• 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”.