So when do we change our child nutrition program to Parents, Infants and Children?

It has to be just as bad to be the one Dad who needs help feeding a toddler on WiC as it does to be the one woman working behind the Men at Work sign.

If only 1 women is on a workforce of 10,000, feminists demand that all signs be gender neutral. The cost, after all, is offset by mostly-male taxes.

If just 15% of the military is female (and less-than-zero in combat), feminists demand that we speak of "men and women" in the military.

Women start half of all domestic disputes against men, and cause most of the abuse/neglect of children and the elderly. Yet, oddly, feminists NEVER say that "men and women" commit violence in the home.

Another example of "women good, men bad."

Feminism: The belief that men are inferior, unequal, and unworthy entities.

Imogen, I have to agree with AnnieW and jjm152. Personally, I also tend to prefer inclusive language, but I don't see it as being so important as you seem to believe. As a linguist, I realize language is full of things that show our past. The fact that we say 'The United States is' instead of 'The United States are' is connected to the Civil War.

It's not that I don't believe language can be sexist -- it can. But gender in language (and note that 'gender' has a different meaning in grammar, not the meaning it has in women's studies -- German has three genders, for instance, and Bantu languages have more than seven genders) is a much more complicated issue, and feminists are sometimes so simplistically Whorfian in their assumptions about what words 'really mean' (a very complicated question for linguists, believe me, not at all simple) and what they 'bring to mind' that I, as a linguist, can only smile. They really haven't thought very much about what language is and how it works.

Note for instance how you evade the problem with 'ass' metonymy by saying we all have asses. You miss the point that the metonymical use of 'ass' for person should lead to us thinking the ass is the most important part of a person, or that, if too often repeated, it will lead to us forgetting that people have other body parts. The point is not that we all have asses, but that we all have more than asses. And you simply didn't address that; you immediately jumped to penises, as if the question were the same. The word 'penis' is not used as a metonymy for a whole human being; the word 'ass' is. To a theory that sees an immediate, direct connection between word use and ideology, using 'ass' to refer to 'person' should have immediate consequences for the way we think about people. And frankly, as far as I can see, we don't. Likewise, I don't think that 'Men at Work' has the kind of immediate effect on the way we think about men and women as you think. I repeat: your idea stems from a rather naive idea about how language works.

What I think is that so much has been said about 'sexist language' and about how words imply sexism that now people are paying a lot more attention to these words than they were using before. Oh yes, there is sexist language, and there are stereotypes in language; but the way we have started paying attention to details, even things that had very little or nothing to do with such stereotypes are now routinely thought of as being a part of them. It's a social phenomenon influencing language, but not, in my opinion, helping feminism or advancing the cause of women. Such vocabulary changes are more a symptom of other events in society than really a cause of anything.

Thanks for the response and I think you have a point.

p.s. my boss refers to me as "yous guyz", even if it's just me, even if it's asking if I want to go out to lunch, but he's from Yonkers, so I always cut him some slack. (g)

I think it's a matter of perspective. It doesn't seem that you feel "persecuted" by the signs (I know it sounds silly, but bear with me on this) and I tend to agree with you. We've used words like "man", "men", "mankind" often enough to refer to humanity in general that they've lost for their gender specific role. Heck, if I had a dollar for every time a woman has addressed her girlfriends as "you guys", I'd be a millionaire.

Inversely, certain people live in a different world from us; one where they see everything as some sort of gender conflict. From women who "wage campaigns" to get street signs changed to gender neutral words, to men who feel as if they are constantly under siege by a feminist conspiracy to remove all evidence of "maleness" from society. To these people, "conflicts" like this one are just more evidence of their eternal "war" with each other.

Unfortunately I suppose, the rest of us are sort of captive to their drama.

I understand what you are saying, and am inclined to use inclusive language myself.

What bothers me for some reason is that this was a "campaign" that was waged.

It also bothers me that $$$ will be spent replacing all the existing signs. I get that as new signs are made, replace them with "workers ahead" or "people at work"...but to have to change out all existing signs makes it seem like a priority, a "big" change. Our tax dollars at work.

For me it makes feminists look like their priorities are out of whack, and I'm a sympathetic feminist.

And perhaps it was going overboard to make a point of replacing those particular signs, but I really don't get why some are so offended by the concept of choosing inclusive over exclusive language in public signage.

We're not talking about the more whimsical fringe revisions such as "womyn," here. Does "Workers Ahead" (or "construction," or whatever) signify such a great culture loss when selected in favor of "Men Working"? What is it that is so outrageous about choosing accurate language that deserves eye-rolling, snarky put-downs, the heaving of sighs, and dismissive comments about those darn feminists?

If the standard term were "White Men Working," would anyone question the superiority of alternate phrasing? Somehow I doubt it.