[npizzolato]

Until those who don't recognise themselves as persons take offense to the obviously bigoted phrase "person hours." This whole argument reeks of fishing for things to be offended by. Any systematic problems women face in the tech industry are certainly not caused by something so insignificant as the use of the phrase "man hours."

[jhurliman]

It's not a cause, but a contributing factor

[x1024]

Holy shit, this entire comment chain is cancer.

Literally nobody commented on the actual content of the OP.

[snowwrestler]

The idea that someone must be "fishing for things to be offended by" starts from the assumption that this is not a thing that would legitimately offend anyone.

That's what I mean by defining the default. The default, in your point of view, is the word "man," so therefore anyone who objects to that must be "different" in some way: overly sensitive, manipulative, deficient, etc.

When in reality, "man" is the default because men made it the default. That doesn't mean that it has to remain the default.

I'm not suggesting that we go back and edit Neil Armstrong's words--they were of their time and are amazing. I'm suggesting that we're in a different time now, and starting now, it is within our power to choose the words we use.

The idea is to recognize the history and context of language, not assign all problems to one word. No single drop thinks it is responsible for the flood, etc.