4 ms·

Why not just use 'person' rather than 'man'?

• mikrotikker 4y ago
  Man is not being used in a gendered manner.
  • niek_pas 4y ago
    Eh. You can _say_ that, but it's clearly no coincidence that the word for 'male' and for 'person' were the same for a long time. 'Person' seems like the obviously neutral choice to make, hence my question: why not just use 'person'?
    • mdp2021 4y ago
      > seems like the obviously neutral choice It seems very wrongly - because it just «seems» ignorant. Because where you read 'person' the normal and correct action is to search where the reference to the personality is. And in that case, _there is not_, and such lack was clearly expressed. Again: no, you cannot use 'person' where you do not mean "a collection of special traits". You can go on annoyingly inventing language, but it was already there. And you cannot demand that others adopt your code, which has no real foundation. Edit: > seems like the obviously neutral choice I missed that detail. «Neutral»? Neutral to what?! Gender? We should be obsessed by that?! We should introduce that in salads, in geometry, in this very page?!
    • mikrotikker 4y ago
      Omg. Get a life.
• mdp2021 4y ago
  You must have not read my text, to which you just replied: you cannot use 'person' instead of 'man', because they mean two very different things! The meanings of each are written right there where you replied - how can you see them overlapping? 'Man' has the same root of "mind", it means "having a mind", but so many things have it, so it must be a special one, must it not? 'Person' is a mask - that thing in which the voice "per-sonat". It means the mask, the specific one - crying, laughing, irate, whatever. No, you cannot use 'person' if you do not mean "that with a personality" - because that is what it means.