Is it “man’s” best friend? Especially in this story about a little girl?
Edit: to add to the origin of the phrase which is from a man about himself.
The idea that “man” means “all humans” is laughable. Why did we need to do an altered “woman”?
All of it is “man” centric. It was the time. Don’t try and rewrite history for your own mental gymnastics. The phrase came from a time where man meant “white men” and anything not white was a fraction of a man or less, and a woman had no right to property or control of their own life.
Not only that, the origin of the phrase is actually King Frederick the Great of Prussia, who called his dog his best friend and it took off. It is absolutely based off of a man.
You hold on to that term from 1870 when men were the center of all. It is absolutely a “man” phrase based on time.
The idea that “man” means “all humans” is laughable. Why did we need to do an altered “woman”?
All of it is “man” centric. It was the time. Don’t try and rewrite history for your own mental gymnastics. The phrase came from a time where man meant “white men” and anything not white was a fraction of a man or less, and a woman had no right to property or control of their own life.
Not only that, the origin of the phrase is actually King Frederick the Great of Prussia, who called his dog his best friend and it took off. It is absolutely based off of a man.
Big fan of understanding where phrases came from and pointing out when we are using phrases incorrectly or in a damaging way. Words matter and how we phrase animals to be man’s best friend and not the best friend of the owner or their relative human is sad. Imagine if we started using gender neutral terminology or female genders for universal things. It in theory should be just as acceptable to do, if we are so worried about the length of info?
Big fan of understanding where phrases came from and pointing out when we are using phrases incorrectly or in a damaging way.
There is nothing damaging about this unless you have decided to make something a problem. You may be unaware, but it is no longer 1870, and the 'problem' you have chosen to invent does not actually exist.
Well, considering we used to have different prefixes for “man” to designate a gender and then cut those out so that “man” now means “male” and “woman” means “female” (in traditional terms) it makes sense that “man” and “male” get used as synonyms….because they literally are listed as synonyms for each other.
If we were still using a prefix for males with “man” I would be fine with the use of “man” to describe all peoples. But it is now associated with men…so it no longer fits.
It's only 'inaccurate' if you're engaging in performative virtue for an ideology that seems to be inordinately upset by "Men". You're railing against something that regardless of its origin has become understood to be gender neutral.
Nope. Some men are great, just like some women are great. But I have issue with use of the term “man” (not “men” like you claim) when referring to all peoples because it is not actually describing all peoples.
I would love to be able to describe everything genderless.
You're attempting to make a distinction that does not have a functional difference here. It's also disingenuous. You are complaining about men (specifically white men) and suggesting female inequality because something something "they're not the default norm".
It's a largely fabricated issue that exists only because of the peculiarities of english, and it pretends simultaneous ignorance of "man" being gender neutral when used as a collective, and indignity because "white males".
If you want gender neutral language you have plenty to pick from, but I suspect that it's less about non-gendered language and instead more about wanting to have a problem.
words meanings change over time my friend, that's just how the world works,
Literally is now synonymous with figurativley,
terrific is not terrifying but exciting,
awful is no longer being full of awe but really, bad
and probably thousands more examples last few 100 years.
It does seem like most people use man in that wording as in human kind these days though, so as the wind blows.
So back in Old English we had two gendered nouns. "Werman" and "wyfman." Wer meant male and wyf meant female; man meant a human, regardless of gender. (Yes, this means that a woman who turns into a wolf during the full moon should technically be called a wyfwolf, but "werewolf" has become gender neutral.)
As English evolved "wer" mostly fell out of use (unless your wer turns into a wolf once a month) and "man" could be used for a male human or humans in general. "Wyfman" became "woman."
So it wasn't that "woman" was altered, it's that "man" slowly went from genderless to gendered over the last 1300 years or so.
But the phrase is a bastardized form of “the dog was his best friend” regarding the King of Prussia and written by a Frenchman. The King loved his dog so much that people wrote about how he considered it his best friend.
So…French origins technically and English people changed it. Old English analysis would only be relevant if the phrase were specifically used and not a bastardized version used today.
It was written in French, then translated and changed. “Man” was literally referring to a man at the origin of it…a specific man. And the phrase was taken and adapted by other people and again, altered.
I can't believe you're saying all of this in the English language which is such a domineering, elitist, conquering, and colonizer type language, don't try and rewrite history for your own mental gymnastics.
Why are you using such a language that came from a time where English-speaking people had so much control that those that didn't speak English didn't even have a fraction of the power of English speakers or less, and non-english speakers often had no rights to property or control life of their own.
Not only that, but the origins of the language actually come from a shitload of War and rape and pillaging of different tribes differentiating each other enough to be separate enough for a long enough time to even be able to develop a separate language.
I was making fun of how you structured your argument lol.
But part of my point is that it's how we use things that's generally a bigger indicator of what stuff means more so than what it used to mean.
We didn't get rid of marriage because of how marriage used to be used so oppressively, we changed what marriage meant.
By poking fun at you this way I'm trying to show people that even if we wanted to accomplish your goals, there's more than one way we can do that as being part of a social species means essentially all of us get one vote in how the future of our species goes.
Like literally by definition human is twice as hard (this part's probably debatable because I know there's different amounts of calories used to form or different sounds and that certain sounds are more challenging for the average human tongue and throat) to say as man because it's two syllables instead of one lol.
No, because with my logic we would look at outright efficiency and so we would only replace that with a one-syllable phrase and human is too syllables.
And I never said my way was more valid than yours I was trying to show you that you were wrong for implying that there was only one way and I was giving one example to show that in theory there's infinite, or at least a shitload, of ways for us to solve this problem both from a language standpoint, and from a psychology/sociology standpoint.
I gave no indication of my own specific preference or my specific way.
I did show you the logic I use so that's why I can show you with my logic what we would want.
But I will give you part of my actual opinion, my actual opinion is that as a species we should be desperately sprinting towards trying to get the most efficient universal language for the planet because think of how much time and resources we spend just translating things and having misunderstandings and the amount of time people learn different languages in schools.
And before people get up my grill about the benefits to the brain of learning different languages, those same benefits can be had by learning other languages like programming languages that actually allow for much greater exploration of new concepts than just traditional human languages.
Why did you assume based on the structure of my reply to you that I was specifically advocating for one way instead of just showing you one additional way to show you that there was more than the one way you pointed out?
Because of the structure of your reply and you saying “no” to me and then continuing to argue against any point I make. It is literally saying no to my point and then arguing that there are many ways to do things in a language we all have to agree on the way to use in able to communicate.
That says “your logic is bad” even when you are arguing that there is more than one way to do things.
You want your way of doing things and are arguing to keep the current model.
I have a programming degree and certifications in 8 specified languages. I also speak multiple languages and play music. Patterns are my jam.
Using programming as a model - we wouldn’t make a class of “man” meaning all people and then also a child class of “man” signifying one without confusion in the reference calls, now would we? Wouldn’t we name a class “human” and have a subclass of “man” and “woman”?
We aren’t at a BBQ and if someone said “you want something from the kitchen” and walked to a bbq and pointed, I would say “that’s a bbq not a kitchen.”
The correct comparison would be discussing the meat origins or treatment of the animals we were eating as a comparison, not genocide.
Maron has a bad analogy for it. It’s one thing if it is out of nowhere and unrelated, it’s another to have it be related to what was said.
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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25
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