pacifistvigilante,
AAAAh! Oh no...the BOYS CRISIS! Dont forget, feminism is also responsible for boys failing grades, laziness, broncchitis, ect....the list never ends, according to some!
Time to crank out the male only authors, male exclusive titled books (ahem...Dangerous Book for Boys), and paint the whole school blue for shucks sakes!

judy, you got to it before I did! I was actually going to submit this for consideration over there but I couldn't find a general contact address.
I like how Gelernter's argument can be summed up in three bullet points.

Geoff Pullum just wrote a measured response to this over at Language Log:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005423.html

Language changes over time. To be "linguistical purest" is ridiculous.
You'd think he'd be more concerned with words like "w00t" being added to the dictionary.
Now that I think about it, it must be feminisms fault for young boys struggling with English in schools.[/sarcasm]

I think he's just too lazy to write out 'humankind' than 'mankind'...it IS a few extra letters you know..... I can't believe this scum is teaching children!

Womyns? I think when I see womyn, I want to say it like women.

A book I read that really illuminated gendered verbage was "Egalia's Daughters," by Gerd Brantenberg. The book exists in a different world where men wear a "peho" which is a bra for the penis. Men are known as "menwim," and females as "wim." Its one of my favorite books. The story is about a young 'masculinists' coming of age who recognizes the injustices that males are treated within their socitey and attempts to change it. The book mirrors the gender struggles in our society and places men in the position of the oppressed and womyn as the oppressors. I love the book, and I wish Gerd Brantenberg would write a sequel.
Question that came up when changing the spelling of woman:
I know we can change 'woman'into 'womyn,'but how do we write 'women?'

Wow, I forgot I commented here. Sorry to drop a comment and not follow up on it.
GopherII is right. I was referring to our language about sex, metaphors and how they're shaped by a male-active, female-passive view of sex, as well as a focus on the importance of the phallus. Most of the slang reflects this. Sex is perceived as something that is done to women, rather than something that is a mutual experience.
The book I'm thinking of is older than Vagina Monologues, I think. Many of my books are packed up so I can't glance through them.

BTW RoymacIII, are you a male or a female? It may explain your primitive oitlook on sexuality.
Remember, sex doesnt happen to women, they are ACTIVE in sex. Not every sexual act is PENIS + VAGINA = sex.

"Which, uh... has to do with one party being active, and the other party being passive, does it not? "
I assume RoymacIII that you are unorgasmic? You'd have to be in order to claim that a woman experiences sex in passive mode. Perhaps you just lie back and say the pledge of allegiance?
But for the rest of the 99.9999% of women,... they do not take a misogynistic point of view created from the invisible sexual identity that only seeing themselves from the angle of men as the 'actor' and women as the 'passive' would create. We do not see ourselves from the point of view that only a man who developed his sense of sexuality from the 1940s would see, and thereby have the effect on herself of distorting her female sexual identity by perceiving herself as a passive participant in her own chosen sexual act.
Really RoymacIII, you are a right-winger even if you dont like to admit it.I highly doubt youve ever cum.

Mild Ennui,
"Heterosexual sex IS penetration. You can't really argue the physical fact of it."
Paripatetic,
"It's only sex when the man puts his penis in my vagina? (because obviously he is penetrating while I just, I don't know, refrain from rejecting his penis or something)"
paripatetic brought up a good point I almost forgot! A woman can also use a strap-on on a man!
See Mild Ennui, its not "OOGA, OOGA, UG, UG ,(as he brushes his knuckles against the floor like all cavepeoples) me man, you woman,...me put penis in vagina,..ERF ERF!"

Secondly, is vaginal sex the penis entering the vagina? Or is it, as the other poster suggested, the vagina enveloping the penis? Well it's both, obviously. But I assume we view it as penetration because we've got the stereotype of men as active and women as passive stuck in our brains.
Penis entering vagina. Which has nothing to do with "men as active and women as passive". When you go through a door, are you entering a room, or is the room "enveloping you"? Naturally, you're entering a room. You're putting an outside body into an empty space.
Which, uh... has to do with one party being active, and the other party being passive, does it not?
It's not as though the vagina leaps off the woman's body and wraps itself around the penis.
It's not like the penis jumps off of the man's body and enters the woman, either, so what's your point? Are you suggesting that a woman can't, for example, climb on top of a man and lower herself onto him? Because it seems to me that, in a case like that, she's most certainly "enveloping" his penis with her vagina.

