[Ads-l] [Non-DoD Source] "man" avoidance

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Jun 27 22:43:07 UTC 2022


Whatever your psychological gender, I think if you're pregnant you count as
a woman, at least for the purposes of idiom.

Which isn't to say I endorse M. Taylor-Greene's belief that trans men are
responsible for a tampon shortage.

JL

On Mon, Jun 27, 2022 at 2:27 PM Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
wrote:

> That’s not avoidance. It’s including people who are pregnant whose gender
> is not female (e.g., seahorse parents).
>
> Benjamin Barrett (he/his/him)
> Formerly of Seattle, WA
>
> > On 26 Jun 2022, at 05:20, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > Cf. "woman" avoidance in the (more recent?) "pregnant people."
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Sat, Jun 25, 2022 at 3:51 PM Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Now that’s a person of a different color.
> >>
> >> Sent from Mail<https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for
> Windows
> >>
> >> From: Jonathan Lighter<mailto:wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2022 11:37 AM
> >> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU<mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Subject: Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: "man" avoidance
> >>
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> >> Subject:      Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: "man" avoidance
> >>
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> JIm Acosta, CNN:
> >>
> >> "But isn't that a bit of a strawhorse argument?"
> >>
> >> JL
> >>
> >> On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 5:58 PM Jonathan Lighter <
> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> So retro.
> >>>
> >>> "A *human* named..." is undoubtedly what we prefer today.
> >>>
> >>> JL
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 1:49 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
> >
> >>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>> On Sep 26, 2016, at 12:42 PM, MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY
> >>>> RDECOM AMRDEC (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> It's like the middle-schooler who writes, _Ulysses_ is a book by a
> >> man
> >>>> named James Joyce."
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> "A man named" adds nothing to the sentence . .  .
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Unless the assignment is "Give me a 100 word book report."  "A man
> >>>> named " gets you 3% farther down the road.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> But "...a human being named...", while less informative than "...a man
> >>>> named...", does add an additional word.
> >>>>
> >>>> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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."

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