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Comment by wcchandler | Hacker News Reader

I can't tell if you're trolling or not...

The use of man in this context is androgynous. It's merely an abbreviated use of "mankind," which is an abbreviated use of "humankind." I'm sorry if you're upset by this wording, but it's not inappropriate.

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"for the modern man" is a very gendered idiomatic phrase unrelated to mankind.

https://www.google.com/search?q="for+the+modern+man"

Note how all of the results are all about men and manliness, which is fine for gendered products and clothing, but doesn't really make sense for a piece of server monitoring software.

i think whats interesting is that people who use sentences such as "for the modern man" don't think about man as male at all and don't intend to offend anybody.

It's only picked out by the ones who feel oppressed by gender issues (which are often males defending females - in fact, genetics also makes us behave that way, ironically.)

Of course they don't think about, and obviously they don't want to offend, and that is why some good people point this out, so that people think about it and pay attention. Sometimes biases are so entrenched that we don't feel them. They feel natural, and therefore neutral. But, if you want to make a change, than it's precisely those seemingly natural things that you need to change.

You can keep using "man" or not, but I think it's helpful to pay attention.

Frankly, i think some people just like to complain about gender issues when there isn't much going on.

In some languages (ex: french), everything defaults to male-centric. Nobody cares or feels offended by it, and females have exactly the same rights as males.

Feminism isn't just about not offending people or giving women the same "rights" as men. You can make the (true) claim that blacks in America have the same rights as whites. But does that mean that there's no more racism? And even without the judgmental word "racism", does that mean blacks have the same opportunities as whites? I don't think so.

Feminism is about making sure women have the same opportunities as men not only by virtue of the law, but "on the ground"; that society doesn't gently (or not so gently) steer them in directions where they end up with less power than men; that they're no longer objectified and that female politicians are not called by their first names.

I'm not saying language can fix all that, or that it even matters all that much. It certainly matters less in cultures where feminism has had greater success. But it is a good place to point out how, perhaps inadvertently, we keep falling into the same gender traps. If you start thinking about your choice of words, language becomes less natural, so you stop treating it, and the culture it articulates, as "nature", and start treating it as the malleable social construct that it actually is.

No, you're right... it's not inappropriate. But really, something like "for the modern admin" is more appropriate and should be used. There is no need for the "modern man", so it should be left out.

The phrase of "modern man" was meant to contrast with old-school admins. For me, it brought up images of classic admins in server rooms either your straight-laced IBM types or your Berkeley Unix neckbeards. Take your pick, but they were both predominantly men.

Why not adminess? Or whatever female version would someone come up with after you'd use "admin".

Female suffixes like that can give the impression of the female version being secondary to the "normal" male version.

re: "for the modern man"

> The use of man in this context is androgynous.

No, its not, even if it was intended that way.

> It's merely an abbreviated use of "mankind," which is an abbreviated use of "humankind."

"Humankind", "Mankind" (and "man" when used in a sense that is semantically-equivalent to the other two) are mass nouns that do not take articles ("the" or "a"). In the case of "humankind" or "mankind", using an article is just plain incorrect (consider, "one giant leap for the mankind" vs. "one giant leap for mankind"), whereas for "man" the use of an article can distinguish between the sense of "an individual adult male human" and "humankind" (consider "the story of man" vs. "the story of a man".)

So, no, in "for the modern man", "man" doesn't work as a shortened form of "mankind".

You're thinking of "modern man", not "the modern man".

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