Purdue’s Online Writing Forum Bans Use of the Word ‘Man’
“stereotypes and biased language”
Wow, man. This is just more evidence of the effort to demonize masculinity.
The Washington Examiner reports:
Purdue Online Writing Lab bans use of the word ‘man’
Purdue Online Writing Lab, a citation website provided by Purdue University available for free to the general public, recently updated its writing guidelines to instruct the avoidance of “stereotypes and biased language.”
“Writing in a non-sexist, non-biased way is both ethically sound and effective,” the Purdue OWL site authors claim. “Non-sexist writing is necessary for most audiences; if you write in a sexist manner and alienate much of your audience from your discussion, your writing will be much less effective.”
Cautioning writers to “[avoid] using language that is stereotypical or biased in any way,” Purdue OWL describes that the general use of “man” as well as its use in professional titles is no longer considered a formal or professional writing style.
“Although man in its original sense carried the dual meaning of adult human and adult male, its meaning has come to be so closely identified with adult male that the generic use of MAN and other words with masculine markers should be avoided,” the site claims.
The formal recommendations include replacing “mankind” with “humanity,” “man-made” with “synthetic or machine-made,” “the common man” with the “average person,” and “man the room” with “stock the room.”
Additionally, writers should avoid the use of “man” for occupational terms such as mailman, congressman, policeman, and fireman.
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Comments
Guidelines and suggestions to avoid sexist language have been in most style guides since the 80s. This is not new.
I tend to support such guidelines, within reason.
Well, then, people had better stop addressing a group of women as “you guys”, hadn’t they?
Fair enough … as long as they discourage the use of wo-man and it’s variants and phrases too. But they won’t.
Lemmings are rampant in higher education.
They recommend replacing MANkind with huMANity. I wonder how long it will take them to figure out that the two words are equally “sexist.”
I recommend avoiding use of the word “Purdue” and replacing it with the adjective “perdu,” which describes the state of higher education there.
The real problem with Leftists’ myriad, petty totalitarian antics is that, eventually, by virtue of inertia and the achieving of a measure of cultural hegemony, they lead to substantive totalitarianism. We’ve been seeing this process work itself out over the past eight decades, or so, since FDR’s tenure in office.
Americans of all political persuasions need to wake up — jackboot Leftists want to tell us what we can and cannot eat and drink, what words we can and cannot use, how much money we can and cannot earn, what (contrived) constitutional “rights” are to be venerated as allegedly sacred and unassailable, and, which (explicitly delineated) rights are deemed illegitimate and are thus fit to be eviscerated.