Man, Mankind, or Humanity?

Kweh?


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    44

Zirrboy

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I'm a little disconnected from how people normally do all this stuff, but I feel like the complaint about gendered language is when it's applied to people inappropriately, lol. Like if you call someone you know is a man a sissy, they get upset.

I'm sure people go to extremes that don't fit that, but applying a false gender to words like human or mandate just because they have the word man in them is too far. There's definitely a difference.
My own understanding of aforementioned opinions, without warranty for completeness or portrayal of all aspects:

The key point here is something called male default, where upright, mostly hairless and neuron-overactivity-plagued apes are by default men, with women being a derivative thereof. (I have no concrete info how other genders play into the model, but probably the same as women)

Most languages with grammatical gender that I know of have plural forms of group/profession names for both men and women separately, but use the male variant for mixed groups.

Even the now mostly gender neutral English language achieved this by dropping the -tress suffix used for women.

If not given a gender specification, like the anonymity of the internet, or being tasked to describe say a doctor, the overwhelming majority of assumptions is in favor of men.

Whether this is just fighting a symptom or related to worse issues, like medication being tested on men for the most part is debatable, but that's the short of it
 

LordJoyde

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I'm a little disconnected from how people normally do all this stuff, but I feel like the complaint about gendered language is when it's applied to people inappropriately, lol. Like if you call someone you know is a man a sissy, they get upset.

I'm sure people go to extremes that don't fit that, but applying a false gender to words like human or mandate just because they have the word man in them is too far. There's definitely a difference.

The children of humanity works too. Or instead of 'Man', God works even better. The sons of Man is either redundant or - again, inaccurate.

'No Man may kill the Witch-King of Angmar!'

Okay, then how about a woman? How about a hobbit? Not men, you know? Neener neener.
I'm pretty sure there was a meme video made about that LotR reference in particular lmao
 

Echimera

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On topic, I'd say 'oomies would be a good pick.

Love the side topic too, really goes to show how culture and language shape and reinforce each other, making needed change n either even harder to achieve.
 

Nautiphilic

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It's inaccurate.

Man means male or humans? Then what if you're talking about a male of another species? If you call it a Man, are you wrong?

Mankind is the same, but weirder. Are you lumping all males into a single species?

Humanity... Is also a fail. Because it refers to both the species and a philosophy. Someone who's human can be inhumane, and non-humans can be humane if they want as well. It's very annoying.

Earthlings and Terrans are a common alternative, but they also don't work. What if Earth's population mutates or something to the point where humans aren't the only species on Earth? What if aliens come to Earth and naturalize themselves there? Are dogs Terrans? Dolphins? It's the same problem with referring to all black people as African Americans. Like... What if you aren't from either of those places?

Well, I usually just use Humans, though. It's just easier that way. Maybe other languages have a better word, but I don't speak 'em.

Your response reminds me of those americans that try to make hispanics say todox referring to EVERYONE in a gender unspecific manner when already got a word for that! Humanity is not a fail, that obfuscation is! context ALWAYS relevant no matter what and it is not huMENity. same as it is not MENkind in english it's Mankind referring to ALL people. all intents+purposes you see the same notion as todos in spanish for group of men and a MIXED group v. todas.

language obfuscation is a waste! 😂 all gotta do is go with >people< and more\less were ALL good!
 
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Cipiteca396

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I'm pretty sure there was a meme video made about that LotR reference in particular lmao
Tbf, that entire prophecy was a meme made by Tolkien to rag on a similar one Shakespeare made. 'No man from woman born' or something like that = Cesarean birth.
context ALWAYS relevant no matter what
language obfuscation is a waste! 😂 all gotta do is go with >people<
Context is important, yes. This is an author's forum talking about fiction. It's extremely common to run into the problem of calling humans people and then encountering non-humans and going, 'Well, are they people? They aren't human though.' People works most of the time in real life, but not always; and it's a fail more often than not in fiction.
(I do tend to use it when describing a number of people of multiple species though; it's quite good for that. Assuming you aren't trying to make a character sound racist by deliberately excluding orcs or elves from the term 'people'.)

You also seem to be attributing someone else's point to me, lol. I prefer to use the word 'human' even though it isn't perfect because it's the best we've got. My main problem with it isn't the 'man' in it, it's that people use the word humane to describe an ideal as well as the species. The implication being, that non-humans can't be humane and are innately inhumane... (Though it's quite amusing when a human calls someone doing good deeds from another species 'humane' and the other person is insulted.)
I find it disturbing that people have issue with mankind because they find it gendered specific. I think people should stop inventing weird words and actually care about what is truly mattered, the people.
I find it disturbing that you are disturbed by other people being disturbed.

All words are weird words that someone invented.
Many words in my mother tongue was once neutral and dear words. Only in the last 70 years are they considered vulgar. It's all human and their society. These thing I see as nothing more than distraction to distract us from the true problem, climate change and etc.