What are you, some right-winger crashing this site?
"Heterosexual sex IS penetration. You can't really argue the physical fact of it."
Umm, no it isnt. Lesbians use dildos and fingers and man and womyn use tongues, strap-ons, fingers, whatever. (CAUTION: THIS MAY BLOW YOUR MIND) but some hetero couples subsist only on oral sex, and gay men fuck each other in the ass, and perform fellatio. Mind blown? I think you would feel better on some "O'Reilly" talk show forum, where this kind of ignorance is acceptable.

Mild Ennui,
"Again, werman = male, wifman = female."
You make my point exactly. Using your examples, they took the word 'man' from both of the words and designated 'man' to be the default from which female is created from. They gave 'man' to men, and made the wo in woman to signify a different 'man' using her as the seperation from the default. Duh...I bet you love Dr. Laura. She has a distorted view that men are victims too. Theres no misandry in making it womyn. I used the words womyn and humyn yesterday in an essay I wrote in philosophy class. I shouldnt be a hypocrite. If I feel we as a society should use these words, then we should.

Geek.
I think the book (that suggested where the definition of vagina came from) was either "The Vagina Monologues," or "Cunt."
"I'm more concerned about the actual effect of using male pronouns as if they're gender neutral than the history of them"
Same here. I disagree with the above comment that stated spelling "womyn" is msiandrist. I love that spelling! I also love humyn.
So changing the spelling of words may be "ignorant" linguistically, but it's often an important (and transitional) part of man feminist's identity formation. For you to dismiss it purely on linguistic terms is equally ignorant and Experimentation is essential to identity formation. I hope you reconsider your disdain when you see people doing it."
WOW! I didnt write that. I believe it was Mild Ennui. I rebuked her statement saying the exact same things you wrote which is:
"Gopher, often women change the spelling of words often when they are in the inception of their feminist thinking and are experimenting with more radical notions of it. They are starting to be aware of the misogyny and sexism that dominates their society."

"Since I started learning Spanish this year, I've been thinking about how other languages are more or less gendered than English. For example, in Spanish, the plural pronoun is masculine if the group is all male or male and female, but feminine only if the group is all female. Masculinity as the default seems to be built into the language more than it is in English, at least to my naive ears. Are there movements to "neuter" Spanish (or other languages) the same way we're talking about English?"
You're misconstruing the meaning of "gender." The gender of a word has absolutely *nothing* to do with what the word actually means and its relation to people. It's wrapped up in linguistic history going back (and beyond) the Romans since we're talking about romance languages. In both Spanish and French, "war" and "peace" (supposedly opposite ideas, right?) are both feminine -- la. In French, many slang terms for "penis" are feminine. La queue, etc. Gender is more about getting the proper phonetic flow working in a sentence (meaning it's easier to say), not whether or not it's "manly" or "womanly."
In fact, in French, there is *no* word for gender in the english sociological sense. 'Genre' does not work. It may be the same in spanish, I'm not sure. My point is that you cannot apply your concepts of meaning to foreign words 100% of the time without nuance and expect to make a coherent point about language.

"Launguage rapists?" This man obviously has some kind of fear of being raped by a feminist. Funny. It usually happens the other way around."Our language used to belong to all its speakers and readers and writers." The last time I checked it was speakers and writers who were using inclusive language. Somehow I don't think readers have that much control over what writers write. Or perhaps Mr. Gelernter is saying that, as a reader, he should have control over the form and content of what he is expected to read. But then, language snobs have complained about the evolution of English ever since it evolved from Anglo-Saxon. The last time the snobs got ahold of the language it resulted in such linguistic abominations as the double-negative which is out of step with practically every other language on earth.

Is it really strange that I learned in one of my earliest English classes that the language is constantly evolving and changing--and that's just the way it is--but this guy, supposed expert, is so freaked out by change he equates it with violence? Very odd.

