Do you consider words like "craftsman", "barman" or "fisherman" to be gender neutral?
Posted Jan 10, 2023, 4:02 PM UTC
060
Bartender, crafter, fisher
27
Bet you can't make "Spiderman" gender neutral.
Checkmate.
9
Spidey,
24
The Human Spider.
12
That sucks!
6
The Spider™
4
Spider-Gwen.
3
Spider-Alex (can be either)
1
Person of spider/Spiderperson/Personspider
3
i dont believe spiderman is gener neutral
1
I’ve never heard anyone call a Bartender a barman
5
Google says it's Br*tish
1
Those are gendered terms in the sense that they originated in Middle English when "-man" had already become a gendered suffix, specifically referring to a male person and when women rarely ever took part in any of those professions.
Nowadays they are pretty much widely meant and understood to be gender neutral, but we still have plenty of evidence suggesting that subtly gendered terms like these have a statistically significant effect on sufficiently large populations. So.. I won't get mad at people using those words, but I personally try to avoid it.
12
What’s the statistically significant effect of using these terms? Specifically which terms? This stemmed from OP correcting “penmanship” to “handwriting” as they considered the former a gendered term, so Im curious if the literature says anything about that. Im open to believing there’s some effect, I’m just curious what the causal effect is and what words it does or does not apply to.
5
Oh, I'm not aware of any studies that examined the effect of the "man" in "craftsman" specifically, but what I assume to be very similar effects are well-documented in languages with rigid grammatical genders like French, Spanish and German where every noun comes with a gendered pronoun. That results in a noticeable gender bias in people's perception.
A classic test is to ask people something along the lines of "Please name 10 of your favorite artists", whereby "artists" is a masculine generic word. Responses will almost always be biased towards people listing more men than women. Using gender-neutral language mitigates that effect.
Some studies: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It's also suggested that this may have tangible effects on a broader scale, specifically gender inequality (6,7), but that's still iffy research.
It's not technically sound to extend the same logic to the word "craftsmanship", so I let you be the judge of that.
3
I genuinely appreciate it, thank you so much for linking those studies. Totally understand that this doesn't necessarily link directly to the discussion, I was just curious what the literature has been on the topic.
To some degree I guess English is exceptional as we don't gender most of our nouns, whereas obviously those studies looking at Spanish, French, and German have gendered nouns everywhere (e.g. el vs la in Spanish). So this kind of association follows if we recognize something like "craftsman" as male, which sort of feels like it isn't just because it's so archaic anyway, so derivates of craftsman like "craftsmanship" seem fine to me, but that's just my understanding. But following the last study which concluded there is a tangible link between gendered language and wage inequality, "chairman" feels gendered since we regularly use "chairwoman" and "chairperson" to represent the gender context, probably because those are more relevant occupations today.
3
From what I can tell, while there are some earlier instances of its use in the modern sense, terms like craftsman actually predate the primary meaning of “man” to refer to adult males, craftsman specifically originating back when the primary terms for women and men were still wifman and wereman.
1
I researched that quite a bit years ago, but finding the sources again would take me more time than I'm willing to commit. You can get the gist of it from this article though; the meaning of "man" as "male person" began to appear around 1000 CE and slowly began to replace Old English "wer" as the default term for it, whereas earliest forms of "craftsman" only popped up ca. 1200 and as "-man" or "-men" in the late 14th century.
1
But that was just the very first instances of it, it appears it wasn’t widely understood with that meaning until the 1300s, after the term craftsman had arisen.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/craftsman is what in going off of here
1
I'm pretty sure it was understood like that earlier than that, the page just phrases it weirdly by making it seem like it was a sudden binary replacement when in reality, both terms were used concurrently by speakers of their respective dialects way before Old English simply disappeared in the 1300s. Don't quote me on that though.
1
Technically no but it'd be cool if we treated them like they were.
6
Not entirely, but "fisherman" feels more gender neutral than "policeman". Maybe words like "policewoman" are more commonly used than "fisherwoman", so "fisherman" is more easily reverted to as a (male) default.
4
I do but I generally end up alternating between the gendered and non-gendered versions pretty much on a whim regardless of to whom it's referencing.
