The Purdue Writing Lab Bans Using The Word "Man" - Barstool Sports Is Now Officially For The Average Person, By The Average Person
Just chill out, man.
Poor Manchester New Hampshire. Humankindchester just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
More information about the context of the clip, per The Washington Examiner:
Purdue Online Writing Lab, a citation website provided by Purdue University available for free to the general public, recently updated its writing guidelines to instruct the avoidance of “stereotypes and biased language.”
“Writing in a non-sexist, non-biased way is both ethically sound and effective,” the Purdue OWL site authors claim. “Non-sexist writing is necessary for most audiences; if you write in a sexist manner and alienate much of your audience from your discussion, your writing will be much less effective.”
Cautioning writers to “[avoid] using language that is stereotypical or biased in any way,” Purdue OWL describes that the general use of “man” as well as its use in professional titles is no longer considered a formal or professional writing style.
Where does this leave Barstool? As hard as the transition may be, all I want is for our writing to be effective. Alienating much of our audience? Sounds like a drop in pageviews to me. Can’t have that. Won’t have that.
“Although man in its original sense carried the dual meaning of adult human and adult male, its meaning has come to be so closely identified with adult male that the generic use of MAN and other words with masculine markers should be avoided,” the site claims.
The formal recommendations include replacing “mankind” with “humanity,” “man-made” with “synthetic or machine-made,” “the common man” with the “average person,” and “man the room” with “stock the room.”
For anyone who has never heard of the Purdue Online Writing Lab and dismisses it as not that important:
The Purdue OWL site surpassed 410 million page views in 2016, a 30 percent increase in traffic. Typically considered an authoritative, nonpoliticized source of information for writing and citation guidelines, Purdue OWL is frequented by college and graduate students, professionals, and anyone who seeks writing advice.
So with that, as THE most progressive website on the internet I am proud to officially announce our new slogan:
Barstool Sports, for the average person, by the average person. Stocking the room with machine made blogs for humanity since 2003.
[via The Washington Examiner]