Don't Say Man, Man!

Here’s something I noticed lately of our media culture. You can’t say the word “man.” Even when dealing with an exclusive group of men, you can’t refer to them as a group of “men.” They have to be referred to as a group of “people,” even if there isn’t a single woman among them.

For instance, I was surfing the TV cable guide last night when I came across a show for one of the History channels. There’s a teevee show called “Picturing the Presidents.” Sounded like something I might want to DVR for the little ones, so I clicked on the INFO button and this is what displayed:

At the National Portrait Gallery’s America’s Presidents exhibit, visitors get up close and personal with the people who shaped the country’s history.

Ahhh! There’s that word, people, that I hate so much.

Why couldn’t it have said, “visitors get up close and personal with the men who shaped the country’s history”? Is that sexist? All our presidents, and all our vice presidents, have been men. Yes, there have been two female candidates for vice president, but neither was elected to office and has not shaped the country’s history. Unless you count what Sarah Palin is currently doing as a pundit, but what she’s doing she’s not doing in an official governmental capacity.

This reminds me of a book I once browsed through detailing the lives and legends behind the Apostles. That’s another exclusively male group, right? Well, the inside jacket began (and I have to paraphrase), “During his public ministry, Christ chose twelve people who would later change the world …”

Are women so fragile that if they read a description of a group of twelve men as a group of twelve men they will run screaming from the room?

Perhaps soon we shall start seeing Major League Baseball teams having nine people on the field? Or maybe we’ll learn that Pope Benedict XVI is the 265th person to hold the papacy?

Why the antagonism towards that simple three-letter word? Isn’t this just foolish?