Genuine question, because I hear this sentiment a lot.
Are they the only ones who tell you, a fellow white man, or are they the only ones who are offended? I strongly suspect (this is not meant to be insulting) that you may not have a relationship with the people who this language impacts. It takes an emotional toll to confide with someone that something is upsetting to hear, even with coworkers or casual friends, especially if you don't think they'd understand.
Also, language has the opportunity to shape and influence how we structure society, even unintentionally. Thats why there's a lot of emphasis on teaching children about what words are appropriate. Even if naming your git branch "master" won't realistically impact racism and the history of slavery, describing some bad event in your day a word that has an origin in describing people can lead to negative associations.
Tons of black people where I come from, and I've talked to a lot. The idea that somehow that black people are afraid to tell white people what pisses them off is racist and incorrect. Again, comes only from upper class white people who don't actually talk to anyone other than other upper class white people. Here's a tip for you. Don't spout woke shit to minorities you meet IRL (as in outside of SV). It's cringe AF, and will make people dislike you. Just talk to them like normal people, which they are.
I mean, you do realize that 99% of black people have no idea where "grandfathered in" comes from, right? You do realize that going into etymology to find offense is something only snobby linguistics cunts that you would find at elite universities would do, right?
> I strongly suspect that you may not have a relationship with the people who this language impacts.
In society we have come to a collective understanding that “I’m not racist; some of my best friends are black” is an invalid dismissal of a person’s potential for racism.
Somehow, however, we have also decided that if someone does not have a sufficient quantity nor quality of relationships with black people, then that is a strong signal of racism.
Brazil has started to try importing this US "harmful words" shenanigans, and most of the words they target are common vernacular among the supposedly harmed people
Labeling a word as harmful actually harms more, since most new generations are so removed from the word's origin that it carries none of the supposed harm
There are exceptions, such as the handful of obvious slurs that they added (tar baby, hermaphrodite, etc) but the vast majority of the list is exactly like this.
Probably even things like policeman, man-in-the-middle etc are not offensive or patriarchal to the vast majority of women (especially since many such words are probably older than the current use of "man" to mean male person, and refer to the older sense of person, as in the US constitution).
> especially since many such words are probably older than the current use of "man" to mean male person, and refer to the older sense of person, as in the US constitution
I feel like that use is... complicated. Why, exactly, did "man" mean "person"? Why not "woman", then? It feels like using "man" to mean "person" -- including and especially in historic usage -- is itself patriarchal. Given the time period you reference -- the writing of the US Constitution -- I think it's even more stark, as it was written by men who were not inclined to allow women any sort of participation in the government (and I expect many of them did not feel that women were as entitled to many of the rights they were enumerating).
But really, the semantics aren't the primary issue. If a lot of women feel excluded by "man"-terms, then that's a problem. To be fair, though, I have never asked a female police officer or firefighter if she felt that "policeman" or "fireman" made her feel excluded, so I don't really know.
I think "excluded" is a better term than "offended" in some cases. "Offended" is a very squishy, subjective, imprecise, emotional term. What matters is why someone might feel offended by a particular term, and I could certainly sympathize with a woman who felt like "policeman" was implicitly telling her that she wasn't fit for the job, that women should be excluded from consideration for that job, or that women should intentionally exclude themselves from considering wanting that job.
As much as I disagree with a lot of the things on Stanford's list, I think calling words "harmful" is better and more descriptive than calling them "offensive".
Etymologically, in Old English, man used to mean person, and there were explicit terms for a (male) man and a woman - wer and wif. Wer fell out of use[0], and the generic "man" started referring both to all people, and to men (males) in particular.
This conflation found in early modern English uses of "man" started being seen as problematic in the early 20th century, and style guides started preferring other words to refer to people in general, thus relegating "man" to mean only male person somewhat artificially.
[0] the only remaining usage is in werewolf - though few would assume a werewolf has to be male.
[1] note that I am using "male person" only to make it clearer when I'm using the generic or specific meaning of "man". I'm not trying to conflate sex with gender or any other kind of subtle transphobia.
It's amusing to try turning it round, makes you realise just quite how sexist it actually is:
"No, of course I'm not offended by being called a firewoman, why would I be? It's clearly referring to both women and men" - Jake Miller, Firewoman, Springfield Fire Department
You would probably feel differently if you had learned the term man and mankind also refer to all human beings and that usage had been normal and active for your entire life.
Of course saying womankind sounds funny now because we haven’t heard it used for our whole lives. The term mankind derives from Sanskrit meaning children of Manu (a god). It’s not a sexist term and we’ve gone 2000 years without people finding it offensive, it’s only one that people with no other issues in their life need something to be offended about and decide to make a war on words.
The words woman/women refer explicitly to a group where every single member is a woman (female).
The words man/men, at least historically, can refer either to a group of unknown composition OR to a group where every member is a man (male). Basically it is a homonym with two separate meanings, just like mouse (animal or input device) or chair (object or leader of a committee).
Point being, policeman being ambiguous doesn't mean that we would expect policewoman to be considered ambiguous as well, since woman is not a homonym.
I think this could be rewritten as “only white upper-middle class people complain about these things” which doesn’t mean they’re the only ones offended or upset