Lala is exactly right, she said what I would have said. Saying that the penis is penetrating the vagina is implying that the man is the doer. And your analogies were dumb. You could turn it around. If a blanket is thrown over your head, the blanket covers you. When you scoop up water, you say you scoop up water, not that the water is entering your cup. So then obviously that means that during sex the vagina envelopes the penis. Nice logic there.
And I disagree with you that sex is exclusively vaginal penetration. Oral sex is sex. It even includes the word sex. If its called oral sex why would I think that its not sex? It's only sex when the man puts his penis in my vagina? (because obviously he is penetrating while I just, I don't know, refrain from rejecting his penis or something)

Hi all, I'm a former lurker. This is my first post (took me awhile to screw up my courage:))
Mild Ennui, I'd like to bring up a few points in your argument that I find problematic.
First, and perhaps least important, is your insistence that the metaphors used to describe sex are not informed by the stereotype of women as passive and men as active. You yourself contradict this through your examples. No, the room does not envelope you when you enter it –because the room is passive. And as for the water example – if you are drowning, and are having water flood into your lungs and stomach, then people do indeed say that the water is going in to your body. But if you are drinking water, people do describe the act of ingesting water in terms similar to enveloping it - you drink it. Your throat muscles are contracting, you are pulling the water into your body - in that case the water is not active, you are, and our language reflects that.
Secondly, though a man used to be called a werman, and a woman a wifman, I think it is very telling that the English language evolved to drop the prefix in front of werman entirely. It seems to me that this is a validation of the idea that male was, even at that time, considered normative. The word designating maleness is the word that means human - to signify femaleness, one must add a prefix. It takes some mental gymnastics to claim that because man, in its original use, was preceded by wer-, and that the two together signified what is now signified by "man" only, that even today the word man only means "human." It does NOT still "carr[y] its original meaning," - that original meaning became compromised when the language evolved to signify maleness by using the word "man" without a prefix.
Also, I'm probably not the only one that doesn't really appreciate the condescension evident in your posts...

. "Man" is a masculine word now, whether or not it started out that way.
And it still carries it's original meaning, much to the chagrin of "womyn" using feminists. I.e. "mankind". Which just means all humans. Not "only men", as some would (incorrectly) argue.
Well first of all you're assuming that sex is only vaginal (or I suppose anal) penetration. I consider oral sex to be sex, even though it doesn't necessarily involve penetration.
By heterosexual sex, I mean very simply, sexual intercourse. Oral sex is considered a sex act, but I don't consider it sexual intercourse, which, of course, in common parlance, is what 'sex' refers to.
Secondly, is vaginal sex the penis entering the vagina? Or is it, as the other poster suggested, the vagina enveloping the penis? Well it's both, obviously. But I assume we view it as penetration because we've got the stereotype of men as active and women as passive stuck in our brains.

Penis entering vagina. Which has nothing to do with "men as active and women as passive". When you go through a door, are you entering a room, or is the room "enveloping you"? Naturally, you're entering a room. You're putting an outside body into an empty space.
Similarly, when you drink a glass of water, is the water going into your body, or do you consider your body to be enveloping the water?
It's not as though the vagina leaps off the woman's body and wraps itself around the penis. There's nothing inherently sexist in calling a spade a spade.

He has a point, albeit a brazenly insensitive one.
This gets to the heart of language and how it is used in contemporary society. When Tina Fey says that "bitch is the new black" she's arguing that bitch ought to be an empowering word and worn as a badge of pride, to stick it to Patriarchy.
This has been adopted by the LGBT community when they have reclaimed the term "queer" to mean anything less than heterosexual.
I am a member of the Religious Society of Friends, known to most as Quakers. Quakers was a pejorative term in the 1680s, but we adopted it as our own and we are best known by that phrase. I would not insist upon being called a Friend rather than a "Quaker".
When we modify our language to be inclusive I do agree that it complicates matters to an extreme. English is a language already littered with irregulars and exceptions to the rule and when we add a kind of postmodern construct to extend fairness it does muddy the waters considerably.
It's not what he says that is offensive, it's how he says it and what he implies, ironically through the use of the very words he decries as being used improperly.
If he had taken a totally different tact, he would have made a much more effective argument. As it stands now, he comes across as shrill, angry, and offensive.
Never underestimate the power of diplomacy when debating controversial topics.

really? I wonder what he tells his students..does he point out all the girls and say look they are language rapists!!
what an ass!

really? I wonder what he tells his students..does he point out all the girls and say look they are language rapists!!
what an ass!

