Binary Candies

The other day the topic came up in english, using male form of words to generically refer to all people.  Using the word “guys” for a group of people, or “mankind” to refer to all humans.

A friend referred me to this article that used was written using “white” as a generic term for all people instead of “male”.

To me the article was a real eye opener.  I began to understand how women feel when being refered to as a guy when in a group of people.

On the other hand tho, there was one thing that I did not agree with at all in the article.  The term “white” is not at all in any way shape or form meant to include any other races, while the terms “guys”, “mankind” are.

I can understand how women, when refered to as a guy would think to themselves, “I am not a guy, I am a woman”.  I can understand what it would feel like to be refered to as something that I am not.  But the thing is, women are guys, women are a part of mankind.  I belive that women have the unique ability to be a guy and also a woman.

Men are only men and cannot be anything beyond that.  There are no gender specific term that really singles men out that is used commonly.

This is largely a flaw in english that male forms of words are used to indicate general and while that is unfair for females, it is also true that female forms of words are used to indicate specifics and the lack of that is unfair for males.  To compenstate one can use words such as “people”, “humans” or “everyone” but using these terms are not very common and often requires extra care to structure one’s sentence to be able to use them properly.

English is not setup against women, it is setup against all people, and requires specific cultural teaching to properly phase out this way of thinking.