Berkeley set to ban gendered words like 'manhole' and 'manpower'

While there's certainly an ungendered use ("mankind", "man-eating tiger"), there's also a long history of gendered use ("man and wife", "man-child" meaning "boy", YMCA vs. YWCA).

That "wooden, literalness" goes both ways. I also remember reading about organizations in the 1800 refusing to accept women, in part justified because the bylaws used "man"/"he" to refer to members. [1]

Wouldn't any public act of virtue have an honest virtue signal? Or are you suggesting that the last 150+ years of decoupling language gender from human gender been dishonest somehow?

[0] https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/01/11/from-mankind-ma...

> In Old English, as in many of the Germanic languages, “man” generically meant “person” in addition to its current “male person” meaning. The OED, for instance, quotes a 15th-century sermon in which a married couple is described as “riht riche men.” Meanwhile, “wif” and “were,” as well as the compounds “wifman” (woman-person) and “waepman” (weapon-person) or, possibly, “wereman” (man-person), were equivalent to “woman” and “man,” or wife and husband. After the Middle Ages, however, the generic meaning for “man” largely dropped out. “Man” absorbed the space vacated by “were” and “waepman,” while “wifman” evolved into “woman.”

[1] https://www.dmymca.org/about-the-y/y-news/ymca-of-greater-de...

> In 1866, the YMCA's Albany, NY convention refused to seat women delegates, asserting that representation at the convention must be based on male membership.