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  3. Nobody ever protests that an elementary school should be described as "manned" instead of "staffed," but dare to suggest a "men

Nobody ever protests that an elementary school should be described as "manned" instead of "staffed," but dare to suggest a "men

admin2022-11-16  95
问题     Nobody ever protests that an elementary school should be described as "manned" instead of "staffed," but dare to suggest a "men at work" sign could just as easily read "workers present" and you might cause a commotion. However, a growing number of women who fill allegedly male-dominated jobs are starting to speak up, and to push for gender neutrality in language.
    Recently, NASA has been working to erase all hints of gender bias. The agency even converted the phrase "manned mission" to "crewed mission". Casual English speech is riddled with gender-specific terms like "manned" that we now use without deliberate bias or sexism but that sometimes carry shadows of past decades’ antiquated stereotypes. In this way, it’s possible the phrase "giant leap for mankind" would now reference "humanity" instead.
    For fields stereotyped as male, like medicine or firefighting, we often create special two-noun phrases to describe the women—woman doctor, woman firefighter. In fact, these peculiar two-noun phrases are grammatically incorrect. The right way to modify the nouns is with an adjective, for example the word "female," as in "female doctor", unless we mean that a "woman scientist" is somehow an entirely different creature than a normal scientist. Some protest that the word "female" sounds clinical, but notably the grammatical mistake never occurs in reverse: we always manage correctly to apply the adjective "male," as in "a male nurse" rather than "a man nurse."
    However, Pilot Katherine Sharp Landdeck, author of The Women with Silver Wings, a book about the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of WWII, embraces her two-noun term and says she belongs to the group Women Military Aviators. She doesn’t think the trend traces directly to the legendary WASPs. Rather, Landdeck thinks the term "woman pilot" originated outside the influence of the early female aviators themselves, and is reflective of the linguistic trend of outside observers applying two-noun phrases to outstanding women. And she does note that many women in aviation are willing to use the phrase as part of an effort to encourage more equality in a world where a mere 7 percent of participants are female.
    In fields where women remain the few, I will admit there is sometimes value in pointing out our existence to younger generations when it is relevant to do so. But maybe we can at least start to be more equal in our language, like NASA. Grammarian Mignon Fogarty recommends a simple test: ask yourself if you would phrase the sentence the same way if your subject were a man. If you would use "male" instead of "man," then use "female" instead of "woman." If you would omit his gender altogether, then consider whether mentioning her gender is necessary. It certainly wouldn’t be a giant leap for mankind, but it might be a tiny push for humanity.
What is the best title of this text?
选项 A、NASA’s Work to Advocate Gender Neutrality
B、Why Does the Phrase "Woman Scientist" Even Exist?
C、The Protests Against Incorrect Grammar
D、Use "Female" Rather Than "Woman"
答案B
解析 总结每个自然段的内容，本文主旨在强调语言中的性别中立，即不必刻意强调“女”科学家，或“女”医生。换言之， “女”字的头衔并不是必须存在的，应当消除这种语言中的偏见，故B项为正确答案。A项和D项都过于片面，只截取了文章某一个自然段的大意，而不能概括全文，故均排除；C项则根本就偏离了中心议题，作者提到语法错误依旧是为了呼吁语言中的性别平等，而不是为了抗议语法错误，故排除。
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