From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihps3!ihuxv!lambert Newsgroups: net.nlang Title: Re: re: genderless usage Article-I.D.: ihuxv.181 Posted: Fri Jul 9 10:29:09 1982 Received: Sun Jul 11 02:03:23 1982 I think the answer to Vic's question is that all the professions which have genderless names (butcher, baker, physicist, doctor, engineer, etc.) were, until recently (say 25 years ago) almost exclusively male professions, whereas those professions which have long included both sexes have separate names for men and women, i.e., actor/tress, waiter/tress. This works in the opposite direction, too. How many people, when they know a man who is in a job that has been traditionally held by women, must specify that he is a man. Thus, the title of "male nurse". This would explain the apparent inconsistency of professional names such as mailMAN, policeMAN, etc. That is to say that even those professions which don't have the word man in the title were still presumed to be all-male until fairly recently (25 yrs.). Thus, until women started to enter the professions on a large scale, all those names which are now non gender-specific did indeed carry with them the connotation of gender. Greg Barton