Stupid Language

If you haven't thrown up today, go read this article about gender-neutral language. Here's an excerpt:

"For what it's worth, you hear less and less of the old argument that "he" (and "man," for that matter) somehow "includes" women. Common sense suggests, and studies bear out, that when you see supposedly generic masculine terms you think first of males. But let's not pretend that the elimination of such problems would mean the end of sexist speech. As writer Deborah Cameron points out, the sentence "The man went berserk and killed his neighbor's wife" is unobjectionable on its surface. But stop to think: why "his neighbor's wife" instead of "one of his neighbors"?"

I fail to see how "The man went berserk and killed his neighbour's wife" is sexist. As it would be equally as common to say "The woman went berzerk and killed her neighbour's husband". And both sentences say a lot more about the situation than "The (man/woman) killed one of (his/her) neighbours." This is also funny :

"The rise of the modern feminist movement set off a new round of linguistic invention, with identical (i.e., no) results: te, tes, tir; shis, shims, shim, shimself; zie (from German sie), zees, zim, zeeself; and so on."

Sure, let's borrow "sie" from German. I wouldn't mind adopting some german words, I particularly like "scheisse" and "abschicken". Sometimes I'm not sure if people really realize how gender neutral English is in comparison with other languages. Feminists should go learn some German or French for some perspective. I'm all for improving the language, but it's always a surprise to find someone that actually feels like someone crapped in their cornflakes when someone uses the word "mailman".