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From: mfs@mhuxr.UUCP (SIMON)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Vigorous Spelling Error
Message-ID: <316@mhuxr.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-May-85 08:32:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxr.316
Posted: Tue May 14 08:32:08 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 15-May-85 00:45:30 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
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>     What we need is a generally useful suffix to replace -man, not just for
>     words that already exist, but also as a general replacement for an
>     extremely prolific formative element in our language. 
> 
> Michael Ellis
> 

You have made a similar proposal before, in arguing for a singular 'they' as
an orthogonal, one-for-one replacement for 'he'. I don't see it as supremely
important that we scurry around the language purging it of words containing
the sequence 'm'-'a'-'n'. Certainly a male fire fighter can safely be called
a 'fireman'. Nonetheless the generic fire fighter is just that. 'Fireman'
has usefulness, for example in an article that deals with a specific (male)
fire fighter, and is thus likely to have many repetitions of that expression.
The author of such an article would be looking for synonyms to 'fire fighter',
and in *that* case, 'fireman' is a perfectly acceptable substitute.

The point is that words ending in -man are *NOT* *inherently* sexist, only
as they are used. If one uses them to refer to specifically male persons,
their usage is legitimate. By and large, professions and crafts spent
time and effort creating or rediscovering gender neutral titles, which
are used when the generic professional is referred to.

Marcel Simon