Re: Manmonth or Peoplemonth?

[April Anderson <April_Anderson -at- PBP -dot- COM>]

Two quick thoughts on this -

        1. As a woman I've never felt terribly threatened by this use of the
default masculine when the gender is unknown. "All men are created equal"
etc. At the age of 11 I delivered newspapers and described my occupation
as "paperboy" - why muddy the waters?
        I figured I knew who I was and words are only labels we apply to things.
They only mean what we let them.

        2. Many of the people who object to using gender-specific terms to
represent gender-neutral or -unknown things because they question why the
male form should be the default.  I suppose it's a reminder to them that
our society was very male dominated for quite some time. ( It's roots go
back some 3,000 years with only a few exceptions for matriarchal tribes.)
They feel the male-centric-ness of the language automatically means women
have less value.
If we were re-inventing the English language today we might include a
neutral term that would foster feelings of equality, neutrality and the
lack of appearance of preferences. Problem is, this ain't OZ and it's not
a perfect world. The best we can do is chose wording that best conveys our
 meaning to our end-users without torturing the language in the process.

Okay, maybe not so quick.

By the way, it's a great discussion going on here.


April Anderson
Asst. Editor
Clean Air News
610-695-8600 x291

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