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Path: utzoo!watmath!deepthot!julian
From: julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: sexism in language
Message-ID: <293@deepthot.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Apr-84 13:24:34 EST
Article-I.D.: deepthot.293
Posted: Mon Apr 16 13:24:34 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Apr-84 19:09:06 EST
References: <62@mako.UUCP>
Organization: UWO CS, London Canada
Lines: 31

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Many words have multiple meanings.  "Man" means either an adult male
or the human species.  Like other homonyms, one must judge by context
which meaning applies.  That is part of our language understanding
abilities.
Yes, undertones of maleness do come in, but I don't believe this is
due to terminology, but rather it stems from the fact that we live
in a male dominated world.  I believe that if we were in a female
dominated world with the same language and terminology, then the
male undertones would be replaced by female undertones.  Similarly,
if you change the terminology in the world as it is today, the
undertones of maleness would remain.
In other words, these masculine undertones are not a product of our
language, but of our society.  Changing the language would be a
very shallow and meaningless victory, although on the surface it
might appear pleasing, it would not solve anything.
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I cannot fully agree with you there.  The word man is what some
philosophers and linguists call "pseudo-generic" because it is used
for two different classes, one of which is a proper subset of the
other.  Doubtless the fact that "man" etc are used in this way can be
traced back to male domination in society, and doubtless some tendency
to male dominance may continue after the language has moved on, but
neither is a justification for continuing with a usage which is at
best potentially misleading.
  Since there are many contexts for the word "man" etc in which the
wider or the narrower meaning could legitimately be taken, the
effect is inevitably to infect the wider meaning with traces of the
narrower (male) meaning.
	Julian Davies		uwo!julian