Mild Ennui, their point is, regardless of the ACTUAL history behind the words, people still percieve the word "woman" to be the masculine word "man" with "wo-" added to it. Regardless of whether or not that was historically the case, people still think of it that way, because that is how the English language is used now. "Man" is a masculine word now, whether or not it started out that way. Maybe YOU are the one who aren't reading the comments.
"Heterosexual sex IS penetration. You can't really argue the physical fact of it."
Well first of all you're assuming that sex is only vaginal (or I suppose anal) penetration. I consider oral sex to be sex, even though it doesn't necessarily involve penetration.
Secondly, is vaginal sex the penis entering the vagina? Or is it, as the other poster suggested, the vagina enveloping the penis? Well it's both, obviously. But I assume we view it as penetration because we've got the stereotype of men as active and women as passive stuck in our brains.

This doesnt make sense. If you believe that "man" has no connection with the spelling "woman," then how can dropping the "a" in woman be misandrist?
Because, as I said: It implies the person using it has such a distaste for males that they have to eradicate things that even spell out "man", even when they don't mean "male".
I already said this. I hate repeating myself.
Anyways, you cant argue that man isnt seen as the default human being and woman as the word created from adding a "wo" to man.
As ALREADY SAID, (again), the word was not created by adding a "wo" to "man". The original words for male and female were "werman" and "wifman". The "man" in both of those words never meant "male". Understand? The "man" never meant "male". "woman" is not "wo" added to man (meaning male). It's an evolved prefix from "wif", which was attached to man (meaning human).
Follow?
It's been established by numerous people besides myself. It would help to read the comments to save people from repeating what's already been said.
I hate when people have the facts before them, and continue to argue points that are completely incorrect. It's ignorant.
They couldnt have used werman and wifman to refer only to a woman.
Again, werman = male, wifman = female.
Ergo, the "man" part did not mean "male" and had nothing to do with it. No matter how hard you argue it, your assumptions are wrong, reactionary, and based on personal interpretation, instead of actual fact.
can't remember which book addressed this and suggested that if it weren't for a patriarchal society we might have different metaphors for heterosexual sex that didn't focus so much on penetration. The penis would be enveloped or something like that.
Heterosexual sex IS penetration. You can't really argue the physical fact of it.
For you to dismiss it purely on linguistic terms is equally ignorant and Experimentation is essential to identity formation. I hope you reconsider your disdain when you see people doing it.
It's not ignorant to dismiss it. It's largely a group of people (like the person I quoted above) using incorrect assumptions about words. Such as assuming that "woman" means "extension of man" simply based on the fact that the word "man" is present in it. It's foolish, pointless, makes the user look ignorant, and makes them absolutely impossible to take seriously.

Haven't there been studies showing that when the male pronoun or suffix is used, that people actually picture men only?...It's not just an academic or grammatical issue. It has actual impact, as commenters above described.
Yes, thank you.
If the female half of humankind feels left out when only the masculine forms are used as the default for "gender-neutral" language, then it's not actually "gender-neutral", is it?

I meant to write, "it's often an important part of a feminist's identity formation."
What a typo, huh?

Gopher, often women change the spelling of words often when they are in the inception of their feminist thinking and are experimenting with more radical notions of it. They are starting to be aware of the misogyny and sexism that dominates their society. They realize that women have largely been excised from history, so they are trying to reclaim their history. The are starting to realize how women are still undervalued as lesser than men, and so experiment with linguistically breaking with male root words. It's part of a process of understanding feminist thought and history.
So changing the spelling of words may be "ignorant" linguistically, but it's often an important (and transitional) part of man feminist's identity formation. For you to dismiss it purely on linguistic terms is equally ignorant and Experimentation is essential to identity formation. I hope you reconsider your disdain when you see people doing it.

Since I started learning Spanish this year, I've been thinking about how other languages are more or less gendered than English. For example, in Spanish, the plural pronoun is masculine if the group is all male or male and female, but feminine only if the group is all female. Masculinity as the default seems to be built into the language more than it is in English, at least to my naive ears. Are there movements to "neuter" Spanish (or other languages) the same way we're talking about English?

I'm more concerned about the actual effect of using male pronouns as if they're gender neutral than the history of them. Haven't there been studies showing that when the male pronoun or suffix is used, that people actually picture men only?
It's not just an academic or grammatical issue. It has actual impact, as commenters above described.
And Herstory is not just a silly pun, it makes a serious point about how history has been almost exclusively written and recorded from the male viewpoint which results in women's experiences being excluded. There are many misconceptions about women in history because women have been left out of recording and interpreting history.
"For example vagina is a word that means "sheath for a sword," much of the english language was created by men seeing themselves as 'first' and women as the excemption to human. "
I can't remember which book addressed this and suggested that if it weren't for a patriarchal society we might have different metaphors for heterosexual sex that didn't focus so much on penetration. The penis would be enveloped or something like that.

