[Ads-l] “Neutrality”

[Jonathan Lighter]

We've been through this before.

Why would I care?

Except that I'd have been told  to.

Around 1979, about when the "neutrality" craze began, I asked the women in
my class how many found generic "man" to be sexist.  Only two out of about
a dozen. When asked, their reason was that a high-school English teacher
had told them so.

Several years later, I tried it on another class, and the objections were
unanimous.

BTW, no female journeyman will see her pay raised or find herself safer
from predators by changing the word.

JL



On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 3:12 PM Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
wrote:

> If you were a woman journeyman, would you appreciate being called a
> “journeyman”? BB
>
> > On 19 Jul 2019, at 09:04, David Barnhart <dbarnhart at HIGHLANDS.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > Aren’t most -man/-men words neutral?
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org