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From: sunny@sun.uucp (Ms. Sunny Kirsten)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Man as a neuter-gender concept
Message-ID: <2206@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 23-May-85 03:05:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.2206
Posted: Thu May 23 03:05:34 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 24-May-85 22:13:50 EDT
References: <434@ttidcc.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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Actually, it *could* make sense if you thought of it like this:
Every human is a man.  Some of them (women) have the additional ability to
nurture offspring (a womb).  Thus <womb>+<man> ==> wombman, or woman for short.
i.e. women are supersets of men.  All women are men.  No men are women.

			Are we not devolving?

				Sunny
> 
> The neutral gender "Man" is said to include the notion of "Woman", but in
> fact, doesn't.  It would only serve as a label for all people if we had
> a differentiating word for genetically male persons, as we have the word
> woman for genetically female persons.  Man might work for everybody if
> we used woman and toman for the female and male portions of the race,
> but as long as it is used to indicate a PART of the whole, it can't be
> used to represent the whole without actually implying the exclusion of
> some.
> 
> 
> This is a nice, old argument that has been clarified some time ago -- see
> the explanations in "Words and Women", available in libraries and in paper
> back book stores.
-- 
{ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sun!sunny (Ms. Sunny Kirsten)