omgawsome

omgawsome:

Is it possible that (while there are people out there who actively dismiss choices contrary to their own) the poster was trying to reach the audience with a broader, more universal point completely separated from the conversation of your gender or sexual identity?

This is a…

There’s nothing hard about it, and there’s nothing wrong with it.  I’m just perplexed at the notion that a discussion has to undergo a full-stop (I’ve had this happen personally twice recently) for the person I’m engaging to bring up the point of gender binaries.  

In your (this is a grand you, not you specifically dear reader) own engagements, apply whatever nomenclature you’d like to society as a whole-and while I have gone off on screeds of my own regarding the mutability of vernacular-the vocabulary of our congress lends itself to great depths of subtlety.  ’Mankind’ for example is widely known to refer to all humans; biologically male and female are included here.

Now-I feel as if I already know how one might want the brakes tapped again to bring out the root word man in mankind as something that should be more gender neutral.  Without getting fully into that bowl of soup, yes our particular sampler platter of a language absolutely does have the potential to be more gender neutral.  In fact, it quite is.  The words exist, we do not need rhetoricians and lexicographers to coin new phrases to adequately support every possible flavor of identity. 

I think Sheryl Sandberg has done a fantastic job bringing the word businesswoman to the front of our vocal chords with the buzz around her book, ‘Lean in’.  She is defined on Wikipedia as a businesswoman. As does Forbes.  CNN even shows us society understands-even in paraphrasing-the inherent existence of a gender-inclusive vocabulary and narrative, but I have to bring us back around to terms like ‘mankind’ or phrases such as ‘men and women’.

While ultimately I think it is the full duty of a writer or alternatively an orator to adequately convey the full picture of their sermon and keep his audience engaged by not speaking down to them in harsh diction. The other-more subtle aspect to our communication is theme. I think it’s distracting then that word choice of say “Mankind” when a discussion on Neil Armstrong’s ‘One small step’ sound byte is at play to completely swing social congress into the territory of gender dynamics.  In the case of our first lunar explorer made of meat, bone and water is that his words were simultaneously an appeal to and an affirmation of all humanities triumphs using a word that had simply been used as such.  There are times when I am tempted to counter the root word ‘man’ argument with the notion that the word woman also contains man.  

I could go on, postulating and waxing poetic for hours on my views of language, and I’d talk circles around myself in the process.  Diction is just one part of how we communicate; ignoring other facets like motive, intent, theme and tone (which help us intercept and analyze diction to create word pictures, thoughts and opinions) results in distractions that move us away from the issues that should already inherently unite us. I point to the Neil Armstrong reference above.
 

Big wall of text, hope that clarifies my stance some.  

(I love it when my followers challenge my opinions in such a respectful, and level headed way.)