Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00012)

In message <313C8B52@mortar.bpa.gov>, "Porreco, Nick - CPMQ"
<nlporreco@bpa.gov> writes

>>>snip<<<

>"The other point concerns the implicit sexism of words such as mankind and
>human, both of which shorten to man taking the pronoun he.  It is absolutely
>clear to my mind that Adam's rib is embedded in the linguistic structure
>(event though the word man goes back to Sanskrit manus, which before it
>meant mind, meant born of woman), and equally clear to my ear that there is
>no way of correcting the fault without falling into circumlocution and
>cacophany.  But just as B.C. and A.D. began preemptively and have now
>arguably become innocuous, so the use of man for all of us can eventually be
>neutered (or at least house-trained) if authors who must employ it remember
>their Sanskrit and proffer appropriate apologies for the sins of the fathers
>in their prefaces."

B.C. and A.D. have long since been *replaced* in academic circles by
C.E. (common era) and B.C.E. (before common era).  This is because the
older terms were found *not* to be innocuous, not least to the the
Jewish population.

Also, circumlocutions around the outdated terminology are fairly simple,
and newer writers will begin to discover that what began as a
circumlocution becomes the norm.  For example, I set out to revise my
own "Keys to Kabbalah" in such a way as to use inclusive language
throughout the entire text.  It wasn't hard, and there is no suggestion
of sexism left in it to the best of my knowledge.  And I did not need to
resort to explanations about sanskrit "manus" or any other language - I
just rearranged the existing English!

(Nick's original post appeared on theos-roots)

Alan, contra sexism.
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