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So basically, you won’t be kind because you can’t find suitable sources?? Okay then.

I'm simply disputing the claim that “Men are evil.” would be construed by English speakers to automatically refer to males.

The reason I'm not what you call “kind” is simply because this is how English works, and how it has always worked and how English speakers would interpret and parse that word.

I see no reason to avoid using a word in a perfectly acceptable, current, and historic use simply because you find that it has a different, secondary use. You call that “not being kind”. I call it “You don't own the English language any more than I do.”

You may speak as you will, I do not deny that the current usage of the word “man” has acquired a secondary meaning of “adult male human” opposed to it's historical meaning of “human" and if you wish to use it as such, then I'm confident I can usually discriminate by context. I merely ask that I be allowed the same and speak as I will and use the word in it's original meaning, that obviously still sees current use.

tsimionescu 1972 days ago

> You may speak as you will, I do not deny that the current usage of the word “man” has acquired a secondary meaning of “adult male human” opposed to it's historical meaning of “human" and if you wish to use it as such, then I'm confident I can usually discriminate by context.

To be fair, while I consider your original wording to be pretty clear, this is wrong. According to Wikipedia, the word 'man' has adopted the meaning of 'adult male human' as its primary meaning starting with Middle English, when it displaced Old English 'wer'. There are still uses where it retains the much older meaning, but its primary meaning today is 'adult male human', and has been for a good few hundred years.

I do not find that to be the case investigating the Global Web-Based Corpus, which contains modern, global internet-published English:

https://i.imgur.com/EG4zaoU.png [sadly the corpus cannot be easily linked, but one may search in it here: https://www.english-corpora.org/glowbe/]

The way I look at it, the usage therein of the word “man” to specifically discriminate sex is very rare but definitely occurs. What does occur is the use of the word “man” to refer to a specific individual, which would typically be male, but in most cases where the word “man” is used indeterminately to refer to a class, it seems to be used without regard to sex.

Apart from that the most common usage seems to simply be vocatively as address, which is also gender neutral.

I would agree that it is rare, outside of compounds, to use the word “man” in a determinate sense for a female man, such as “that man over there” which would mostly be used in a military context, but in an indeterminate context to speak of “a man in general” or “men in general”, the most common usage from context seems to be sexless to this day.

tsimionescu 1972 days ago

Reading through the first 100 results, I see it mostly used to refer specifically to adult male individuals, or to "a man" meaning specifically an adult male ("would've flipped out if a weird man said some creepy remarks"). There are some uses where it may or may not be gender neutral ("you are a Spammier man than I" - may refer to a man or a woman, but it is probably used because the author is male; a woman might have written "a Spammier woman than I" instead, while also addressing both men and women).

There are also clear cases where "a man" is used to refer to "a human", such as "wheat growing taller than a man".

Rather more interestingly, if you instead search for "men", you'll see that is used essentially exclusively to mean "adult males". The only exceptions I found was "and because the greed of a few men is such that they think it is necessary that they own everything" and even there I'm not sure.

> Reading through the first 100 results, I see it mostly used to refer specifically to adult male individuals, or to "a man" meaning specifically an adult male ("would've flipped out if a weird man said some creepy remarks"). There are some uses where it may or may not be gender neutral ("you are a Spammier man than I" - may refer to a man or a woman, but it is probably used because the author is male; a woman might have written "a Spammier woman than I" instead, while also addressing both men and women).

I disagree; the first uses of “man” in an indeterminate sense are these:

> down the economy, Here is the truth the republicans feel uncomfortable with a black man in the with house and a lot of voters are riding the republicans coat tail

> someday you might ask me to help you move. Or, to kill a man. # Leonard: I'll doubt he'll ask you to kill a man

> say, in 35 years of working I have almost always had at least one man who I felt " wrong " about. (the exception? Disney Studios!

> boyfriend, well husband, but either way would've flipped out if a weird man said some creepy remarks regarding me at a christmas party. To me this says

I have specifically included up till your reference, which was the first of an indeterminate usage of the word “man” that by implication is most likely gendered, whereas all the others are most likely not.

