Do you consider it sexist to use the word "man" or "mankind" in reference to human beings?
Should we not simply use human, humankind or humanity instead?
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The English language sadly lacks a few works I would find preferable and useful. These include:
The second person plural pronoun, to replace the dreaded “y’all”
and
A generally accepted and inoffensive gender neutral pronoun. This could serve to remove gender roles expectations from children (having a boy who prefers his hair long means a lot of, “actually, I’m a boy, but thank you” responses to compliments like “She’s so smart!”). It would also remove the anxiety ridden “man or woman” guessing game we’ve all played in public, not wanting to offend someone by mis-guessing their gender expression.
A gender neutral term for mankind, “humanity”, exists, but I don’t find mankind offensive, because the use of “man” in place of a gender neutral word is so deeply ingrained in our language.
No. And were you to put the case that the term is sexist before the public, not one soul in 20 would understand (or care) what you were talking about.
In my most recent days in any religion, I attended the Episcopal church. We read a modernized liturgy in which all the male pronouns for the deity were replaced by “God.” I quite liked it.
“Mankind” is certainly an exclusionary term, but I use it. It’s part of our language, and much of our language is exclusionary and sexist.
They’re just words, anyone offended needs to have a word with themselves, give your head a wobble.
No. I don’t consider it sexism. Why look for offense where obviously none was intended?
The N word and other words intended to be deragatory are the ones which need to be worked on, not something like mankind.
This reminds me of a real-life woman I knew who changed her last name, Tollman, to Tollperchild. She replaced the ”-man” with ”-person,” only to decide that ”-son” is too sexist and must become ”-child.”
No, I’m not exaggerating; this is a true story. Let’s all lighten-up and accept the fact that not everything’s hateful or oppressive.
No. It’s a convention.
Certainly, in our time, conventions are being challenged and even attacked-which eventually happens in any civilization.
But when conventions are abandoned, civilizations descend into chaos.
I’ve seen it, and it isn’t pretty.
I would stick with the convention.
If man is the shortened version of ‘human’, than what?
Man is the incomplete version of WOman.
When I use Man to mean mankind, I capitalize the M. But more often, I simply use the word Mankind.
First definition of man from OED entry: “A human being (irrespective of sex or age).
Man was considered until the 20th cent. to include women by implication, though referring primarily to males. It is now freq. understood to exclude women, and is therefore avoided by many people.”
Section of the etymology: “In all the Germanic languages the word had the two senses ‘human being’ and ‘adult male human being’, though exc. in English it has been mainly replaced in the former sense by a derivative (German Mensch, Dutch mens, Swedish människa, Danish menneske person, human being: compare mannish n.). In Old English the words distinctive of sex were wer [were n.1] and wīf [wife n.], wǣpmann [wapman n.] and wīfmann [woman n.]; both the masculine terms became obsolete by the end of the 13th cent., leaving English with no means of distinguishing the two major senses. The genderless uses of man to mean ‘human being’ or ‘person’ are now often objected to on the grounds that they depreciate women, and are frequently replaced by human, human being, or person.”
So the way I read it, maybe we start calling male human beings weremen!
No. The word “man” means humanity as a whole, as opposed to animals. The word “mankind” originated in the 13th century before anyone might have thought it was sexist. “Sexism” and “sexist” didn’t come into the language until 1968. If anyone should think that the words “man” and “mankind” are sexist, they are probably fanatics, lunatics, troublemakers, overly sensitive types, or supremacists of some sort.
I dont consider it sexist to use the term “mankind,” but it does highlight systemic sexism in language.
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