this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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All good points. I admit (growing up in the 70s, and being male) I happily referred to women who were mailcarriers as "the mailman" for years and years before I was informed it was problematic. Functionally it always was gender neutral to me (much like congressman, etc).
While I have been (and remain) open to adjusting my vocabulary with the times and have generally sought to become more mindful in my choice of words, this particular ball of wax is always challenging for me because even as a kid I truly never thought of such words as actually specifying a man. So I tend to get really pedantic in trying to understand humor and memes that touch on those issues because thinking of the terms that way is still a bit of a manual (no pun intended) process for me.
various edits to fix a typo and provide clarity
At the same time, it was also an era where the gender neutral or gender unknown pronoun was “he” for those roles. Eg “The congressman spoke at length. I don’t know who it was, but I’m sure he must have been tired by the end.” It was to the point where most style guides claimed that “he” was the correct gender neutral pronoun. Conversely, it wasn’t truly gender neutral because “she” would be the default for roles like secretary and nurse. I find it implausible to believe that all this really had no effect on the impression that women were not the typical congress person, firefighter, etc. So I think it’s a spectrum, and I believe you that you personally used it in a gender neutral way, but I doubt it was truly gender neutral in society overall.
For sure getting rid of those sorts of terms (my headscratching at OP aside) certainly pushes things more in the direction of gender neutrality, not less.
One girl closing off a career path for herself because she's noticed and internalized "-man" in the name is more than enough reason to adjust how we use the language IMO, and I have no doubt that far more than just one girl was impacted in such a way.
OTOH, I think there was plenty of very overt sexism back then that was going to have an effect that would likely completely eclipse the effect of the language in this regard.
I can't argue there, and if nothing else it was something to reach for when the typical folks (you know the type) would want to say "it says 'Fireman' right in the name!" or etc.
Edit: I essentially mismatched the quoted bits with my reply to each, fixed now. I semi-seriously blame cognitive weirdness post-covid.