So there are three sexless ones before the first gendered one.

yrimaxi 1972 days ago

You mean primary.

You wrote:

“Do these men think that time is free?“

That’s not even the same structure as ‘all men are evil.’ Instead what you wrote is gendered and thus completely inaccurate.

So again, you could have used ‘people’ to be respectful and inclusive but you’re choosing to stick with ‘man’ because that’s what you know.

That’s unkind. You know that this is an issue within our community but you are fully choosing to go against the norms because of ‘your language’?

I’m sorry but I thought we could have a conversation. This many replies in and I realize that you don’t actually have much sympathy, understanding or even basic caring.

Be better. It’s easy.

> That’s not even the same structure as ‘all men are evil.’

Indeed it is not. I merely separately disagreed with that the statement “All men are evil.” would also by necessity be interpreted as such. Either can be, depending on context, but this is not such a context.

> Instead what you wrote is gendered and thus completely inaccurate.*

You seem to be of the minority that has interpreted it as such. I would not quickly use votes for an argument except when they pertain to popular opinion, and this is a matter of which interpretation is more common.

I certainly didn't mean any gendered statement, and I also believe that most readers did not read any gender into it.

> So again, you could have used ‘people’ to be respectful and inclusive but you’re choosing to stick with ‘man’ because that’s what you know.

I could, and you could also change your language to avoid any and all possible ambiguities that would not be a problem in practice due to the power of contextual inference.

You seem to ask that this specific word be given special treatment above all others.

> That’s unkind. You know that this is an issue within our community but you are fully choosing to go against the norms because of ‘your language’?

Such as here, the word “our community” is quite vague. You used the word “our” which is ambiguous in English as it's unclear whether it includes the listener or not, and on top of that also what it includes.

I can however perfectly well infer from context that this is an “our” that includes the listener, and can make a reasonable guess to the extent of the “community” you refer to.

Finally, do not know that it is “an issue” and I certainly do not know that there are “norms” about this. It very much seems that the majority sides with me on this issue given the votes, at least here. I do not believe I am going against any norms, not that I would consider an argumentum ad populum a strong one, but you were the one that raised it here.

> I’m sorry but I thought we could have a conversation. This many replies in and I realize that you don’t actually have much sympathy, understanding or even basic caring.

Well, frankness be, it seems from your language as though your default expectation is that your arbitrary wims, at least on this particular issue should be accommodated, and that everyone who disagrees with you is unkind or lacks sympathy.

You call it a conversation, but it seems as though you started it from the assumption that you are right, and everyone who disagrees is wrong.

> Be better. It’s easy.

It is your opinion that this is better that this is better indeed. Not everyone has to agree with you on that matter, and not everyone does.

Nobody ever has to agree with me and I’m proud to be a minority of one.

However, you’re a beautiful writer and beautiful writers can cause immeasurable pain. I’ll always speak out in case another minority of one feels pain but is too ??? to speak out.

Seriously, take good care. This has been a wonderful thread and again, you’re a really beautiful writer. :)

yrimaxi 1972 days ago

Not terribly pertinent, then. One is more likely to fall into conversations about mundane topics with uneducated people than to stumble upon existential conversations with educated philosophers, even though the latter might produce a large corpus.

One would also think that “man is evil” would be preferred by the erudite philosopher to the more ambigious “men are evil”, although one can never overestimate the fondness that an educated person might have towards pedantry, frankly.

> Not terribly pertinent, then. One is more likely to fall into conversations about mundane topics with uneducated people than to stumble upon existential conversations with educated philosophers, even though the latter might produce a large corpus.

“Mundane people” is an entirely different segment than “raging identity politics aficionados complaining about their romantic life”.

The common man on the street will think nothing ill of the word being used as such, even when he be a blue collar construction worker, and will normally interpret it as intended.

