this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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3 years ago, “man” in that context was considered gender neutral. More recently tho a lot of stink is being made about little language things like this. Theres no replacement word to use.
Wow, this actually sounds very plausible.
Sensitivities during Covid ran high. A lot of things changed then. For instance in the software world removing the name “master” from git usage, and on the TV Show Survivor, the host not saying his famous line “come on in guys”. At the same time pronouns became a huge thing, and these seemingly gender specific or sensitive word terms were targeted.
You are correct, there was a round of this in the 90s or so, where job titles like “waitress”, “stewardess”, “policeman” were all adjusted. I see that as a very different round of language change.
Yeah, 2020 is the time period I’m referring to. I had never heard of it being a thing until George Floyd and BLM movement in 2020, then GitHub changed in response to that.
I’ve been in IT for 35 years. And I never heard a single negative thing about branch names and master/slave terminology until 2020.
Perhaps you think that was set aside because IDE hard drives are dead.
All this sensitivity being mainstream is new to me. It came from all angles in all aspects of life very suddenly.
Yes you can find some things happening in the past, but sweeping changes were made in the 2020-2022 timeframe.
That fact doesn’t minimize anyone’s prior efforts, thoughts, feelings, actions, movements, or otherwise. The attempts to fix the English collective masculine date back to 1795.
Frenchwoman and Frenchperson are both ridiculous enough to try, but maybe go with Frenchie just to see if they'll punch you.