"They're incorrect. Man meant human being, "werman" and "wifman" were male and female. As the language evolved, the prefix was dropped from one, changed from the other. It does not imply that "male is default".
That's why I find it gratingly ignorant when people use it. It's also misandrist, because the group using it is implying they detest males so much they have to eradicate even things that spell out the word "man"."
This doesnt make sense. If you believe that "man" has no connection with the spelling "woman," then how can dropping the "a" in woman be misandrist? Anyways, you cant argue that man isnt seen as the default human being and woman as the word created from adding a "wo" to man. It insinuates she is second in consideration. For example vagina is a word that means "sheath for a sword," much of the english language was created by men seeing themselves as 'first' and women as the excemption to human. Youre missing the argument by focusing on the spellings themselves and not on the way people perceive when they use the words. You cant argue that when a person hears the word "woman" that they dont see it as a added deriviation from man, rather than an automous person. You forgot to mention, what were women known as? They couldnt have used werman and wifman to refer only to a woman.
"In fact, if you want to talk about such an absurd thing as a language being "wrecked" by another, how about the French influence, the Breton influence, and the Latin influence? Stupid languages, they wrecked English!"
Thanks Peripatetic.I was freakin reeling when I read his retort about Italians complaining about English creeping into their language. English was highly influenced by Latin (Rome conquered the Celtic areas...). I found the comment to be highly pompous and ignorant. I learned alot by reading, "The Story of French" for a French class I'm taking.

I've been reading the comments with great interest, and I have a question for those who know something about language and English etymology. It's my understanding that the 'man' in chairman is derived from the Latin manus, meaning hand (cf, manual labour, work done with one's hands), and signifies power or authority. Thus, the seat of power or seat of authority. Is this the case?
As to the article (screed?) written by Gelernter, well, I could hardly be bothered reading more than a few paragraphs. He does his argument no good when he proposes that fireman and firefighter mean exactly the same thing. If he can't understand the difference in meaning in these two simple words, then he is being willfully ignorant.

What I'm thinking is more that if college let in anyone and everyone, it would cease to exist. It helps create economic stratification.
Not really. The CUNY system was completely free for its first several decades of existence, until the city screwed it over financially, and it was a remarkable engine for working-class and immigrant kids moving into the professional classes.
Complete open enrollment would destroy academia, because students need to meet a certain baseline level of skills in order for higher education to happen. Without that baseline, college becomes remedial high school. Certainly, public high schools and elementary schools are failing to educate their students left, right, and center, but that slack can't be picked up by colleges and universities--that's not their purpose.
What does create and perpetuate the economic stratification you're talking about is this shift in the past thirty years in which any professional entry-level job now requires a college degree. That is total bullshit. One does not need a college degree to become an administrative assistant and move up the ranks. I've known people with five years of full-time experience in publishing, for instance, who were refused jobs because they didn't have college degrees--as though going to college somehow teaches you how to work successfully in an office and how to edit better than several years of experience actually doing those things does. There's no reason for those two things to be linked; they're not in the UK. That's what's perpetuating the economic stratification.

It's also misandrist, because the group using it is implying they detest males so much they have to eradicate even things that spell out the word "man".
I think there are myny valuable viewpoints on this.

My main issue with "herstory" is that it's a pun masquerading as a serious argument. It's like arguing that we should rename the tropical storms to "himmicanes" because it's offensive to blame all that damage on women, or the surgery to "hersterectomy" because, after all, it's an operation on a woman.

Ruth, you mentioned that there is nothing to indicate doctor or actor as specificly male. But surley the "-or" at the end does? Is it dominator (male) and dominatrix (female), terminator and terminatrix ? So the "ix" became "ess" to indicate female in latin? Can anyone shead some light on this?

Yeah, that's not "rape" means, even metaphorically. I loathe the use of the word "rape" to mean "do something I don't like" in the same way that I loathe the use of the word "Nazi" to mean "someone who's strict." It's a way of effacing brutal violence against disempowered groups.
"An act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: "the rape of the countryside"."
Or, in fact, the word rape has more than one meaning, and that's the one I used. See the above definition.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, "man" in its origin meant "human being". But it also means male. The implication is sort of that males are the default human being, don't you think? That is what the alternative spellings to "womyn" are seeking to address.
They're incorrect. Man meant human being, "werman" and "wifman" were male and female. As the language evolved, the prefix was dropped from one, changed from the other. It does not imply that "male is default".
That's why I find it gratingly ignorant when people use it. It's also misandrist, because the group using it is implying they detest males so much they have to eradicate even things that spell out the word "man".

