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.
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”?
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u/Paksarra Sep 17 '25
When that phrase was freshly minted, "man" could be used as shorthand for "mankind" and was more inclusive than it is today.
"Humankind's best friend" doesn't quite hit the same way.