While I agree that the *singular they * can sound awkward, it has been around for quite some time.
“One small step for [del]a[/del] man, one giant leap for mankind.”
The reason this was such a big deal was because if he didn’t actually say the word “a”, then he was basically just repeating himself…
If you have a group of 1,000 women, would you call it mankind. If one of those woman delivers a baby boy, is it suddenly mankind?
Anyone who thinks that men includes everyone should agree with the statement “it’s okay for men to marry men.”
Oh, you “would not use it today.” So you admit you’d use it back then. You are a racist.
So men can no longer call women “ladies”? Ok, I guess it’s back to “bitches” then.
It *is *OK for men to marry men. 
It *is *OK for men to marry men. Not sure what kind of “gotcha” you think that was supposed to be.
But anyway, you are not getting the distinction. “Men” does not include women. “A man” does not include women. But the word “Man” when talking about more than one person, *does *include women.
And you could call a group of 1000 women either mankind or womankind, they are both correct. (Though womankind does have a twee-ness to it.)
Nice straw man.
Sometimes words have more than one meaning. Prescriptivism is particularly ridiculous when it sounds unlettered, as you do here.
Weird, huh?
Concur. A dog is the term for a male canine animal, but ‘Dogs’ may include ‘bitches’.
(not exactly analogous, obviously, because ‘dog’ also denotes the species - a female canine is also ‘***a ***dog’ in the sense that a woman is not ‘***a ***man’ - but that might just be because a)there’s no battle for gender equality amongst canines and b) they didn’t invent those terms themselves.)
Just a guess here, but
c) when we encounter a dog, its sex is not always immediately apparent, and
d) it may not be particularly relevant under the circumstances.
In most cases, neither of the above is true when encountering a human being.
That’s what I use.
So Annie-Xmas is a racist AND a homophobe, spouting out some grammatical gotcha involving men marrying men. Hilarious.
:dubious: I wasn’t aware my sex was mostly “particularly relevant.” I’d better start posting under a more clearly gendered name or something, then.
Hey, you talkin’ about me?
Much depends on the nature of the “encounter,” doesn’t it?
When I used this term, I wasn’t considering anonymous internet posts.
Yes, it’s possible one’s sex wouldn’t be particularly relevant under those circumstances.
For other encounters (i.e., face-to-face, or at least voice-to-voice ones), I would think there would be at least some relevance.
While it’s certainly possible to “over-consider” someone’s sex to deleterious effect, I think few of us could honestly say that we give an individual’s sex no consideration whatsoever in dealing with her/him on a personal level.
Holy Crap, I got halfway through reading the thread with this eerie feeling of deja vu…
2 months short of 14 years?! There’s nothing left but bones on this corpse.
I still want to know what happened with PatronAnejo and why this thread got bumped 14 years later for a minor grammatical nitpick.
Did it really take 14 years to think of this reply?
Did he post this from deep in the Amazon via carrier mule and it just now got to the hamsters?
Was he in a coma for 14 years and it feels like this thread was just posted the other day to him?
Seriously… what happened here? I really need to know.
Freeze dried, duh!
I certainly (in general) notice whether I’m encountering a male or female person - just like I notice whether I’m encountering a tall person or someone with an interesting hat. I’m not really sure any of that has (or should have) anything to do with the terms we use to describe people.