Princeton University Banning the Word ‘Man’

[jsgolfer]

Not the Onion!

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/28540/

Good grief, what special kind of snowflake hyperventilates if they hear the word Men or some form of it in used in a sentence?  What happens when stresses in real life take hold? 

[Valleygolfer]

No way man.....

...thought I would get that out of the way...

[JxQx]

I was gonna say they may have a rough time post college in the real world but to be fair, most likely a decent percentage of them may never need to work in their life.

[DaveP043]

How about "dude"?

[Golfingdad]

I get it.  Seems reasonable to me.

[DaveP043]

I'm gunna move, to Personchester, VT.

[iacas]

19 minutes ago, Golfingdad said:

I get it.  Seems reasonable to me.

Yeah, ditto.

Of course people will likely scream "oh no, more PC gone wild!" But it's not really about that.

[Shindig]

Classic, more clickbait title.  They aren't banning the use of the word "man."  They're saying to use gender-neutral language when a gender-neutral meaning is intended.  Are people really upset that an elite university is suggesting that people should communicate more clearly?

[Aflighter]

The way things are now im not exactly surprised.I wonder what the hell do you call a trackman? Guess we need to say "  i used the track thingy."Hopefully one day everybodys panties wont be in a wad.

[imsys0042]

I think it's a little overkill, but it does make sense from the perspective that a lot of people don't feel included or inclusive for things that many of us take for granted.   Every year there is a big flap over "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" and the reason for doing that is so that people don't feel excluded, or that what they are is not part of the team, group or whatever.

Now if "Happy Holidays" and the like were the only things that would make people feel excluded or different, I can see the whole thing being silly.   but in fact, those smaller things re-enforce bigger attitudes that make people feel excluded or different, hence people trying to do what they can.

[misty_mountainhop]

At one level, I can understand, but this sort of thing is going mad. Can't use 'manmade'?? Laughable! It doesn't mean 'made by a man (i.e. an individual man)', but 'made by man (i.e. the species)'. Good job their HR dept probably never needs to say 'mankind'....

[imsys0042]

2 minutes ago, Shindig said:

Classic, more clickbait title.  They aren't banning the use of the word "man."  They're saying to use gender-neutral language when a gender-neutral meaning is intended.  Are people really upset that an elite university is suggesting that people should communicate more clearly?

There are people that might take it that way.   No one wants to be told what to say, how to say it, etc..  and when you personally don't mean anything by a word but it's going to be misconstrued if you don't remember then yes, it ticks people off.

But there is also a more real problem because it's a college/university.  These institutions need to get young adults ready for the real world, yet many of them coddle students and provide too "safe" of an environment.  Not prohibiting things that are wrong.  If something is wrong, illegal or prejudiced it should be prohibited.   But many schools do go overboard in not "offending" people.  And in fact colleges are regularly in the news for not letting a controversial speaker speak because the students don't agree with their views.   That's not to say that if there is not enough outcry that someone shouldn't speak anyway, but at that age I think you want to have more interaction and have students make up their minds by hearing something instead of shutting it down.

Being offended is part of life and learning to either not take offense, unless you really need to stand up for something, or trying to understand whether the person is truly offensive or just you are misunderstanding them.  A lot of "offense" would go away if people truly put some thought into why the other party actually did/said what they did/said.

The best, and funniest, example was a school that banned an Asian cafeteria item because it wasn't "authentic and truly representative of the culture" and hence would be offensive to people from that culture.   When I think most people would just think "that's bad cooking!"

[Golfingdad]

16 minutes ago, Shindig said:

Classic, more clickbait title.  They aren't banning the use of the word "man."  They're saying to use gender-neutral language when a gender-neutral meaning is intended.  Are people really upset that an elite university is suggesting that people should communicate more clearly?

Bingo.  Nothing is "banned."  It's just an in office memo asking the department employees to be more conscious of their language.

Quite reasonable.

[DaveP043]

In spite of my earlier attempts at humor, I don't think this should be a big deal.  I do think that efforts to eliminate gender references often result in more cumbersome words and phrases, and not always clearer words and phrases.  To me, something like "workmanship" isn't associated with the male gender, but rather with the quality of the work.  To me, "man and wife" is perfectly appropriate for a male-female married couple, while spouses or partners might be more appropriate for other arrangements.  The "freshman" class has always been first year students, without reading anything about the gender of those students into the word.

Of course, a language is a living thing, constantly changing, so my few objections may simply be those of an aging man, yearning for things as they used to be in the "good old days".  Of course, I'm not THAT old (yet), and things these days are pretty good too.  

[mcanadiens]

I know someone that insists on using the word "persyn" instead of "person". I guess the son part is also a gender reference. I try not to talk to her (err, that persyn) much more than I have to.

Getting older is really going to suck with these kids.

 

[Jeremie Boop]

I guess it's no longer the human race either, it's the huperson race  I mean if you can't say mankind then how is human any better? I don't know, it just all seems silly and a waste of time to go through so much effort to avoid using "man" in words because somehow it's offensive.

 

[DaveP043]

5 minutes ago, mcanadiens said:

Getting older is really going to suck with these kids.

In some ways, I'm looking forward to it.  After all, young people get called weird, but old people can be "eccentric". 

[mcanadiens]

2 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

In some ways, I'm looking forward to it.  After all, young people get called weird, but old people can be "eccentric". 

Yeah. A racist, misogynistic eccentric.