Sure thing

The Bombay-based Life Insurance Corporation says that a eunuch called Janaki is ineligible for cover because he (the BBC uses “she” for some reason) is neither man nor woman. If I were an actuary, I’d be more worried about Janaki’s fortune-telling skills.

Trevor @ 3 September 2004 1:37 PM

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Comments

1. MM
   4:16 PM on 3 September 2004

   They look like women in the photo, too.

   BTW when Language Log were on about too many negatives in a sentence (Mark Liberman’s post with the ‘dutchess’ spelling in the header), I threw in a verse of ‘Clever Trevor’, but you probably missed it and they didn’t show any interest.

2. MM
   4:34 PM on 3 September 2004

   If you look at the articles on eunuchs linked at that BBC site, the first one uses neither ‘he’ nor ’she’ throughout, and the second one says they wear women’s clothes and adopt women’s names. So the usage of ’she’ appears to be PC, in that the BBC has Indian readers too.

3. Trevor
   4:41 PM on 3 September 2004

   Weird: on Western eunuch fetish sites, “he” is still used post-op.

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