From my point of view, having negative emotions about this at all seems "ridiculous", much more describing it as "a mouthful", and framing it as their having "insisted" on doing something, rather than simply having done it.
Well, the generally-accepted term has been "salesman" for over a hundred years. Whether or not you approve, it's definitely a conscious choice.
As an aside, can someone explain why a generic "-man" suffix is taken to indicate only the masculine by some people? It's no different than using the masculine for indefinite gender, so why the objections?
Well, because it says "man" and that means a male. Never mind its from the German where 'man' meant 'person'; today in English we are where we are.
And 'a hundred years' is not much of a defense. Women couldn't sign a mortgage in the US in the 70's. I imagine folks defended that too - "Its the way we've always done it."
> Women couldn't sign a mortgage in the US in the 70's.
yeah you're going to need to provide a source for such a ridiculous claim. My grandmother has owned her house for much longer than that.
* edit: all you downvoters need to look at the claim being made instead of bringing up different issues. credit cards are not mortgages. "couldn't sign" is not the same as "needed a cosigner" or "discounted rates". the original claim implies that women could not own houses through a bank loan, which is very much false.
It is ridiculous, but also true. It's not that there was a law prohibiting women from signing a mortgage, but there was no law prohibiting banks from discriminating against women - which they did by discounting their income or requiring a male co-signer.
Specifically there wasn't a law to prevent it AFAIK, but in practice banks denied women lines of credit without their husband's approval as a course of normal business.
As per usual, and especially true in the US, the story is complicated. There was no law on the books that prevented women from signing mortgages in the 60s, but there was systematic discrimination and discounting or ignoring a woman's ability to make good on a loan.
> Part I discusses the extent of discrimination against women in this field. It concluded that such discrimination is wide-spread and takes two forms. First, lenders discount a working wife's income when she applies with her husband for a home mortgage. Second, lenders are less likely to make a loan to a single woman than to a man.
That smacks of pedantry. Sure, its correct, but says nothing about the issue of women buying property, and how they actually couldn't until the '70s. How is it informing this discussion, exactly? Other than earning imaginary internet points?
> Well, the generally-accepted term has been "salesman" for over a hundred years
Who cares? Did your ancestors coin the term or something? You can keep writing "salesman" whenever you write things yourself. "Salesperson" doesn't seem at all offensive, and I think it's bizarre to nitpick such a trivial and irrelevant aspect of the article. It reads to me like political virtue-signaling since the article has nothing to do with the gender of the traveling agent.
I wasn't complaining about the use of the term, I was simply rebutting the parent's claim that the framing of "salesperson" as the deviant term rather than "salesman" was disingenuous given that "salesman" is the status quo.
Look buddy, if you don't understand that certain things just mean certain things, I don't know what to tell you. Stop making everything complicated and just get with the plan.
If that was sarcasm, apologies. In a better world, I'd indeed assume it was, but social justice warriors have spoken to me in that manner with a straight face, and it's hard to know for sure.
