On Thu, Oct 21, 2004 at 05:02:57PM -0400,
Holm, Mark <MHolm(_at_)medrad(_dot_)com> wrote
a message of 14 lines which said:
One of the oldest lessons of this very immature medium we call email
is that colorful metaphors are often misunderstood, misapprehended or
mis-whatever.
Do not forget also that this mailing list is international. It is
painful enough to have to write in a foreign language (USAn english),
it is worse if you have to decipher cute metaphors only understandable
if you watch FoxNews daily.
I quote RFC 3774 (very good reading):
This reluctance may also be exacerbated if participants come from a
different cultural background than the dominant one. Such
participants also tend to find it more difficult to follow the rapid
and colloquial speaking style of native English speakers, and may
consequently be effectively excluded from the discussion, even if
maximum assistance is available by such means as real time Jabber
logs and extensive text on presentation slides. Even on mailing
lists, people from other cultures may be reluctant to be as
forthright as is often the case in discussions between North
Americans; also, a person whose first language is not English may be
daunted by the volume of mail that can occur on some mailing lists
and the use of colloquialisms or euphemisms may cause
misunderstandings if correspondents are not aware of the problem.
Often best to give them a miss, and stick with plain declarative
language.
In this specific case, I believe the problem was not a cute metaphor
but plain and old sexism (prostitutes are victims of organized crime,
not a subject of despise).