Re: Political Correctness Re: Manmonth or Peoplemonth?

["Brierley, Sean" <Brierley -at- QUODATA -dot- COM>]

That sounds like an interesting paper. Some thoughts,

1. If I read "four manmonths" to finish a job, for some reason I picture
hairy elephants moving logs, but perhaps that's because I rarely run into
the term <g>.

2. My serious thought on policemen versus police officers is that I
associate the profession with males, not the term. How does your research
address that issue?

The term police officers conjures an image of a ranking police officials
whereas policemen conjures an image of a regular patrolmen or constables. I
count two policewomen among my friends and believe I have lack of respect
for them in their profession despite that hang-up. I certainly do refer to
them as "Officer Nancy," or whatever the name happens to be.

Furthermore, if I hear the term chairman, I picture a man. If I hear the
term chairwoman or chairperson, I picture a woman. If I hear the term chair
(except when used as a verb or when folks members are cautioned to address
"the chair" directly), I usually picture a woman also, the reason being I
sense the term chairman is being deliberately avoided.

I find man-hours and manmonths to be fairly concise terms and, no offense
intended, find your workaround of "it will take the team 3 weeks of effort
each, working over three months" awkward versus "it will take three
manmonths."

As I said, your research sounds interesting. I don't suppose you have it
available as a PDF??

Thanks and all the best.

Sean
sean -at- quodata -dot- com

>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Ginna Watts [mailto:gwatts -at- QUESTERCORP -dot- COM]
>>>Sent: Monday, April 26, 1999 4:24 PM
>>>To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
>>>Subject: Re: Political Correctness Re: Manmonth or Peoplemonth?
>>>
>>>
>>>I wrote rather a lengthy essay on the topic of
>>>gender-specific language
>>>in university. Before I did the research, I believed it
>>>didn't matter -
>>>now I know it does.
>>>
<snip>


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