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To me “Man” has more of a “each and every” connotation. Compare

“Man must achieve this.”

“Humanity must achieve this.”

The latter is more of a collective emergent thing. And in some cases that leaves you with a diffusion of responsibility kind of passive feeling, while the former is a call to action.

Maybe it’s just my ear.

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It's more than just your ear. The way we use language to describe individuals versus groups highlights a divide between personal responsibilities and collective rights. All too often individuals use the group as a means to avoid personal responsibility.

Maybe I should re-translate this and replace each "man" with "woman" and each "his" with "her".

"Woman has achieved great things!"

I think it slaps even harder that way!

You can if you want, but that ignores how one of the accepted definitions of "man" is humanity. If you're just swapping words without understanding their deeper implications, you might miss the point. It's not about the gendered language; it's about the collective achievements and struggles of all people.

So, are we really focusing on inclusion, or are we just playing word games?

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