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Yale changes class names to be gender neutral

Lucian said:
They aren't gender neutral. A midwife is a woman who is with another woman when she is giving birth. A husband was originally the male head of household.
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The words themselves are, they do not refer to the gender of the person. In practice, they definitely are. I think almost everyone hears gender in them (I do!). Proposing a new name would require a different argument to change them than Freshmen, or Firemen which are gender specific.

Like the word 'Captain' which simply means chief or leader. We do not change it now because there's no gender in it even though it was previously used only for men.
 
Seems the Marines and Navy both adopted gender neutral job titles last year, removing the 'man' at the end for many to be more inclusive to women.

Some titles were kept, like rifleman.
However, ...
A month after announcing the change, the Navy decided the complaints were too much and restored all the names.
. There is immense pride associated with the traditional titles.
 
Sherkeu said:
Seems the Marines and Navy both adopted gender neutral job titles last year, removing the 'man' at the end for many to be more inclusive to women.

Some titles were kept, like rifleman.
However, ...
A month after announcing the change, the Navy decided the complaints were too much and restored all the names.
. There is immense pride associated with the traditional titles.
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"As Chief Poop Deckman, I took great pride in ordering, "Man the Poop Deck!" No way am I changing that to People the Poop Deck. That just sounds silly!"
 
Lucian said:
They aren't gender neutral. A midwife is a woman who is with another woman when she is giving birth. A husband was originally the male head of household.
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Meet the male midwifes

Sherkeu explained perfectly well that the word means somebody who is with a wife during childbirth, not a separate wife who is helping with the birth.

On that basis 'midwife' is as gender neutral as 'miner' or 'refuse collector'. 'Miner' doesn't indicate gender just because most miners are male.
 
For dog's sake, people. This:

Cl1mh4224rd said:
I'm a pretty progressive person, but I think the origin, so to speak, should matter. Not every "man" in a word is a reference to the male gender.
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Once more with feeling.

When the "man" in a word is a reference to gender, then I am all for gender-neutralising it. Firefighter, police officer, chess piece, access hatch. When it is not, there isn't a good reason to bother.
 
Manual labour?

Many uses of the term 'man' actually originate from the term from hand 'manus'.

On the other hand werewolves are specifically male the female form is correctly a wifwolf. Virtues are specifically male and clearly needs to be retermed. Warrior from the same male root as 'were' and 'vir' needs deleting soldier is perhaps more PC.
 
Ok 'Mandate' is clearly a word that needs re-making. Not only gender specific but clearly not sapphic friendly. Personmeet? Does Theresa May have a personmeet to take the UK out of the EEA?
 
Mailman doubly gender specific so clearly needs to be post-person. Or does post have phallic connotations?
 
GlennB said:
'Husbandry' to 'spousery'

Is that the kind of thing you were looking for? ;)
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No, because "husband" there is an old word for "farmer"; nothing to do with "a married man". This is precisely the sort of illiteracy that wants to change "history" to "herstory". ETA Not meaning to imply that Glennb is the illiterate one.
 
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GlennB said:

Meet the male midwifes

Sherkeu explained perfectly well that the word means somebody who is with a wife during childbirth, not a separate wife who is helping with the birth.

On that basis 'midwife' is as gender neutral as 'miner' or 'refuse collector'. 'Miner' doesn't indicate gender just because most miners are male.
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That's not what it means. The "wife" in "midwife" does not refer to the woman giving birth; it refers to the woman assisting in the birth. From the OED: " the original sense seems to have been ‘woman (wife n. 1) who is with the mother at childbirth’. With the formation compare German (arch.) Beifrau female assistant, especially midwife's assistant (1377 in early modern German as bijfrauwe concubine < bij (see by- comb. form) + frauwe (see frau n.))." Thus, "midwife" is a gendered term, just as "fireman" is.
 
Lucian said:
That's not what it means. The "wife" in "midwife" does not refer to the woman giving birth; it refers to the woman assisting in the birth. From the OED: " the original sense seems to have been ‘woman (wife n. 1) who is with the mother at childbirth’. With the formation compare German (arch.) Beifrau female assistant, especially midwife's assistant (1377 in early modern German as bijfrauwe concubine < bij (see by- comb. form) + frauwe (see frau n.))." Thus, "midwife" is a gendered term, just as "fireman" is.
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A very fair point, and I retract my own point. "Midspouse" it is? ;)
 
GlennB said:
A very fair point, and I retract my own point. "Midspouse" it is? ;)
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It's actually rather tricky. There really is no way of making it gender neutral without using a new term entirely, but "midwife" is pretty strongly established in English. While "midwife" may not be gender neutral, in Old English, "wif" was grammatically neuter (the German cognate is das Weib). "Woman," which started out as "wifmann" (or "wifmonn"), was, of course, grammatically masculine, although it was sometimes treated as if it were feminine (i.e., it was occasionally modified by unambiguously feminine adjectives).
 
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