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
Nature truly is beautiful
It’s the strongest lake! With the strongest shape!
“Man” is a gender neutral term, as it was the original use (from proto-germanic “mann”). Previously, wer and wif were used to differentiate between sex. Using “man” to refer to male gendered individuals is based on context.
Inclusive language is important, which means not creating new exclusions for terms that are already neutral.
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.
i dislike using ‘man’ and instead use terms closer to what it literally is, for this panel it would be artificially made
Language evolves.
Also, do we really want a gendered language? Where does that leave people who aren’t wermen or wifmen?
It did evolve already so that in some contexts “man” can refer to male gendered individuals. However, that doesn’t mean that the gender neutral and inclusive term “man” is suddenly gone. E.g. man-made, mankind, man-eater, etc.
And why can’t it keep evolving? Human-made, humanity, human-eater, etc.
Nothing I said implies that’s wrong, can’t happen, or is not happening. Choosing to use those forms for yourself is fine. I do so often. The problem is when a person claims that the term “man-made” is gendered, which pushes an already neutral term into being needlessly gendered. It creates a new exclusion that is contrary to the ideal. It others people by pushing a new definition onto someone who very likely is not being exclusive.
If we had a gendered romantic language, with wifman and werman, then “man” would be a neutral term. We don’t have that language, though, and so “man” is not a neutral term and implies gender. This is just how the language evolved under patriarchy. Now that patriarchy is in decline the language is evolving again, to remove “man” and replace it with a neutral term.
It’s probably too late to go back and re-romanticize the language, but if you want to try you’re welcome to it I guess.
You’re referencing a specific context, though. In the context of referring to gender, “man” does indeed mean the male gender. However, “man” in other contexts still does mean humans as a whole, as shown in the examples I’ve already provided. There is no need to force that context into all uses, especially when an individual is clearly not being exclusive.
“Human” based forms of the terms that include the original neutral “man” are not prevalent enough to make that distinction. The best we can do is to change our own choice of words until those are the new default, and at that point the “man” based forms would be a specific choice to imply gender. The language has not evolved to that point yet.
Well languages don’t just evolve spontaneously either. They’re a human project that we’re always tinkering with.
You’re just living through a period of evolution. We change our own choice of words until those are the default, and we encourage other people to do the same, and before you know it “man” has become archaic.
Yea but when I say ’ nobody uses the “r” word to talk about people with actual intellectual disabilities and the word has changed to just mean very dumb’, nobody can grasp the concept.
Except it didn’t change, it’s still used as a slur to talk about people with actual intellectual disabilities. You can’t avoid that.
The evolution of language isn’t a personal choice, it’s done on a societal level.
That’s fair, I guess its just changed in my social circle, but I disagree with your second point.
Society is made up of people and the way we use words changes their meaning over time. There isn’t a dictionary committee that decides what words mean, words change based on how individuals use them on a daily basis.
That’s not the case though. While it’s no longer formally preferred, many people still use the term with no pejorative intent to describe a range of intellectual disabilities and neurodivergence. (Generally I’ve heard it from family and professional caregivers.) The word itself is not the problem; its use as an ableist slur is.
The thing about insulting someone for being very dumb is that it’s inherently ableist no matter what language you use. Do you think this person chose to be less intelligent than you? It’s better to criticize flaws in their reasoning or to point out falsehoods.
Ok cool, I get your points.
Do you think its alright to use dumb and stupid? Because those words pretty much have the same root as the r slur.
I imagine Idiot is ok because it comes from the greek for common man.
I kind of think you’re overthinking the whole “root of the reason” for using words like “dumbass”, its just a mental stress reliever.
Somebody cuts you off in traffic you say motherfucker and you feel kinda better for just instantly getting it out of your system instead of keeping it bottled up, you don’t sit there and go through a Buddhist podcast about forgiveness and suffering and think about how difficult life must be for that motherfucker that cut you off, and how she probably was distracted by her kids or stressed about something.
Also I don’t think its necessarily ableist, people can do a dumb thing and be called a dumbass for it, doesn’t make them irredeemably dumb. A thought can be dumb, you can say it and sound dumb, doesn’t make you dumb forever.
That’s an example of a different scenario, where a single term changes in meaning. In the case for “man”, a separate term evolved. “Man” never stopped having the meaning of “humans as a whole”. Instead, it evolved a different meaning in certain contexts. “Man” also isn’t used as a slur, which makes using the word you chose as an example not equivalent.
There’s just no need to push “man” in these kinds of context into being gendered when it’s not. Choosing to use another term is great, but it’s not great to impose onto others.
So words evolve unless they become slurs.
Edit: Yea just terminate thought and downvote, very productive discussion. “Words change meaning unless we decide to ignore the new meaning of the word.”
Im honestly just trying to have a conversation about this, because me and all my friends are progressive people, and none of us see the ‘r’ word as badly as it is perceived online. But whatever its cool, the slur treadmill continues, see you in 50 years when idiot becomes the “i” slur.
This is based off a real Reddit meme pic isn’t it? I swear I have seen a Google maps image of “Dicky Lake”.
What a nice, long, thick lake. I’d love to run up and down it all evening to get a good workout in
