Someone is WRONG on the Internet

[telerib]

Must not engage in Merry Rose discussion, must not, must not...

(For the non-subscribers: the hoary old flame-bait as to whether or not "he/him/brother/mankind" are gender-neutral or not has been raised. Marshal your "I am not a man!" arguments to this side and "Do you hate the English language?" arguments on that one. Love how I can be told in the same breath that it's silly to pretend there are no differences between the sexes and then insist that I allow myself to be referred to as a man.)

Comments

[beatrixherald.livejournal.com]

OY!!! that old debate.


It would be easier if there just stopped being sexism so that we (women) could care less about if we were included in that "Hey you guys" or not.

I got off the Merry rose after the FIRST stupid debate like that. If they are good enough, they always make it to LJ anyway.

[telerib.livejournal.com]

Weird but true story... I grew up with "you guys" (or "youse guys") being pretty gender-neutral. Our Girl Scout leader was forever correcting us in high school and we were forever laughing her off.

I took a SCUBA course in grad school; instructor was a 50-60ish man. Class was mostly men. And when he said, "You guys, come over here," I totally felt like he only mean the males. I'd never had that reaction to that phrase before, and still generally don't. Something about the delivery...

Context is so important. When Neil Armstrong is walking on the moon, acting as a surrogate for all of us, I'm not likely to mind if he uses "mankind" instead of "humankind." When we're talking about the community of SCA fighters, which includes some women who are often swimming very hard against some powerful currents, further disappearing them by referring to the community as a 'brotherhood' gets me. Go home, little girl, this isn't a game for you. :p