4
Words bear no profound connection to what they reference. As signs, they only point/ indicate away from themselves, and no context can saturate their possible range of reference.
In some contexts, these words can be gendered & other contexts not. There's no final answer or once & for all.
4
could be either depends on intent and context. however i would like to take this moment to loudly advocate that the term “foot guy” is in fact ALWAYS a gender neutral term. wamen are foot guy, mem are foot guy, emby are foot guy, idc
3
I think we’ve largely moved into a sphere where anything that still largely uses “-man” as a suffix can be considered gender neutral.
When I hear “oh she’s a fisherman” or “oh she’s one of the craftsmen who are working on this project” I don’t immediately think the person is being exclusionary.
I think certain specific categories are more gendered than others tho. “Congressman” vs “fisherman” has some difference to me
3
Sorry if I sound rude, but this is the stupid shit that the right loves to mention the left crying about
3
I could not care less what the right thinks
1
Follow up question for those who said yes:
Would you call AOC a congressman?
Edit: You're all cowards lmao
2†
Man in the english language could mean human.
13
Would you ever call a trans chick a man tho?
-3†
"Trans chicks are part of mankind." is correct as much as Justin Trudeau would hate that.
In the context of the question, said trans chick is a woman.
Another example that could justify using man in regards to a trans chick is, "Man, that really hurt." You don't see it often phrased like this."Woman, that really hurt." Another form of it to use in case you want to be extra politically correct is,"Dammit woman! That really hurt."
17
[deleted]
1
I've called her both before. I just say whatever I feel like "flows" best at the time.
7
No, I would use congressperson
5
Okay.
But why?
Why is "congressman" not neutral but all those other words are?
2
Because those words aren’t even used that much any more. People use bartender or crafter/blacksmith. Those gendered words are old-fashioned. It’s like using thrice instead of three times
8
I just thought I should point out that those words aren't used anymore thanks to advocacy by second wave feminists in the 90s. When I was young "fireman" and "policeman" was used but now we tend to say "fire fighter" and "police officer".
4
[deleted]
1
Yes, cause she has more balls than any of the men in Congress.
1
They certainly can be.
2
No, but I am from the Midwest, so by default, hey you guys is gender neutral.
2
I'd like to say, if we consider pronunciation, it makes far more sense to consider these terms gender-neutral, even if they didn't start out that way.
You do not typically pronounce the 'man' part of these terms with a hard 'A' sound like you would with the word man. They're usually pronounced with a soft 'i' sound, like you would pronounce the word 'human'. Not sure if I've heard any person say "congressMAN" before, it always sounds like congressmin.
So, I'd prefer to think of the 'man' part of these terms to be derived from the word 'human' and not 'man' simply because it makes more sense to think of it in that way.
2
All terms are gender neutral.
1
Craftsman here we have some of the toughest women and men in the work force
1
Crazy thought-they’re not, and it’s fine. Scrubbing every trace of patriarchy from the English language will not get rid of patriarchy, it just makes you look ridiculous Ruining a perfectly good language in a quixotic effort to bring about utopia via grammar is a stupid waste of time, just talk like a normal person and actually treat people as equals.
1
Depends on the word. I wouldn’t call a woman a barman but would call them a fisherman or spokesman.
1
As we should all know man just means a featherless biped. Nothing gendered about that.
1
I consider dude to be neutral for what that's worth
Dude is the true go to for gender neutrality.
Nothing wrong with that as long as you don't keep using it when somebody asks you not to.
Well if someone does I will refer them to the universally recognized authority on the proper usage of dude that being Kel from Good Burger both the film and sketch series from All That. Kel clearly states on multiple occasions "I'm a dude, he's a dude, she's a dude, cuz we're all dudes, hey."
I'm being serious here.
Some people get really uncomfortable about that stuff.
Well of course I'm not going to go out of my way to be an asshole to someone. That's just my general policy that definitely would apply in that situation.
But I couldn't just pass up the opportunity to reference good burger in 2023, rarely happens these days.
[deleted]
Well that’s true of every word
Not in the same way.
There's a difference between somebody asking you to stop saying "pencil" and a trans woman asking you to stop calling them "dude".
Ok stinky whatever you say