"The media was playing with replacing 'actress' with 'actor' for a while (still not sure which won out) and 'poet' completely eliminated 'poetess'. Yet again the masculine form of a word is considered somehow gender-neutral."
Actually, these particular examples ARE gender-neutral. A poet is a person who writes poems, and an actor is a person who acts. Do you insist on referring to a female doctor as a 'doctress'? There is nothing in the words themselves to indicate 'male person'.
Calling these gender-neutral words 'masculine' is actually misogynist, since it assumes that a 'person' is male unless that person is specically stated to be female.

The_Cellest, I think the point is more that if people never took liberty w/ language, we'd all still be speaking something totally different than English. I agree standardized spelling is for the most part a good thing (trying to read middle-english can be a b****) but as long as a new term/spelling is widely recognizable, it's really not different from the process that has been happening to our language, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, throughout the centuries...

EG,
Sure right-wingers attack the ideas in academia (well, I've had my share of right-wing idea, male-centered universe perpetuating profs in areas like philosophy and biology, but that's a slightly different issue...)
What I'm thinking is more that if college let in anyone and everyone, it would cease to exist. It helps create economic stratification.

"HAHAHAHAH! What goes around comes around.
He says the English language is wrecked? I'll bet he's not losing sleep over all of the languages wrecked by English! What a pathetic loser.
How many English words have gotten sucked mercilessly into other languages?
I've heard it with my own ears too; Italians lament the creeping of English into their language, especially in technical areas like business."
This is a pretty lame comment. English has "wrecked" no languages. In fact, if you want to talk about such an absurd thing as a language being "wrecked" by another, how about the French influence, the Breton influence, and the Latin influence? Stupid languages, they wrecked English!
The French are probably one of the most protective peoples of their language (l'Académie Française), more so than the Italians for sure (who are equally proud, probably). Tons of english words have crept into everyday French, and while some "lament" it, it doesn't make them right. It makes them linguistically myopic.
English is prominent in business largely because of technology. Most modern (nano)technology came out of english speaking countries, and thus it's written in english. Go look at the source code for a website in Japanese: it still has [i][/i] for italic. Their word for it likely doesn't begin with an I. Ohnoes, english is wrecking other idiomas!!
"Oh, and since there is an ungendered pronoun in French which means roughly "people" ("on"), I'm sure it is the translator's fault rather than de Beauvoir's."
Probably the translator's fault, but "on" for people is quite rough. "One" would be better. And we have it in english...
"Herstory" and other such concoctions are usually rather childish, in my opinion. "History" in French is "histoire," but the possessive adjective "his" is "son/sa". What would a "rebelling" french feminist call it who does not connect "his"-toire with maleness, "sastoire"? It's a platitude and pointless.

I think my original message was too long -- I kept getting a connection time-out -- so I've broken it into two posts.
Nina, you're mistaken. As you said, the English word "man" originally and primarily (if not exclusively) referred to a human being. But your conclusion that this implicates men as the default human being does not follow. A male human being and a female human being, respectively, were referred to as "werman" and "wifman." A commenter above already mentioned this in passing. In Middle English, of course, "man" replaced "wer" but "wyf" was retained, and "wifman" gradually evolved into "woman." You're right to think that "wo-" is a suffix, but it is not a suffix to maleness -- it is a suffix to humanness. That the word for humanness in this context happens to still be "man," which is now seen as gendered, does not prove your point.
Continued below . . .

