Learning to Speak Christianese

I love it, well done. True, witty & funny. Thanks.

I like these in general, but his assumption that everyone that does anything is man. It’s always man, guy, him, etc. Women can grow food, be doctors, and lots of other things.

And no one better feed me that crap that ‘man’ means women too, that’s not how the English language works. A group of women is also never called men, not even when speaking about huge groups of women, American women, 5,000 women. A mixed gender group in english is not called men. A group of 20 women and 20 men are called men forty men and women (or forty people), not forty men. So, in English, man never means anything other than men.

You said it, Cathy!

@cathy,

While “men” might never be used to refer to mixed gender groups, it’s similarly true that “man” isn’t used to refer to groups of men either. A group of 20 men is not called man. In English, the word man either refers to a single man or humanity as a whole. It’s pretty clear which one is meant in the video. The term may have sexist origins, but that the modern usage is not typically intended to exclude women.

It never refers to women but it refers to humanity as a whole Dave? Way to not count women as humans.

“The term may have sexist origins, but that the modern usage is not typically intended to exclude women.” Yes it does, and every piece of credible research done in this area finds that when people hear man, he, mankind, and chairman, they assume the person or people being spoken about are male and are more likley to have negative reactions if the preson, contrary to expectation, is a female person.

@Caffeine, at the time man was gender neutral, it did not apply to male people, the term for male people was waepman and you wouldn’t say that sentence, because it would not hold up in the old english you are referrencing, because, even though modern english has its root is old english they are DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. In modern english, the language that people actually speak, man always means man, never women and, as someone who had read late medieval, renaissance, and enligtenment works, it is very clear that the usage of the word man means male people, particularly because more than one of these authors did not count women as moral persons. These writers make it clear that women are not counted when they speak of marriage and family, though they still use ‘man’ in the exact same way. This is not a gender neutral usage, but a one of men as people and women as subhmuman.

“(“40 men worked in that town” would initially have meant that 40 people worked, but in essence the workers counted were men” Yep, because women never work or do labour of any kind or ever do anything that needs to be spoken about so why bother to include us in language?

@Cathy
I actually agree with you on the sexist nature of the difference today, and I am with you in any effort to remove this from language from now on. I’m not trying to justify its continued use, so there’s no point arguing against that.

Still, that doesn’t change the usage of language in the past. “Man” has been used as the unmarked form, as in Darwin’s ‘The Descent of Man’ for an easy example.

@Beth
How did you come to the conclusion that only males would disagree with you on this subject?

If you want to get technical, ‘man’ nowadays refers to people with penises and transmen, as well as an unmarked form, this latter usage becoming rarer, which is good especially for the sexist connotations. The facts remain that the term has been used as an unmarked form, and to ignore this will mean you will misunderstand wherever it has been used as such. Furthermore, it is a different thing to say ‘man’ shouldn’t be used as a collective word because it lends itself to sexists and that it has never been used this way.

It never refers to women but it refers to humanity as a whole Dave? Way to not count women as humans.

I was trying to draw the distinction that “men” never refers to women, but “man” does. Those are different words. As Beth pointed out, “man” is used to refer to all of mankind. Whether another term might be be more appropriate is arguable. I would certainly agree that “humanity” is a better term to use.

If you’re not convinced that “man” is used to refer to humanity as a whole, refer to a dictionary. On dictionary.com, the second entry under “man” is:

a member of the species Homo sapiens or all the members of this species collectively, without regard to sex: prehistoric man.

Yay Cathy 😉 It’s bummed me out how the atheist and skeptical community seems to be just as male oriented as society in general. I don’t know why I expected better (especially with so many women involved). There was a long discussion on skepchick after the last TAM wherein the skepchicks (and others) kept pointing out how there were so few women asked to speak and other people kept giving defensive explanations as to why this was ok (usually something along the lines of ‘well, there just aren’t that many female scientists and/or atheists’ – whuh?).

I agree that the terms man and mankind are a problem but whenever it’s brought up, it’s rarely taken seriously. I get the historical context and it’s interesting, but I don’t see that as a reason to continue it today.

@Beth:

I only only care that today, “men” refers to people with penises.

Way to reduce men to penises, Beth. We love you, too.

Gender neutral is so much easier.

I call shenanigans on that one. Ask any English major about “he or she” and hear them growl.

A couple of things:

Firstly, man is the abbreviated form of ‘human’. It is clear that it is being used in this way in the video, because the narrator is comparing two ‘types’ of beings. Man, and ‘god’. Abbreviations are so common because they are easier and quicker to say than the full word. Heck, my name’s actually Gregory, and I like the name, but I go by Greg because it is short and snappy.

If I am in a large group of female friends, and they talk about the group as ‘girls’ do I take offense? Of course not. I might joke around a bit, and make long suffering noises, but I don’t care because it is just words, and words mean little compared to the meanings and beliefs behind them.

Secondly, virtually all of my female friends will at various times use the word ‘guys’ when talking about groups of people, whether all male, all female, or a mix of the two genders. By your reasoning, they are being sexist against their own gender.

Problem is, they aren’t sexist at all. Well – okay, one or two might be, in that they are possibly slightly sexist against men, but your argument would claim them to be the opposite.

Sexism requires some kind of belief, whether conscious, or no, and the worst you can say about the narrator with any justifiability is that he misspoke.

Tell me, if you found out that this guy was a prominant supporter of women’s rights, would you feel at all bad for being so judgmental without any real evidence?

You want my honest opinion? Calling this guy sexist is not only absurd, but does a wonderful job of turning people away from your point of view.

Incidentally, I don’t “stand behind its usage as a term for all humanity”, I stand both behind the right to use abbreviations of words for ease of communication and for words to have more than one meaning.If anyone wants to join some science fiction and/or fantasy works in using the word ‘hume’, then I am fine with that, too.

Sorry for the rant, but there are enough people getting hurt mentally and physically in this world for all sorts of reasons, including sexism, without wasting time complaining about someone without any reason to believe they are one of them.

And I’ve had a rough night.

I found the video amusing, but count me among those who found the statements about “men having grown the food” to be jarring. Agreed that inclusive language can often be clumsy, but a simple substitution of “people” for “men” would have easily solved the problem.

On the other hand, it just occurred to me to wonder if the authors might have actually been consciously using “men” to be consistent with the Christianese language, since many (if not most) conservative Christians count it a matter of pride to refrain from all appearance of inclusive language.

@ Beth:

@ Alex, Thanks for taking everything I said out of context.

I’m sorry if it is out of context, but I got that attitude throughout all your posts. Maybe it’s just my perception, though. Please forgive me if I’m wrong.

Gender neutral, it’s easy. Ze= he or she. Hir=him or her.

Ze… ze Germans? Sorry, but you can’t just take a naturally formed language and apply crutches like these (also, “womyn” comes to mind for some reason) to make it politically correct. Actually, yeah, you can do whatever you want to the language, but don’t expect everyone think it’s a good idea. I’m all for respect towards people, but count me the hell out of the PC movement. There is a reason the whole world is making fun of the U. S. and A.’s media.

Really, isn’t this what it really all is about? You want respect, and I will give it to you, but please don’t try to find disrespect where there is none, because if you try hard enough, you will see it — just as you shall also see manifestations of living God, aliens, and World Zionist Conspiracy. Isn’t sexism supposed to be a conscious position rather than (arguably) incorrect use of pronouns?