Rather than getting weird boner about whether the people that use mankind are sexists, there are more pressing works to be done and addressed for example the fact that woman isn't considered rapist in UK.
If you want to talk about something different, you can always start your own thread instead of hijacking someone else's.
 

AKnightWithaKnife

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what is the issue with man? or "gendered language" if I'm really being honest here it only seems that the lanauge with the least rules has this stupid issue
 

Deeprotsorcerer

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what is the issue with man? or "gendered language" if I'm really being honest here it only seems that the lanauge with the least rules has this stupid issue
Some people believe gendered language is inherently exclusionary while others believe that it's often wielded as a tool to enforce gender norms.

I personally don't think saying man or guys or fellas or most other male-coded language is a huge sin, but it can be inefficient, or fail to meet the image you want to portray in a written work. You wouldn't say that the Sisters of Battle fought to the last man, for example.
 

AKnightWithaKnife

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Some people believe gendered language is inherently exclusionary while others believe that it's often wielded as a tool to enforce gender norms.

I personally don't think saying man or guys or fellas or most other male-coded language is a huge sin, but it can be inefficient, or fail to meet the image you want to portray in a written work. You wouldn't say that the Sisters of Battle fought to the last man, for example.
hmm in the context of terms related to war it kinda makes sense for the masculine to be the default. males are usually the ones fighting but in this case what word would you propose to swap man with ?
 

Deeprotsorcerer

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hmm in the context of terms related to war it kinda makes sense for the masculine to be the default. males are usually the ones fighting but in this case what word would you propose to swap man with ?
The Sisters of Battle just use sister (or Sister with the capital S like a US marine will refer to their allies as Marines) but I'll admit that this is a very specific case.

Interestingly enough, in WH40K the Sisters of Battle often fight alongside males, so using sister to refer to the entirety of a combat element including allies outside of their organization may run afoul of some language puritans, and give people like me a chance to stir the pot.

I would not stir the pot in a Sister's face, though.

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Deeprotsorcerer

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im pretty sure man would be acceptable in this situation because your referencing the amount of manpower left
A valid point. It'd be easily understood, and may be automatic for any in-universe historian or officer outside of the SoB's chain of command.

For a novel however, Sister would remain on theme and make for a more consistent, immersive narrative depending on whose PoV you're taking on.
 

Echimera

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im pretty sure man would be acceptable in this situation because your referencing the amount of manpower left
That depends on the order, some may actually prefer counting how many have fallen as martyrs over counting how many are left.
what is the issue with man? or "gendered language" if I'm really being honest here it only seems that the lanauge with the least rules has this stupid issue
English is generally rather gender neutral (at least if you don't look into the origin of the words), making it a lot better than some other languages.
But this also means that gendered terms can stick out like a sore thumb.
 

Gryphon

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Okay so this just happened to me recently and I'm still laughing. If you use prowritingaid to edit your stories, and you put in mankind, then it'll read it as offensive language because it has man in it. I'm laughing my ass off.
 

Deeprotsorcerer

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Okay so this just happened to me recently and I'm still laughing. If you use prowritingaid to edit your stories, and you put in mankind, then it'll read it as offensive language because it has man in it. I'm laughing my ass off.
And people thought that I was kidding about some people taking issue with gendered language. Try writing for corporate/marketing stuff, the connotation dodging you have to teach yourself to do is real.

One client, for example, had us use language for medical afflictions in a certain way. If it was an article relating to diabetes news we'd have to say "people with diabetes" instead of diabetics, but the client of the client then sent the article back to me and accused me of using convoluted language to pad the word count and increase the price.

Then when I changed "people with diabetes" to "diabetics" guess what the middle man client did...

Note: I understand that abelist language actually does offend a great many people, and if used in a certain way under a certain context, can be a blatant insult.
 
D

Deleted member 57675

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Mankind if want to make it sound like a story from old, old times or to sound epic. Like using old english to reflect the time period the characters are in or like an ancient prophecy. Makes me think of Bewoulf and other old epic tales.

Humanity seems more modern. Sometimes feel like may have read it in some old stories, and feel its more of people describing what humanity/humane in an action/people. But heard humankind more. Humankind sound more inclusive thu i feel this is something aliens coming across humans who they never have seen would term it as. Sounds more modern or sci-fi? Eh idk. It just a feel anyways. Sorry mind trail thought from all tomorrow.

Mankind. Humankind. They all refer to humans anyways.
 
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SakeVision

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The key point here is something called male default, where upright, mostly hairless and neuron-overactivity-plagued apes are by default men, with women being a derivative thereof. (I have no concrete info how other genders play into the model, but probably the same as women)

lol someone tell them that X chromosome falls apart to become Y
 
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