Yes, you are PastAllReason. C’mon, do we really need to pick that nit? Humanity? OK. Yes, then use humanity. Not like anyone’s ever used that word, or that people in the past used “mankind” to mean anything other than “humankind”.
There’s a devil in every detail I suppose.
I’m here. What more do you want? You’ve escaped the kitchen (without footwear!!!), work the same jobs, receive equal pay and NOW you want sex when YOU want it?
Fuck you, that’s a man problem. We want sex when we want it and if we don’t get it (which is always), we’ll pout about it, bitch. Fuck you and your need to be cuddled.
“Stan Marsh? More like Stan Darsh!”
Fecking LOL. Stay off my coattails from here on out. You’re witty enough on your own…
Spoons, I agree. Pretty much all of those “pointed” spellings just cause me to dismiss the argument. They always strike me as just silly or a way to make a point without really saying anything. Any time I see them I think of the kids I know who are always soooo sure of the rightness of their beliefs, but can’t articulate them to save their lives. “Why do you think that?” “Well, you know, it’s just really true.”
Yeah, its like a guy I know back in my hometown that went around telling people how they still didn’t allow black people in the pentagon. (this was in fucking 1997! Google Colin Powell and do the math) and I (and I’m black) worked in the freakin’ Pentagon! This turdnugget still persisted that he was right but admitted he had never even BEEN to the Pentagon.
Why not use the more inclusive words humankind or humanity from now on, though? Even though ‘mankind’ was supposed to include women too, it certainly doesn’t look like it does - it quite clearly says ‘man.’
People in the past did mean humankind when they said mankind, but it was with women as an adjunct to men, not equal. That’s what the word implies, and that’s what society was like then. Course, these days if people say mankind it’s simply out of habit, but the word is still rather exclusive.
Well, the second paragraph’s kinda funny, but the first one’s mostly wrong. I really don’t have the energy to go into it right now, though. The implications of a single word like ‘mankind’ is about my limit tonight.
Less political perhaps, but can I throw in a heaping bit of scorn for people who use words like “Micro$oft” and “cow-orkers” too?
Because “cute” misspellings, whatever they are, just make you an ass hole.
Pretty soon, that’ll be inaccurate, inless changed to “people and robots.”
Well, in all fairness, he’d never been because they wouldn’t let him in. Catch-22, man.
I never said HE was black.
But he is. He’s also an idiot, so it doesn’t count. He honestly believes that I saw the spaceship we have hidden there, but wouldn’t talk about it. (and yes, on my rare trips home it is fun to jerk his chain about it)
But OT: If you saw two headlines saying this, which would you be more likely to take seriously-
America’s Race Problem
or
Amerika’s Race Problem.
It does depend on your point of view, but to me, the one with the K means it’ll probably be a loon bin article.
Well yes, posting/writing about “Amerika” is a juvenile trollesque tactic, indicative mostly of one’s vast ignorance about history and politics, in much the same way as ranting about “fascism” or “Nazis” when referring to virtually anything one believes is in the least unfair.
It wasn’t all that far removed from the tactic of referring to “USers”. Eventually he admitted to outright trolling to piss people off, without caring about whether the stuff he posted had any basis in fact.
I agree that there’s a problem here. Consider a sentence like, “All men are created equal, except for Michelle Obama.” Most folks do a double-take here, because they’re instantly confronted with the disparity between “men” including “Michelle Obama.” Yes, the word denotes both males and females, but it strongly connotes males only. Since that’s the more common use, and since our brains tend to gravitate toward the common use even if that’s not what’s intended, I think we’re better, more precisely served in communication by using words like “people” instead of “men,” or “humanity” instead of “mankind.”
Contrast that sort of consciousness-raising to words like “womyn.” I’m pretty convinced by a lot of feminist linguistics, but words like “womyn” serve no purpose. Nobody, AFAICT, hears or reads “woman” and processes it as “man, only modified slightly.” I cannot come up with a sentence that leads to a double-take in the way that “man” as gender-neutral does. Instead, words like “womyn” lead me to think that the writer has a head full of marbles.
Same with “Amerika.” Criticize the country all you want: lord knows we deserve a lot of criticism. But when you spell the country’s nickname with a K, it tells me that you’re the sort of person who expresses her sense of humor through bumperstickers and shouted slogans, someone who thinks repeated a tired epithet is a substitute for wit and perspicacity. It tells me not to waste more time with you.
Daniel
The former, obviously, but that’s because there was a billboard erected on a nearby interstate by a white supremacist group fairly recently that said, “Who Rules Amerika?”. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to make of it.
It’s because English lacks a gender neutral pronoun, not for exclusivity’s sake.
Political correctness is bullshit. Anyone who insists on it, claiming offense otherwise, is a moron.
Amurrrrrrrika! FUKC YEAH!
No mention of those that use "United tate"?
I think I’m going to start spelling it “Ameriqa”, or if I’m particularly outraged, “AmeriQQQa”.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11309022&postcount=5
So misspelling American is “simply a way of riling up other posters to no purpose beyond trolling,” but misspelling God or Jesus or Catholic, in an attempt to rile up other posters, is not trolling?
So much for consistency.