We were taught in Latin class that man was “homo” in Latin and people were “vir.” I hated the days when man covered male and female. I have yet to meet a single human being who has a visual image of a woman while saying the word “man.” And they don’t have a visual image of a mixed crowd. In their head, they see a man. And that’s wrong for half the human race. That’s a day happily gone, hopefully never to return.
I was told I couldn’t give Zeiss Planetarium lectures because an audience wouldn’t accept a woman’s voice in the dark as an authority figure. I was told that I couldn’t use a female narrator on my first movie because it, again, would not be an authority figure. Nothing sexist. No never. Just simple economics. Now find a male lecturer and narrator and forget this women’s jobs silliness.
Never go back to those days. Just don’t take it to the idiotic extremes the feminists have.
Interesting perspective difference there. I hear “man” and think very gender neutral, just a human being. Glad to know you found it so offensive. I kind of had a picture of a sexless human when I heard gender-neutral “man.”
I just watched “The Great Race” the last two nights and found the early feminism theme circa 1908 to be interesting (movie was made in 1965, so it had that viewpoint of 1908). It was the era of suffragettes, women fighting to get jobs that men had always held, the classic “battle of the sexes” between Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis, and how they were trying to resolve the conflict between an enlightened, emancipated woman and old-fashioned love.