DehuMANizing our society

Webster's dictionary defines "huMAN" as "relating to or characteristic of huMANs. Consisting of huMANs. Having huMAN form or attributes."

Webster's dictionary defines "MANkind" as "the huMAN race: the totality of huMAN beings."

Webster's dictionary defines MAN as "huMAN being, the huMAN race, MANkind. A bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens) that is anatomically related to the great apes but distinguished by notable development of the brain with a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning."

Sure, the dictionary gives other definitions of MAN that refer to the male gender, but the primary definition of MAN refers to MANkind; the totality of huMAN beings. In other words, the entire huMAN race.

Why then do we, as a society or a culture, get so preoccupied with the maleness of the word MAN? Is it more important to identify gender over species?

Remember the days when a salesMAN was a salesMAN? We didn't have to worry about defining the gender of a particular salesMAN as a "salesWOman," or completely androgynizing the term by saying "salesperson."

Well, those days are gone. Actually, they are way gone. We are now so afraid of offending people (presumably huMANs, by the way) that we rarely even use the term MAN anymore.

Our politically correct culture now prefers terms like "sales representative" or "director of sales." How "sales MANager" still flies is beyond me. But if the trend continues, we'll soon see terms like "sales woMANager" or better yet, a frog will be helping us with that new pair of shoes because it will no longer be important for our "sales associate" to be huMAN.