If people want to avoid being sexist, then...

"Humankind" works pretty well. It is a cover-everyone plural-like noun, meant as a collective and decidedly equal inclusion.

Language can block liberty and genuine efforts to use it to establish and preserve liberty are good deeds.

This poll, for example, does quite a bit of good work.

Bravo.

as in Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

A person can still say "mankind" and still vote pro-choice, promote women to management positions and get pissed off when people try to marginalize female coworkers just because she worked late for six months to find the evidence to bring all those drug dealers to trial and win guilty verdicts.

...since I'm not a woman (I don't want to encroach on other people's space), but I'm absolutely fascinated by language. I wish I lived in a place where I could get a decent linguistics degree...

Anyway, a few points:

1. In a reprint of the beautiful Heaney translation of Beowulf, Grendel being "a scourge on the race of Man" was changed to "a scourge on the race of Humanity." It just sucks all the poetic vitality right out of it. Is there, at least sometimes, a difference between man and Man? People aren't stupid; most of us get the difference.

2. I remember an article about the Bay Area I read in the late 80s, maybe early 90s. In it, a city council had decided to spend 300k dollars on changing every city document that contained the phrase "manhole cover" to something like "sanitation access lid." That didn't bother me (though letter writers were pretty pissed about it). What bothered me was that they spent 300 thousand dollars on having it done right that minute. Wouldn't it have made more sense to change the base documents, updating the terminology as old manuals, etc. were replaced?

3. APA and MLA guidelines about nonsexist language. They both say, basically, to avoid sexist language and default to a gender neutral plural (their, they, them) when using pronouns. It doesn't sound natural, and leads to poor writing. The best use I've seen of gender-neutral language came in an education textbook (I wish I could remember the name). In it, every chapter switched between the masculine and feminine. It felt natural, wouldn't have been noticed by anyone but me, and probably advanced the cause of gender neutral language far better than edicts about which words were/were not acceptable.

Women are sick of being the 'marked' gender, where to be male is 'normal'.

I have no problem with 'mankind', but generally would use 'humanity'. And I have no problem with 'manhole' cover.

Being in poli sci, I'm not offended when countries are referred to as 'she', but I think it's archaic.

Thanks for your post.

My understanding that it was perfectly fine as a gender-neutral singular pronoun until some pedantic knob in the 19th century decided it wasn't. If I say, "I think someone should be able to marry the person they choose", I think it's pretty obvious I'm talking about one person. I find constructions such as s/he or his/her to be far more unwieldy and detracting from fluidity of writing. I suppose some writers are deft at interchanging gender pronouns in a passage without detracting from the message but I'm not one of them and inclusion is important to me so I'm a "they" user.

The drafting standard for Canadian legislation and regulations is now the "singular" they etc.

They, them, their ... and themself.

It takes some getting used to. I decided to adopt it in the language of a contract for a client the other day. I explained it in my email. They queried it - heh, actually she, the employee of the client agency, queried it - not disputatiously, just a query. I said I'd be happy to go back to "he or she" etc. if they liked, or they could change it.

There's a choice:

- "he or she", which becomes extremely awkward when "he or she" and "his or her" and "him or her" all appear repeatedly in a single sentence, for example;

- alternate "he" and "she", which really isn't appropriate in things like legislation and regulations and contracts, since each has a particular meaning and neither means the other (and which really is an artificial and potentially confusing way to write other texts);

- the same old he/him/his, which is just plain wrong, besides perpetuating exclusion;

- neologisms like they/them/their/themself, which sound odd and are technically incorrect, but do no harm and are understood perfectly in context ("everyone shall pick up their own litter themself").

I'll go with adapting the language to the need, and the lesser of the various evils. Doing technical violence to the language is better than having the language do violence to the civility of the society.

I could not get away with this sentence in school.

:evilgrin:

"Wouldn't it have made more sense to change the base documents, updating the terminology as old manuals, etc. were replaced?"

Welcome, come on in and share your insights, love of language and respect for DU Rules = respect. Anyone of any gender persuasion is welcome. It's the threadkillers and willfully ignorant who aren't.

:hi:

As for Beowulf, that's interesting if even with such an ancient text, even Heaney thought the change was worth making.

That suggest maybe he thought it It didn't "just sucks all the poetic vitality right out of it."

I'm one of the "they" people, too. See no problem saying they as inclusive of possible genders, whoever "they" may be.

are a coward...plain and simple. You send me private messages with your crap and then block me from having the ability to answer.

A female bully to the extreme. I don't respond to you or others like you with respect. you simply do not deserve it and initially when I joined this board, I tried, for months to be cordial and engage in respectful discussion but no more because those like you saw it as a weakness and a place to spout your garbage. I fight fire with fire and call you out like the charlatan that you are. Then you hide behind your gender and claim you are being attacked. This is the last correspondence I will have with you because I know your kind. You will cry to the administrators and try to get me banned for harassment, even though you harass first. Good riddance.

'bitch' that I think is sexist.

Why are they bent on trivializing issues?

:thumbsdown:

Like most words it is not the word itself but how it is used that is offensive. Mankind can mean either all of Humanity, Homonids or imply Masculin humans.

"One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" sexist?

"Mankind has failed to deliver a lasting peace in the world." sexist?

And concider the radio reporter in War of the Worlds (the radio play)

"Oh the Humanity, this is terrible..."

"Oh the Mankind, this is terrible..."

throw like a girl, run like a girl, whine like a girl, quit screaming like a girl....

than any of the mankind stuff.

when it is used figuratively in the sense that the context doesn't necessarily have anything to do with an athletic or sporting competition?

How about "penmanship", when we are talking about such things as good penmanship of a physician ensuring that a pharmacist can fill a prescription with neither any need to request clarification from the physician nor any risk to the patient arising from difficult deciphering the handwriting of the physician?

You tell us.

. . . what they DO more than what they SAY. Actions speak louder than words.

The question is therefore irrelevant.

However, it occurs to me that perhaps the ideas that you used to develop a step-by-step and valid argument based on known truths to arrive at your conclusion might also allow you to reach the conclusion that the following statement is irrelevant:



On the other hand, I'm not even sure what that means. For example, what if an appropriate title were added and the above boxed text were the entire non-title part of an Original Post of a DU thread? A reply in such a thread could be irrelevant, but in what sense could the Original Post itself be irrelevant?

;)

people.

Language matters.