I find this an appropriate comment by Hofstadter, in the Intro to 'Godel Escher Bach', on the gender of the Tortoise:
The Tortoise turns out never to have been attributed either gender. But when I first read it, the question never entered my mind. This was clearly a he-tortoise. After all, an author only introduces a female character for some special reason, right? Whereas a male character in a neutral context needs no raison d'etre, a female does. And so, given no clue as to the Tortoise's sex, I unthinkingly and uncritically envisaged it as a male. Thus does sexism silently pervade well-meaning but susceptible brains.
This was clearly a he-tortoise. After all, an author only introduces a female character for some special reason, right?
This kind of thing certainly applies to me and music. For some reason, it's hardly noticed when a North American of Hungarian, Polish, or French descent decides to play Irish Traditional music, but someone with Hispanic, African, or Asian descent playing that kind of music is frequently asked questions about how she/he got into Irish Music, or if they're in conservatory or are studying ethnomusicology, as if only "white" people are the default, normal human beings. A lot of this plain ignorance. For example, there's a thriving pan-celtic music scene in South America in countries like Argentina, where many people are playing the music as part of their heritage from celtic regions in northern Spain, like Galicia and Asturias, so there's no reason why the above attitudes should necessarily apply, depending on where in S. America that person is from.
Most people have a caricatured view of the world, where the only culture that matters is the majority's, and everyone else's culture is just some kind of distracting "flavor of the month" which only survives out of some sort of jingoism and has no deep artistic value on its own. Let me tell you, this perception has nothing to do with artistic value, and is only an illusion woven by political and economic power. Often the best music is made by people who have neither.
I think the assumption is that white people are the default kind of Irish people. White people playing some manner of traditional African music get asked the same questions, and it's not because black people are the default, normal human beings.
White people playing some manner of traditional African music get asked the same questions
This can happen. It depends on the context. There are contexts where white people don't get asked these questions about African music. I'm not so sure there are contexts where I'm not asked those sorts of questions about Irish Trad, just times and places where people are more reticent about asking than others.
Also, there's an additional difference. There is some small fraction of people who seem to think that I'm somehow defective/slightly crazy/deserving of ridicule for being of Korean extraction and playing Irish Trad. It's rare, but there's even sometimes some sense of resentment. More pleasant, but just as telling, there's sometimes some additional delight or pride that I in particular would choose to play Irish Trad, where my race seems to play a part. I never see the above happen in North America with white people who aren't Irish. I've also seen the same sorts of things happen to African Americans.
The third thing is this: mainstream North Americans don't view African traditional or Irish Traditional music as the default, normal music. It's also something of a "special flavor" to them, even though it was just the default, normal music in a different culture. An Asian person playing western "classical" music sometimes results in the same kinds of questions as Irish Trad, but often it's not even questioned at all.
If you are talking about the Tortoise and the Hare, I personally also identified the tortoise as a male, but the hare as a female. It's just how the words sounded in my head.
I have not read GEB; perhaps it's a different tortoise you are talking about.
In GEB, the protagonists are the Tortoise and Achilles. I think this particular passage is about the french translation that Hoefstader proof-read (as he's fluent in French); the French translator called the Tortoise "she", because "tortue" is of feminine gender so most "tortues" characters are naturally female in French.
Not quite. Achilles and the Tortoise originally came from an essay by Lewis Carroll. Hofstadter had borrowed them for GEB, and in doing so also borrowed their gender -- or so he thought. In reality when he went back to check, long after publication, he realized that Lewis Carroll had left the Tortoise completely genderless.
I dug up the book to check, and in the 20th anniversary preface page 16 and 17, a few lines before the previous quote there is :
"Mr Tortoise, meet Madame Tortue
A few years later, a wholly unexpected chance came along to make amends, at least in part, for my sexist sin."
And here comes the French translators part:"[...] they rather gingerly asked me if I would ever consider letting them switch the Tortoise's sex to female."
So I don't see what's the contradiction you're trying to point out.
Then it's probably my mix-up. An extremely similar passage occurs in Metamagical Themas, in which Hofstadter describes a conversation in which he first realized that he may have only assumed that Carroll's Tortoise was male. I've likely confused one with the other.
This I wonder about: do feminine and masculine (and nueter) pronouns indicate gender when used for non-people beings, or must they match the word of those things?
Ich hab' eine Hase, die wir Hans nennen.
The pronoun is feminine to match the word Hase, even though the hare is male as indicated by his name.
In french, the article or pronoun must match the word gender too, it's always "une tortue", even if it's "une tortue male". There are often two different words for male and female animals, though: "un lièvre" (male hare), "une hase" (female hare).
But cat, Katze (feminine), and dog, Hund (masculine), work. There are versions of these words for the opposite sex, Kater and Hündin, but there are used rarely. So 'Ich habe eine Katze, Felix' and 'Ich habe einen Hund, Bella' would be perfectly acceptable even though the gender of the noun doesn't match the sex of the animal.
> This I wonder about: do feminine and masculine (and nueter) pronouns indicate gender when used for non-people beings, or must they match the word of those things?
In french at least, words themselves have gender irrespective of the subject's gender. And pronouns usually match the word's gender. So a tortoise is feminine even if it's a male, so's a sparrow, a mole, a goat or a stork. Then, there may be subsets of the original word for each of the genders (or further differentiations by age). "Goat" in general is feminine but buck ("bouc") is masculine for instance.
Interesting. That also seems to back up my point that languages just make words sound masculine or feminine, even if not explicitly defined like in the Romantic languages (French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, others of similar origin). The fact that they are in a footrace seems to suggest they were lifted from their original myths though.
The race between the tortoise and Achilles (or sometimes Achilles and the arrow) is the common illustration of the best known Zeno's paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenos_paradoxes
The Tortoise turns out never to have been attributed either gender. But when I first read it, the question never entered my mind. This was clearly a he-tortoise. After all, an author only introduces a female character for some special reason, right? Whereas a male character in a neutral context needs no raison d'etre, a female does. And so, given no clue as to the Tortoise's sex, I unthinkingly and uncritically envisaged it as a male. Thus does sexism silently pervade well-meaning but susceptible brains.