Efforts to dispel androcentric language go too far

The argument

Proponents of this position treat the objection to words like 'mankind' as resting on a confusion about how such words work. 'Mankind' and words like it refer to all humans, not just men; on this view the syllable 'man' inside them is not an assertion that humanity is male but a feature of the word's history, and to read it as an assertion is to treat a form as though it were an argument. Holding such terms to be sexist merely because they contain 'man' is, on this account, political correctness pushed too far — an objection to a shape rather than to a meaning, and to a meaning that competent speakers do not in fact take from them. The second strand of the argument concerns what the reform movement does rather than what it says. Words like 'mankind' have been used to talk about all people for a long time, and proponents see no need to change that by substituting other gender-neutral language. The campaign against so-called androcentric usage is characterised here as radical feminists attempting to change how people speak, which in practice means telling them which ordinary words they may not use — effectively censoring them, on this reading, and encroaching on their right to free speech, since the demand is pressed through disapproval of vocabulary rather than through argument about substance. Finally, proponents hold that the whole dispute is misdirected. There are far more pressing issues, both in gender relations and in the world as a whole, than people's choice of words. If the terms at issue already include everyone, and the effort to police them costs speech and attention that more serious problems require, then on this reasoning the campaign against androcentric language overreaches — and what sustains gender roles, if anything does, is not to be found in the vocabulary itself.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It is important to recognize and combat sexism and prejudice in all forms, and this includes androcentric language. The word "man" is no longer completely synonymous with "person," which many dictionaries and writing guides acknowledge. Many studies show that generic male-oriented language (such as using "he" as the default pronoun) makes listeners perceive a man as the default person, too, instead of a woman or gender-nonconforming person. This perpetuates the notion of men as the norm and anything else as the (potentially deviant) exception and can result in a number of detrimental effects primarily on non-male individuals. Sexism is incredibly pervasive in society, so it is therefore essential that all people do what they can to eradicate it.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] "Common sense" is not evidence of how a word is actually received, and the counter cites dictionaries, style guides and studies finding that generic masculine terms lead listeners to picture a man — the empirical question the premise declines to examine. [Rejecting P2] Recommending different wording is not censorship in any legal sense, since no one is prevented from saying "mankind"; and ranking the issue as less pressing than others is a reason to spend attention elsewhere, not a reason the criticism is mistaken. Neither premise bears on whether androcentrism perpetuates gender roles, which is the question at issue.

Further reading

Research articles analyzing resistance to changing androcentric language: https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620937188 https://rdcu.be/b6qGk https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X14538638