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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  97
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.
Grammarian Mignon Fogarty is most likely to agree that________.
选项 A、the factor of gender should be omitted altogether in our language
B、the right way to modify nouns is with an adjective like "male" or "female"
C、gender equality should be taken into account in our language
D、it is not necessary to mention the gender of a woman when you make a sentence
答案C
解析 根据关键词Grammarian Mignon Fogarty可定位到第五段第三句Mignon Fogarty recommends a simple test: ask yourself if you would phrase the sentence the same way if your subject were a man (语法学家蜜妮安.福格蒂推荐使用一项简单的测试：如果描述的对象是男性，问问你自己，你还会不会用同样的方式遣词造句)。根据她的话，我们可以总结出，在遣词造句时，应该考虑使用体现男女平等的语言，即考虑性别平等，故C项为正确答案。第五段第五句话提到If you would omit his gender altogether, then consider whether mentioning her gender is necessary (如果你根本不提男性的性别，那也要考虑一下是否有必要提到女性的性别)，这句话是举例分析遣词造句过程中的性别平等问题，并不是要完全忽视性别因素，故排除选项A；在第三段，作者用语法层面的知识来阐述语言中关于性别平等的措辞问题，旨在呼吁语言中的性别平等，而保证语法的正确并不是真正的目的，且这并不是语法学家蜜妮安.福格蒂的观点，故排除B项；D项内容与选项A出自同一句话If you would omit his gender altogether, then consider whether mentioning her gender is necessary，D项断章取义，应排除。
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