Now you can build a snowman!
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Oh wait - that's sexist!
Is this snowman?
Are you kidding me?
Where is his snowballs?
This is a snoweunuch at the most!
Snowman is not only sexist, but racist as well. White privilege at the finest!
In case you haven't noticed, all snowmen we have seen are white.
No African-American snowmen. No Latino snowmen. No Asian snowmen. ALL snowmen are white.
The government turns a blind eye on this? No way!
What about the Affirmative Action that has been implementing everywhere for over a decade?
Shouldn't the government mandate a quota for African-American snowmen and Latino snowmen?
Snowman is also discriminatory against people with disabilities!
Many snowmen only have their upper bodies, no legs or feet, sometimes no arms either. True, the population with disabilities, especially amputations, is sufficiently represented in the snowmen population.
However, aren't snowmen representing amputees in a derogatory way??
Shouldn't a snowman represent an amputee in a less comical way, but rather a more realistic way?
Being this comical shows no respect for the people with disabilities!
This is extremely reprehensible and culpable, malicious and outrageous.
Amputees, time to sue everyone who makes snowmen under the American Disability Act!
(*It's funny that I'm writing this answer during a Disability Law lecture when the professor starts to indulge in his own intellectual world*)
We definitely need to lobby for a legislation which requires everyone to submit a petition prior to making snowmen.
Then the petition shall be reviewed under the strict scrutiny standard. The government is at discretion to reject any petition, and has the obligation to make sure that —
Snowmen to snowwomen ratio is roughly 1:1.Quota for African-American snowmen and snowwomen is met.Quota for Latino American snowmen and snowwomen is met.The population of snowpeople need to be representative of the general population.All snowpeople’s appearance shall be consistent with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Derogatory representation of any protected group is strictly prohibited.The modern English vocabulary you're familiar with became prevalent only after 18th century.
The Old English is almost entirely different from the modern English. The Middle English is quite similar in alphabet, but not quite comprehensible for English speakers in the 21st century.
Here's what Old English looks like:
(Modern English translation: Comfort for that he lived to know/mighty grew under heaven/throve in honour/until all that dwelt nigh about/over the sea where the whale rides/must hearken to him and yield him tribute)
This is one chapter in Beowulf commonly used to teach undergrad English majors Old English. Nowadays, Old English is used almost exclusively in the English Literature field for research purposes.
The English language we are speaking today has gone through many centuries’ evolution. It has incorporated many borrowings from a mixture of different languages, including Latin, Ancient Greek, French, German and Dutch.
Many allegedly “sexist” words today were actually coined without intentionally connotating masculinity or male pronounce. A good example would be the word “history” — borrowed from Ancient Greek “?st???a”— and first carried the meaning “knowledge obtained by inquiry.” Etymologically, the word “history” has nothing to do with gender. [1]
I don't know how the word “snowman” came into existence, but I can tell you that the word “man” is used not only to refer to adult males, but also human beings in general. [2]Adopting the term for the human species to refer to males specifically is not an uncommon feature in Romance and Germanic languages, although less common in other European languages. In fact, several centuries earlier, the word “man” was more often used to describe the human species. The generic meaning started to decline only in late 20th century. The generic meaning, however, is still carried in a couple of compound words, e.g , mankind, no-man, etc. The same thing with homo in Latin, along with its derivatives homme, uomo, hombre, homem, became increasingly more often to refer to males in the 20th century.
To sum up, the using “man” to refer to the human species is not because the world is too sexist to take women into consideration. Rather, it's an evolution of language which narrows down the meaning of certain words.
Footnotes
[1] This Is Where the Word 'History' Comes From
[2] man | Definition of man in English by Oxford Dictionaries
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