The word “firefighter” was not used years ago. The word was “firemen”. It was changed because of this very idea the article talks about.
And some liberals use the word “humankind” because they do indeed have a problem with “mankind”. You’re joking about it here, but some liberals actually think that way.
I beg to differ.
"Firefighter" refers to one who battles a forest fire.
"Fireman" is a person who serves a municipality and who battles urban fires.
The assault on the "-man" occupation words predated the latest spasm of feminism. When those two, er, women got that particular bee in their lacy bonnets, they were hitching an ideological ride on an earlier disapproval of the association of work with one's sex.
In the early 1960s, I recall hearing firemen described as "fye-uh fightas" in suburban New York by callers to a local radio talk show. They were calling in to support some action against the City of New York by one of the firemen's unions.
The distinction in the air then was that, to firemen and their wives, it sounded more professional and educated to identify yourself by your technical expertise—fighting fires—rather than as a man doing a job because he was from the working-class caste, as the word "fireman" might imply.
At the same time, for similar reasons, in place of "policeman," a man would describe himself as a "pu-leese aw-fissa," and instead of a "garbage man," he was a "sanitation woika." They're still cops, firemen, and garbagemen to me, and I like 'em just fine. And as you've probably noticed, in private, firemen still call themselves "firemen."
Both feminism and working-class self-consciousness view the idea of work being a function of one's body as limiting to class aspirations: The higher you go on the social scale, the less connection there is between your body and your work. At the end of the day, "firefighters" still put out fires. Meanwhile, feminists . . . I haven't figured out exactly what they do, but it's a lot of talk, and very little work.