List, Please let's try to retain some rational perspective. Even the finest, most beautiful, perfectly designed and executed, historic, folkloric bicycles are, in absolute stone cold fact, "its": inanimate hunks of alloy, steel, leather, paint and plastic. We love them, collect them, ride them, and celebrate them as wonderful, beautifully built, sometimes historic OBJECTS, and yes, sometimes works of ART! The fact that they bring us both pleasure and pain does not, in fact, make them women. When I desire the company of a woman, I generally turn to my wife. It does not bother me in the least if anyone speaks of them them as she, he, baby, or mama, aside from making me think, fleetingly, that the speaker is a bit silly in this respect. But silliness is not a big problem, all the interesting characters I know have a wide silly streak. What does bother me is the statement-as-fact that inanimate objects are animate, and the blasting as "nauseating PCism" of a good member's very animate talking cat's assertion that something silly and possibly offensive is at play here, cultural history notwithstanding. As much as we all love vintage bicycles, it is the love of objects, a very refined and worthwhile form of materialism. All New York style kidding aside, I assume that if the house was on fire, we would all make sure that all the real "she's" and "he's" were out of the house before we ran back into the flames to risk life and limb for our very precious "it's", RIGHT?....RIGHT???!!!
Tony (don't know what PC really means, but when it comes to silly, I'm an authority!) Winters Center Moriches, NY USA
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