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