Nina, you're mistaken. As you said, the English word "man" originally and primarily (if not exclusively) referred to a human being. But your conclusion that this implicates men as the default human being does not follow. A male human being and a female human being, respectively, were referred to as "werman" and "wifman." A commenter above already mentioned this in passing. In Middle English, of course, "man" replaced "wer" but "wyf" was retained, and "wifman" gradually evolved into "woman." You're right to think that "wo-" is a suffix, but it is not a suffix to maleness -- it is a suffix to humanness. That the word for humanness in this context happens to still be "man," which is now seen as gendered, does not prove your point.
As for "history," it comes from the Middle English "historie," from the Latin "historia," from the Greek "historía" -- which means "learning or knowing by inquiry," and also connotes our modern idea of "history." This Greek word "historía" itself derives from "hístÅ?r," which means "one who knows or sees." No mention of masculinity, as far as I can tell. Though an ancient Greek writer may have envisioned this "one" as a man -- one wonders what Sappho thought -- there doesn't seem to be any sexism in the etymology itself.
A little common sense and research go a long way to making sense of these disputes. I couldn't help but notice that two separate posters mocked the article's author for supposedly inventing "skreak" before even bothering to look it up themselves -- and the one who did, upon finding herself wrong, proceeded to further insult the author for knowing a word that she had not. Even were it a neologism, what a silly point to pick on! In the context of nails on a blackboard, the efficacious onomatopoeia of the word speaks for itself.

Nina, you're mistaken. As you said, the English word "man" originally and primarily (if not exclusively) referred to a human being. But your conclusion that this implicates men as the default human being does not follow. A male human being and a female human being, respectively, were referred to as "werman" and "wifman." A commenter above already mentioned this in passing. In Middle English, of course, "man" replaced "wer" but "wyf" was retained, and "wifman" gradually evolved into "woman." You're right to think that "wo-" is a suffix, but it is not a suffix to maleness -- it is a suffix to humanness. That the word for humanness in this context happens to still be "man," which is now seen as gendered, does not prove your point.
As for "history," it comes from the Middle English "historie," from the Latin "historia," from the Greek "historía" -- which means "learning or knowing by inquiry," and also connotes our modern idea of "history." This Greek word "historía" itself derives from "hístÅ?r," which means "one who knows or sees." No mention of masculinity, as far as I can tell. Though an ancient Greek writer may have envisioned this "one" as a man -- one wonders what Sappho thought -- there doesn't seem to be any sexism in the etymology itself.
A little common sense and research go a long way to making sense of these disputes. I couldn't help but notice that two separate posters mocked the article's author for supposedly inventing "skreak" before even bothering to look it up themselves -- and the one who did, upon finding herself wrong, proceeded to further insult the author for knowing a word that she had not. Even were it a neologism, what a silly point to pick on! In the context of nails on a blackboard, the efficacious onomatopoeia of the word speaks for itself.

Nina, you're mistaken. As you said, the English word "man" originally and primarily (if not exclusively) referred to a human being. But your conclusion that this implicates men as the default human being does not follow. A male human being and a female human being, respectively, were referred to as "werman" and "wifman." A commenter above already mentioned this in passing. In Middle English, of course, "man" replaced "wer" but "wyf" was retained, and "wifman" gradually evolved into "woman." You're right to think that "wo-" is a suffix, but it is not a suffix to maleness -- it is a suffix to humanness. That the word for humanness in this context happens to still be "man," which is now seen as gendered, does not prove your point.
As for "history," it comes from the Middle English "historie," from the Latin "historia," from the Greek "historía" -- which means "learning or knowing by inquiry," and also connotes our modern idea of "history." This Greek word "historía" itself derives from "hístÅ?r," which means "one who knows or sees." No mention of masculinity, as far as I can tell. Though an ancient Greek writer may have envisioned this "one" as a man -- one wonders what Sappho thought -- there doesn't seem to be any sexism in the etymology itself.
A little common sense and research go a long way to making sense of these disputes. I couldn't help but notice that two separate posters mocked the article's author for supposedly inventing "skreak" before even bothering to look it up themselves -- and the one who did, upon finding herself wrong, proceeded to further insult the author for knowing a word that she had not. Even were it a neologism, what a silly point to pick on! In the context of nails on a blackboard, the efficacious onomatopoeia of the word speaks for itself.

Also, we can't catch a break from our fellow enemies of the people, as academics and academia are constantly being pilloried by right-wingers for being bastions of evil leftism and feminism. So for all aspiring enemies of the people out there, I must recommend that you go into banking or think-tanking or munitions-manufacturing or something similarly remunerative and well-respected by your comrades in people-hating.

the traditional institution of academia is as a whole one of the enemies of the people
We are many. Sadly, academia is one of the lowest-paying enemies of the people.

Well, and as an undergraduate I've come to decide that the traditional institution of academia is as a whole one of the enemies of the people -so there you go =P

That was humorous, Nina. Or it was supposed to be, which is why I prefaced it with a chuckle.
In all seriousness, I do dislike "creative" spelling. I always correct it on papers.