What is mankind?

[enimmead]

Just heard a bishop on Radio 4 praying for mankind.

That's kind of him.

[ecclesvet]

Oh FGS, this kind of stuff is why young women increasingly don't identify as feminists...

[BasilBabyEater]

That's an intellectual response ecclesvet.

The feminist analysis of language, is absolutely valid. It was feminists who brought to the attention fo the world, the fact that women were routinely excluded from discourse about humanity and they did this by analysing the language we use.

Then you got a whole load of nobbers pretending that words like man included women too - whcih of course, they never did, there was some uncertainty about whether women and had souls until about the enlightenment, when bishops grudgingly conceded that maybe they did.

This stuff is important for our history and our culture. If we're pig ignorant about it and decide it's irrelevant, we won't understand it and that's not a good thing. On an individual level, it's fine to not be interested. But to come on a thread and slap down a poster who wants to discuss it, is frightfully bad-mannered and somewht oafish if you don't mind me saying so.

[enimmead]

Oh - and the boats on the Thames are....manpowered :(

[Trills]

To answer your question, mankind is a collective word for all humans. HTH.

[enimmead]

You mean...

humankind :)

[Trills]

Maybe you do.

[BasilBabyEater]

Mankind is a collective term for all human beings, ie men.

Because women still aren't humans.

Our language is really clear about this. The male collective term was used, because women and children didn't count as full, real humans with representative characteristics of humans whereas men did.

How would you refer to all women in the world? The word is Womankind. And all men? Mankind. And all humans? Mankind again, because women don't count.

It's a little thing, but it's a little thing with a bloody big history and we should be aware of it and acknowledge it.

[KalSkirata]

what about languages other than English?

[exoticfruits]

I think it too trivial to worry about.

[BasilBabyEater]

I'm not fluent enough in anything but German, to say.

Der Mensch is the German word - which means person. It does have a male definite article though, which does imply male, but it is a bit more gender neutral than man. (German for man is Mann and Weib is woman and also womb - same word.)

[enimmead]

Now that is something I never got my head around at school.

Der, die, das

Le, La

How is something labelled as masculine, feminine or neutral?

[CardgamesFTW]

I don't think this is trivial. Why use a specific male word when humankind has been in use since 1594?

I also have a problem with using "man" instead of humans and "guys" for mixed groups. You never see a female word used to descibe both men and women.

[CardgamesFTW]

...unless it's in an ironic or degrading way of course, then it's ok to use female words for men.

[KalSkirata]

peoplekind

[enimmead]

Seems like the "manpowered" boatsthe BBC was telling us about on the Thames actually have some women powering them as well.

How did they slip through?

[WidowWadman]

Erm, "Weib" doesn't mean "womb" and is not used to mean woman, unless in a derogatory way in contemporary usage.

"Frau" is the German word for "woman". And no, that's not used for "womb" either. The German word for "womb" is "Gebärmutter".

[exoticfruits]

We have lots of sayings that come from history-lots from ships-they have just passed into language.

[enimmead]

A feminist friend of mine is convinced "history" means "his story".

Apparently that's not true.

[enimmead]

Still don't get how you call things masculine, feminine or neutral in foreign languages.

How did they decide?

[VashtiBunyan]

It depends on the context. In the bishop's context 'all of humanity' would be a better phrase. In other contexts 'human beings' or 'people' would be more suitable.

The church does have an inclusive language version of the wording of its services, and it has been popular and widely used for at least 30 years, so it is his individual and deliberate choice on the bishop's part to choose to use the phrase 'mankind.'

Whether it matters or not, beyond the ethical implications, depends on what you do I suppose. Certainly universities have inclusive language as a criterion in their marking scheme, so if your children are going on to HE, it would be in their best interests to know that in contemporary society, inclusive language is the norm.

[LineRunner]

The 'Museum of Mankind' became the 'Department of Ethnography of the British Museum' in 1997.

Boats that are being rowed are being rowed. With oars.

[WidowWadman]

Grammatical gender and natural gender only correlate very losely. It's just a classification what rules to follow when declining (declensing? declinating? I mean putting it into different shapes according to their position) a word or what pronouns to use.

E.g. nauta (sailor), pirata (pirate) and aquila (eagle) in Latin all have feminine grammatical gender. but that's nothing to do with natural gender.

[enimmead]

@WW

It's all very strange. I think I got it all wrong at school. :)

[BasilBabyEater]

Yes sorry should have said it's archaic and now pejorative. And was getting mixed up with Leib/ Mutterleib the other word for womb (is that archaic as well?) which also means body (but also isn't used anymore for either AFAIK). I always got those mixed up.

I also never understood this thing of the grammatical gender of nouns not marrying up with their actual gender. I remember thinking how much easier German was going to be than French, because they had Der, Die Das , so obviously everything was going to be das if it was a thing. Then finding out that girl is neutre and chair is masculine. At least the french only had 2 genders. . I remember feeling a new affection for the word The. (I mean, why did the romans think an eagle needed a feminine article? Just why? WTF? In fact, why did anyone ever think nouns needed grammatical genders? It's so wierd.)

The bishop deliberately chose non-inclusive language. No-one working in his field, would be unaware of this as an issue and he has deliberately come down on the side of sexist language. That's his choice I suppose.

[WidowWadman]

I think, Mutterleib and Leib are pretty archaic. I think Leib is still in use in some idioms and dialects, but I haven't heard or read it used in ages.

As for genders and words, Wikipedia has an interesting list:

" Old English had two common words for "woman": þat wīf (neuter) and se wīfmann (masculine). (These words are the origins, respectively, of modern "wife" and "woman".)
German die Frau (feminine) and das Weib (neuter) both mean "the woman", though the latter is considered archaic for most purposes (although some people may use mein Weib in a jocular fashion in non-formal contexts, and Weiber is still used sometimes with a derogatory meaning).
Irish cailín "girl" is masculine, while stail "stallion" is feminine.
Scottish Gaelic boireannach "woman" is masculine.
Slovenian dekle "girl" is neuter, while its cognate dekla "maidservant" is feminine.
Swedish människa "human" is feminine; in proper Swedish the feminine pronoun is used to refer to människa regardless of natural gender, although this usage may sound overly formal today.
Spanish la gente "the people" is feminine, even if the collective term refers to a group of men.
"

I can see how the theory that grammatical gender has anything to do with hierarchy of natural genders is appealing, but I don't think it neccessarily stands up to scrutiny.

Really need to start reading more linguistics books again, have become a bit rusty.