I have never met such a raging identity politics aficionado in real life. I would assume not living in the U.S.A., where most of them seem to be centred, reduces my chances. But even there, it seems to be a rather small segment that is isolated to weblogs, as even newspaper columns do not seem to find it mainstream enough to dedicate segments to it.

I'd gander that if I were to find myself in New York and strike a conversation with a blue collar local and say something such as “A beautiful city isn't it? all these millions of men, working as an organized beehive.”, that he'll not interpret me wrongly or even think much of it.

yrimaxi 1972 days ago

I said mundane topics... I won’t bother with the rest.

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.htm...

dTal 1972 days ago

>I'd gander that if I were to find myself in New York and strike a conversation with a blue collar local and say something such as “A beautiful city isn't it? all these millions of men, working as an organized beehive.”, that he'll not interpret me wrongly or even think much of it.

Actually I think there's a very good chance she'll object.

The problem is that in your mind, males are the "default" human, and using sexist language reinforces this. This is not a recent opinion confined to "raging identity politics aficionados" or "weblogs" - at this point it's the wrong side of history for the better part of half a century. Consider this piece of satire by Douglas Hofstadter, written in 1985, which substitutes racist language for sexist language in a precisely analogous way:

> Actually I think there's a very good chance she'll object.

If you mean to suggest that this position runs across gender lines, then I very much object and find that a naive, but common, assumption.

It reminds me of a Canadian act that sought to introduce the word “fisherwoman” as a sign of good faith to the female fishermen, but it revealed that, overwhelmingly, the fishermen, male or female, did not like this change and found the word to sound silly.

I have noticed no correlation with the gender as to what position one takes on this, as many females as males seem to either favor, or object to, innovations such as “chairwoman” or “councilwoman”.

> The problem is that in your mind, males are the "default" human

No, that would be in the mind of those that read the word “man” and must compulsively attach a gender to a statement containing it.

I've certainly noticed that those so interested in gender language police invariably seem incapable of abstractly thinking of a person without attaching a gender thereto.

> and using sexist language reinforces this

The sexist history is to use the word that has always simply meant “human” and giving it a gendered, ageist meaning. — you reverse the history of the word here.

> at this point it's the wrong side of history for the better part of half a century.

What would you mean with “wrong side of history”? It is undeniable that the meaning of the word “man” to mean “human” is the original meaning of the word and that the secondary usage to mean “adult male human” is a later innovation.

dTal 1972 days ago

No, you missed the point entirely. The point is that you pictured this "blue collar local" as a man, as evidenced by your use of the pronoun "he". Don't tell me that it's about the word "man" and its historical role to mean "human".

>I've certainly noticed that those so interested in gender language police invariably seem incapable of abstractly thinking of a person without attaching a gender thereto.

The irony. Next time say "they" instead of "he".

> No, you missed the point entirely. The point is that you pictured this "blue collar local" as a man, as evidenced by your use of the pronoun "he".

No I didn't. The pronoun “he” in English is also very often used to refer to an indeterminate, hypothetical person of irrelevant and unspecified sex.

I didn't picture him as anything in particular, given that I am partially aphantastic and never draw mental pictures about such scenarios.

> The irony. Next time say "they" instead of "he".

There is no irony here; you infer that he is male because of the pronoun and I find such usage to not be universal at all.

The pronoun “he” has a very long history in English for use with a hypothetical person, from which the listener is not meant to infer any particular gender. It is also true that some use the pronoun “they” in that case, but that is not a universal behavior and either may be encountered.

Use of “she” for such hypothetical persons has also seen recent use, and was probably innovated deliberately; some auctors deliberately alternate both in even distribution.

All of this is how the English language is used by different speakers. I am not telling you which is better and how you should use it; I am telling you that if you are denying that all have currency, you are but certainly being willfully ignorant because you do not like the descriptive truth about how English is used by it's speakers.

You’re an excellent writer!! Again, while sad, this has been a wonderful thread, full of amazing writing.

(I’m on your side but that’s an aside. You’re a really beautiful writer.)