Sexist language

What in the world is "sexist language"? Language is a concept, incapable of being sexist.

Some people say that words such as "chairmen" should be replaced with "chairperson". "Mankind" with "human beings". And the like.

Why is there such a movement to drive the word "men" out of words? Doesn't make any sense.

Pour your thoughts in below.

I'd say language becomes sexist when it puts down one gender over another. For example, the phrase "girls are stupid" would be sexist language.

admin: Well yeah. See, that makes sense. But usually when people mention the term "sexist language", they mean individual words that usually have the word "man" in it. Some people say that it's sexist to say "hey guys!" in a room full of men and women. Or saying "men" instead of "humanity". Or phrases such as "Man up!".

grammar.yourdictionary.com explains it like this:

Sexist language is language that excludes either men or women when discussing a topic that is applicable to both sexes. This includes using the word man to refer to humanity, and using titles like Congressman and fireman. Another common error that shows gender bias is assuming that the subject of all sentences is male.

According to this logic, saying the word "woman" is sexist against women because it has the word "man" in it.

The only case of true sexist language is obvious disrespectful slang, such as the B-word.

These people don't seem to realize that a word can take on more than one meaning.

Krazy: It's curious that in languages where nouns are gendered, such accusations are almost never made. "Oh, school is a feminine word? That's so sexist!"

admin: Ha, that's funny. Never thought of it that way. But there is a good explanation for that.

The reason why many English words have the word "man" as a suffix is because the root of English derived that style from the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. Eve was made from Adam. The woman came from man. So usually, the term "men", can refer to all human beings. In the original Hebrew in the account of Genesis, men was "ish" and woman "isha" because woman came from man. Interestingly, this style of language is found it's way into English. Funny that this manner of writing didn't carry on into other romantic languages. It's not in any other language. Just Hebrew and English.

But not everyone trusts the Genesis account of history, so understandably, they have a problem with the idea that "men" is a suffix in many words - because they don't believe woman came from man. So they try to change the language. They try to change it under the cloak of "sexism", but the REAL reason is because they don't believe that woman came from man.

So gendered nouns is not really it, that's just a principle to add convenience to languages. Whether a noun is masculine or feminine is normally quite arbitrary.

Krazy: I'm not sure you understand what a gendered noun is. Do you speak any other languages? French for example?

In many languages, nouns are assigned a gender. In French, feminine words start with "la" and masculine words start with "le".

The French have a saying, " vive la difference" - basically they celebrate the difference between men and women, rather than trying to homogenize everything.

nzlockie: I'm not sure you understand what a gendered noun is. Do you speak any other languages? French for example?
I do not. I took introductory courses to Spanish and Hebrew. Forgot most of it though. I know what gendered nouns are, but not the reason for them, other than to add complexity and convenience in some instances.

The French have a saying, " vive la difference" - basically they celebrate the difference between men and women, rather than trying to homogenize everything.
France was the first country to accept transsexualism in the world. How is that celebrating the difference between men and women?

You're probably right in that they USED to. But there is a growing trend across the world to pretend that there are less and less differences between the sexes.

Like allowing women in infantry roles, for example. It's not a great idea, but people have got to have their political correctness.

To be more accurate, France was the first country to make transsexualism a non-mental disorder.

admin: Why was Lars' father banned? He was banned recently.

Lol admin you're banning people left and right. First Stag, and now this guy. Banning spree!

Although I have to say it's about time Stag got banned. He was consistently being uncivil and sometimes used lies to support his arguments.

Krazy: He was a multiaccount of another banned user, RationalMadman.

admin: Oh