> If it's small and unimportant, why not do the right thing and use a non-sexist term instead of a sexist term? Because we don't agree that it is a sexist term

> If it's small and unimportant, why not do the right thing and use a non-sexist term instead of a sexist term? Because we don't agree that it is a sexist term at all, and altering common usage to suit the sensibilities of a tiny group of people[1] is a) pandering, which is discriminatory, and b) impossible. > Why are we defending the use of a masculine noun to refer.. Well that's just it. It isn't a masculine noun. It's gender neutral. It takes no stance on the debate whatsoever. Its resemblance to a masculine noun is interesting but not relevant. If the author had meant it in a gender specific way, he would have committed a grammatical error. Right bark, wrong tree, I think. You're just making easy noise. If you are passionate about the underlying issue which you've conflated here, I hope you also spend energy in more fruitful efforts. [1] by which I mean the tiny group of people offended on behalf of the larger 51% of the population, the vast majority of which doesn't even recognize this conversation as linguistically, much less socially, interesting.