Hacker News Reader

Comment by close04 | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but notice that sometimes the language is seen as a reason to shout "discrimination".

> “This,” said the professor, “is alleged to be man’s first attempt at a calendar.”

> “what man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.”

I'm pretty sure nobody ever implied (or could support in any way) that a certain archaic invention definitely came from males. As a non-native English speaker I always took "man" to be a synonym for "human". As in "mankind". Would the objection made by the professor above imply the terms should be changed to something like "personkind"?

View on HN

This happens in my native language as well. I really think it's time we should drop the use of the word "man" referring to "mankind". I simply say "humans" or "humanity".

I'm for (or rather "not against" seeing how I have no stake in English language matters). But think about it, how would you in good faith interpret a sentence like "Ever since man discovered fire..."? Humanity or male?

Does it still seem good faith when someone goes to the implausible but shockingly discriminatory interpretation? And do you think such a reaction helps the image of those fighting against discrimination?

Yeah. For those who get hung up about the supposed gender of words, here are some genders of words in German:

Human: male

Person: female

Humanity: female

Since we don't have the original allegation to examine, it might well have said "humanity". If it said "man" as the professor claims, then "humanity" would have been an improvement.

My point was that the ambiguous term "man" was immediately interpreted as a sign of discrimination. If HN can have "Assume good faith" in the guidelines then society should also have it. So hearing such a reaction to a term where the most plausible interpretation is "human" can only be bad faith. Looking for reasons to squabble.

If enough people use such bad faith arguments to make a point how long until it will be easy to overlook a good, valid argument and assume the same kind of bad faith from the start?

This conversation does not occur in a vacuum. For most of the history of writing in English, a casual everyday sexism has been baked in. The presence of that sexism has done harm even if few authors have really cared about it. We're lucky, that now we can't really pretend this isn't a thing. So the reasonable assumption to make is not that a text was unintentionally sexist, but rather that the author didn't care enough not to be sexist. It's really easy to write "humanity" rather than "man".

Yes... just like mother nature, motherland, mother tongue, motherboard, etc. Not hypocritical at all. No normal person would feel insulted and discriminated by any of these words.

Looking for an offense in everything is just making it easier for everybody to overlook actual offenses. Feel free to create imaginary enemies if it makes you feel like you're fighting the good fight [0].

Tell me, how do you feel about the oppression of noun genders in every language?

[0] https://pics.me.me/1-year-of-not-shaving-her-legs-to-fight-a...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com