cbostrum (04/19/83)
> The "man" in, for example, "repairman" does NOT derive from "man" as in "male > person"; it derives from the Anglo-Saxon "mann", meaning "one who". > If people react to a female repairman with some disparaging remark indicating > that they don't believe this is "a suitable job for a women", THEY are being > sexist. The LANGUAGE is not sexist. Try educating people, not making trivial > changes to language. The former is much harder but much more likely to have > positive effects. > decvax!yale-comix!leichter > leichter@yale This is just like saying that "nigger" is not racist since it derives from "Negro" which is merely a name for one of the branches of the human race. That is a little too dramatic, but the point here is that the origins of words are not as relevant as their *present* meanings and connotations. (This is not to say that in many cases, the origins have not affected the present state of affairs.) Anyway, this comment misses entirely the main point. I am not objecting to words where "man" is embedded and is not a signifigant part of the meaning of the word. How much does it take to make some people understand this?? I am talking about the LACK of a genderless personal pronoun in English, and the need for one. Let us take these points slowly, one at a time. One: There is no genderless pronoun in English. Some people say that "he" is such a pronoun. To do so, they must maintain that it is a homonym, "he1" is a third person personal male pronoun, and "he2" is a third person genderless pronoun. (Already it is bad enough and will endender confusion having two different words, likely to be used in the same context, spelled the same way). But "he2" is NOT a genderless pronoun, since it does NOT refer to a person of unspecified sex, but to a person WHOSE SEX IS UNKNOWN; there is a big difference. This means that I cannot refer using a pronoun to a person whose gender I know without using the properly gendered pronoun. There is no way "he2" can be considered a genderless pronoun. Anyone who cant see a big difference here between "repairman" and "he" has porridge for a brain. Two: We need a genderless pronoun. I take this as obvious; why should we include gender in all discussions of people, including those where it is decidedly irrelevant? We dont include other signifigant characteristics, such as religious persuasion. Note that I am not denying signifigant differences exist between men and women. However, often FAR TOO MUCH is made of these differences. THIS is sexism, and our language clearly encourages it by not having a genderless pronoun. I hope we have it right, now.