Too late to edit my previous post, but I'd like to add:
When speaking in the general case, I think it's worth thinking about using gender-neutral language. The attitudes in the article that home improvement and all things handy are "manly" things are worth challenging, and using gender-neutral language is a simple step you can take.
The sentence "What ever happened to learning this stuff from good ol' dad, or your grandfather?" tacitly reinforces the idea that handiness is a man's skill because it is in line with that norm. Phrasing it in gender neutral language makes it clash against the norm, and that clash encourages the reader to pause for a moment, consider the norm, and possibly conclude that there's no inherent reason that a mother or grandmother couldn't be the handy parent. Or that both parents could be handy.
Why does this matter apart from political correctness (which I find obnoxious when it's for its own sake)? Getting over the idea that cooking is a woman's role or that repairing things is a man's role encourages people to pass on knowledge in ways that doesn't reinforce these traditional gender roles.
If a person lives their life without ever having these challenged, and then passes knowledge on to his or her children in a way that reflects the roles, the cycle continues for another generation. Then we have another group of boys who can't cook or sew and another group of girls who can't hang a picture or replace the fill valve in their toilet. If you think those are worthwhile skills for all people to have, please think of how your choice of nouns and pronouns reinforces or challenges the attitudes that lead to people deciding what to teach their children.
In case it matters to anybody, I'm a guy. I can cook, but my sewing skills are self-taught because (in my specific case) my mother didn't teach me. And obviously I didn't pick up on the gendered language before the edit window ran out. It isn't my intention to make you feel called out; rather, writing this was in part an exercise in figuring out for myself why it matters so that I might be more aware of my language in the future.
When speaking in the general case, I think it's worth thinking about using gender-neutral language. The attitudes in the article that home improvement and all things handy are "manly" things are worth challenging, and using gender-neutral language is a simple step you can take.
The sentence "What ever happened to learning this stuff from good ol' dad, or your grandfather?" tacitly reinforces the idea that handiness is a man's skill because it is in line with that norm. Phrasing it in gender neutral language makes it clash against the norm, and that clash encourages the reader to pause for a moment, consider the norm, and possibly conclude that there's no inherent reason that a mother or grandmother couldn't be the handy parent. Or that both parents could be handy.
Why does this matter apart from political correctness (which I find obnoxious when it's for its own sake)? Getting over the idea that cooking is a woman's role or that repairing things is a man's role encourages people to pass on knowledge in ways that doesn't reinforce these traditional gender roles.
If a person lives their life without ever having these challenged, and then passes knowledge on to his or her children in a way that reflects the roles, the cycle continues for another generation. Then we have another group of boys who can't cook or sew and another group of girls who can't hang a picture or replace the fill valve in their toilet. If you think those are worthwhile skills for all people to have, please think of how your choice of nouns and pronouns reinforces or challenges the attitudes that lead to people deciding what to teach their children.
In case it matters to anybody, I'm a guy. I can cook, but my sewing skills are self-taught because (in my specific case) my mother didn't teach me. And obviously I didn't pick up on the gendered language before the edit window ran out. It isn't my intention to make you feel called out; rather, writing this was in part an exercise in figuring out for myself why it matters so that I might be more aware of my language in the future.