyists from seducing innocent (but often hungry) congressmen with fancy dinners.

The new ethics legislation introduced by Majority Leader and Chief Ethicist Harry Reid (D-NV), master of pally real estate deals, forbids congressmen from accepting gourmet lures.

But, according to the latest congressional foodspin, the bill does not ban accepting �toothpick fare.�

As long as you�re standing up (admittedly a challenge for some of the thirstier lawmakers), it�s OK to fill up on hors d�oeuvres no matter how pricey.

According to the foodspin philosophy in the bill, maybe you can buy votes from a �sitting� congressman with Dover sole in a dark candlelit restaurant, but a �standing� congressmen can not be had even with smoked salmon or Beluga caviar wrapped in pastry.

The foodspin in the bill does not make clear how many hors d�oeuvres you can have wrapped to go.

Spin Bulletin: Willietalk Award of the Week

2007-01-25T10:40:00.000-05:00

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) expressed �extreme sadness� to learn that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) will not be joining him and so many others in the Senate�s Democratic Wannabe President Club.

You Can�t Figure Out the Way Forward until You Read the Triptik

2007-01-25T10:31:00.000-05:00

To even attempt to understand the political brouhaha over the Iraq War, you need to understand the meaning of the following essential spinspeak soundbites:

The way forward = one way or another we are going forward just as today usually follows tomorrow: the phrase reassures, but really says nothing until you look at the Triptik to be used.

(The sitting Republican President�s Triptik calls for sending in another 20,000 plus troops who may get us forward; the some dozen wannabe sitting Democratic Presidents� Triptiks all say the way forward involves only reverse gear [see redeployment]. No other Triptiks are on the table.)

surge = Pentagonspeak for more troops but not for long maybe.

escalation = scarespeak for here comes the Big One.

most Americans, many Republicans = political hypertalk for at least a majority of one.

redeployment = peaceniktalk for retreat �over the horizon� to Okinawa, maybe some advance readiness base near Chicago or Louisville.

Turkey with a Side-order of Spinspeak Is Still Turkey

2006-11-22T15:05:00.000-05:00

And now to go with your big holiday turkey here is some newly-minted post-election spinspeak.

realist = political fogspeak for �it�s OK to give away the farm to the enemy as long as we can get the boys home for Christmas.�

situation = cosmeticspeak for a war that you would like to make disappear and that you are politically committed to lose.

ill-advised = corporatespeak for a disastrous and truly stupid idea from which you wish to extricate yourself with a shed or two of grace.

engage = forked-tonguetalk for suggesting that you can somehow wheedle concessions out of an opponent who already has deprived you of your trousers.

Kerry Wins National Spinney for �Botched Joke�

2006-11-02T10:22:00.000-05:00

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), failed contender for some of life�s greater awards such as unalloyed respect and the White House, is far away the winner of a coveted National Spinney for his invention of the plastertalk phrase �botched joke.�

As much of the world now knows, the Senator said at a Democratic political rally in California:

You know, education--if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq

When most people who can understand the English language saw or read this including many prominent Democratic politicians, they clearly interpreted it to mean that the Senator was saying only dopes and academic losers were fighting in the U.S. Armed Services in Iraq.

After two days of trying out much Kerry spinspeak, Kerry finally apologized (sort of) but even then continued to insist that his comment was only, merely, just a �botched joke.�

�Botched joke� is a triumph of the art of spinspeak. Think of how it could have been used brilliantly in the past and will be in the future to plaster over unfortunate comments and phrases. For example:

�Peace in our time� (N. Chamberlain)

�Is Paris Burning?� (A. Hitler)

�We will bury you.� (N. Khrushchev)

�Israel must be destroyed.� (M. Ahmadinejad, stand-up Persian comedian)

No One Here But Us Infidel-Hating Brits

2006-08-21T16:05:00.000-04:00

The foiled murder plot to blow up 10 airliners over American cities once again demonstrated how politically correct spinmeisters are aiding the Islamofascist War on Western Civilization.

