http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/man-3
Alt text
All I’m saying is show me one – just ONE – woman who ever dug a 200,000 gallon boner-lake. I’ll wait.
Bonus panel
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/man-3
All I’m saying is show me one – just ONE – woman who ever dug a 200,000 gallon boner-lake. I’ll wait.
This is an example of the “generic masculine”, where masculine words are used as the generic expression for groups of both sexes/mixed groups. This has a long history - e.g. in Latin, a group of 100 women would be referred to by the feminine plural, whereas a group of 99 women and 1 man would be referred to by the masculine plural.
But isn’t that a bit strange? Yes, it’s a long-standing feature of languages, but still - isn’t it strange how the masculine version is the “default”? In other languages this goes even further, where e.g. the male term for a job is used as the generic version, even though the female term is different. And this has a measurable effect on thinking. There are a bunch of studies that show that using the “generic” male version makes people think more often of men than women. It’s bias encoded in our language, and it biases our thinking towards men.
You’re right that it’s currently a gender neutral term, but you’re not right that it’s actually neutral. Language affects our thinking, and this is a great example of something that has detrimental effects for non-male people. It’s not a bad thing to think about these things!
The difference here is that “man” was originally neutral and a secondary form diverged from it while the original form remained gender neutral.
I don’t think that this is an example of generic masculine. Not like “fireman”, for example. I think that it’s starting to become that way because the diverged form causes some people conflate the two by being essentially homonyms, and those people are pushing that as a new reality instead of understanding that it’s a different term. Though, I empathize with the initial reaction to think that. More importantly, I do think that it’s needed to adopt new terms to avoid the issue of it seeming like a case of generic masculine.
My issue is telling others that it’s a gendered term when it’s not, for the same reason it’s good to change to different terms. By that, I mean we shouldn’t be pushing a divide needlessly, and in this case by treating people like they are being sexist or misogynistic when they clearly are not.
It would be fine to say “it feels like a gendered term”, “it’s too similar”, or that “it’s reminiscent of the gendered form”. But that is different than treating it like it’s a fact.
Is generic masculine strange? Infuriatingly, no, considering how women have been treated throughout history. We absolutely should adopt better language to avoid that and grow past that archaic ideology. But that shouldn’t come at the cost of pushing down other people.