• Cabrio@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Fireman and policeman in English are also not offensive because they aren’t referring to gender or sex.

    Human - Group
    Humans - Collective Individuals
    Man - Individual
    Men - Collective Individuals (Non-sexed)

    Not to be conflated with

    Men - Collective (Sex Male)
    Women - Collective (Sex Female)
    Wo - Female, men - collective individuals (non-sexed).

    Keep in mind these are all traditional definitions and were constructed before sex and gender were determined to be separate and before intersex was a classification.

    We now often conflate those in common English with human and man and person being interchangeable. As man (individual) with man (sex). And many others conflate sex and gender.

    Firefighters - Group
    Fireman - Firefighting Individual
    Firemen - Firefighting Collective (Non-sexed)

    Police - Group
    Policeman - Policing Individual
    Policemen - Policing Collective (Non-sexed)

    The arguments for removing gender from professions is based on the misapprehension that the professions were ever related to gender and as a result mass illiteracy has made it an “issue”.