Although the British police had arrested 21 alleged terrorists, early on it was all but impossible to learn from the media that they were all Muslims dedicated to killing infidels at random.

First the �suspected� would-be murderers were �young British Asians"(Chinese? Mongols?)�"British-born of Pakistani descent"(Cambridge grads?) � "British citizens with dual nationality."(Liechtenstein?) Then, they included several �pregnant women.� Then, when the Pakistani police began making arrests, the perps were reported to include �Kashmiri militants linked to al Qaeda.� Then some were Muslims after all but they were "white converts."

Reuters and BBC were among the chief sufferers from the persistent myopia that makes it difficult to notice that all of these people are Muslims; and that they all think killing non-Muslims is a great idea.

Reuters, which still can�t bring itself to use the word �terrorist,� also distinguished itself in recent days with a great display of lookspin in its coverage of the Hezbollah War. Reuters graphicmagic photography included adding extra smoke to bomb shots, pristine stuffed animals and play-dead actors among the dusty ruins and encore appearances on different dates of the same screaming motherly victim of Israeli bombs.

Meantime, Iran has assured the world that Hezbollah terrorists are nothing more than �pious youths� out there achieving �God�s promises.�

Spinmeisters to the Front in the Hezbollahwar

2006-08-01T13:29:00.000-04:00

As always, spinmeisters are on top of events as the Hezbollahwar in Lebanon unfolds in prime time.

Only by understanding the spin can one follow the bouncing bombs. Additions to the world lexicography of war spinspeak include:

asymmetrical war = softsoap technogook based on the same mindset as exhibited by the proverbial child who killed his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan.*

immediate ceasefire = peaceniktalk for you quit while we rearm.

proportional response = peaceniktalk for gpoing easy and ineffectually on an enemy who says he wants to obliterated you as soon as he can swing it.

degrade = military softspeak that could mean battering an enemy sufficiently so that he can�t fight again for a long, long time; but also could be spin for implying that but actually doing a lot less.

peacekeeper = plastertalk inflator for what once were combat troops under bumbling UN command with faulty rules of engagement;** now non-combative bureaucratic troops under UN command who neither keep the peace nor clearly observe its violation.

* One side fights in uniform, minimizes killing non-combatant civilians (e,g., warns them in advance to get out of the way), does not use women and children as human shields and does not use hospitals and houses of worship for storing munitions or launching missiles. The other side hides in civilian clothes, maximizes killing all non-combatants, keeps its civilians in the front lines preferably where the media can photograph their bodies, finds houses of worship ideal as ammo dumps and launch pads.

**Earlier definition in Spinspeak II: The Dictionary of Language Pollution

Meditalk Spins Away the Blubber

2006-07-05T14:55:00.000-04:00

Doctors today are not only trained in the worthy tradition of �do no harm,� but also in the questionable contemporary school of �offend no one.�

Thus, we have the new proposed Centers for Disease Control spinspeak guideline of not calling overweight children �obese.� Presumably,� fat kid,� �porky� and �chubby� are also off the approved list. Instead, children waddling around in a state approaching but not yet reaching total rotundity are to be called �at risk of overweight.� Once total rotundity is achieved the full mound of blubber is to be described simply as �overweight.�

Dr. Reginald Washington of Denver, a pediatrician and �co-chair�* of an American Academy of Pediatrics task force on obesity agrees. He notes that calling children �obese� risks �making them angry, making the family angry.�

There is also the possibility of loss of self esteem � the dreaded state of mind that many sensitive educators already avoid by eliminating the uncomfortable idea of competition with �winners� and �losers.�

Some other recent medical spinspeak:

non-compliant = meditalk softspeak for describing a patient who refuses to follow prescribed medical direction.

non-adherence = earlier meditalk for what is now called non-compliant.

drug seeking behavior = meditalk for coke sniffing and other drug addictive folkways.

* co-chair and chair is spinspeak adopted on the politically correct assumption that it is better to call people pieces of furniture than make gender distinctions.