So since we can no longer use the term 'man' in titles in the military, what does one now call a woMAN?

SN Greg Wright
There are three discussion on this, each different in it's approach to the matter. I have the same response for all of them. Feminism has gone to far and political correctness or the desire to become a part of history by being the man who brought change to the military (Navy and Marines) has gotten out of hand.

Here are some thoughts to consider.

The word man may to some seemingly exclude women, however it is intended to carry the specific idea of humanity or people from the planet earth. This is reflected in the word human.

Perhaps the problem over gender in the English language has something to do with the fact that it is without the concept of grammatical gender. Our culture now views gender as being something personal and not in the grammatical context it should be viewed. In Latin, the word for manliness is feminine in gender; in German, the word Mann means “a person, or a human male,” but man [lowercase] means “one” or “you.”. In French, the masculine gender supersedes the feminine; the phrase la femme et l'homme (the woman and the man) is replaced by the pronoun ils (they [masculine]). In some languages the male female connotation is changed by simply changing the suffix of the word for example in German Ingenieurin from Ingenieur, engineer or in Arabic Habibi changed to Habibti, the change is made depending on if you are speaking to a male or a female and sometimes is there because of the age of the person you are speaking to. We don't have these options in English.

The argument that job titles should be changed to having female variations does nothing more than draw attention to gender differences .It does not focus on the truly important aspect of can or did the person accomplish whatever task was at hand instead of on was it a male or a female person who did it.

We still have the option to choose gender neutral language if we want. Examples of this are: No one instead of No man, Everyone for yourself instead of Everyone for himself....

Further if a person's gender is important in the case you are trying to make then yes go ahead and make that a relevant statement. Such as: She's was the rifleman....The rifleman jumped over the rubble and took her position behind a large steel beam. To say, She is a riflewoman, to write The riflewoman jumped over the rubble and took up her position behind a large steel beam calls unnecessary attention to gender. In most cases we can tell by the name on the writing the gender of the person. Lisa Smith..... For you Sailor types, Should we change the words to Anchor's Away to make it gender neutral "Anchor's away my boy" to Anchor's away my Sailors .... ? Lose terms such as "Man the rails"? Most ships are referred to in a female context anyway thus the term "ship's husband"

It is also reflected in many Naval songs and poems,

Take her down and softly glide,
Thru the deep blue underneath the ocean.
We'll control the ocean wide
From down, down underneath the sea.
Torpedoes crash and missiles roar,
that's the music underneath the ocean
From down below we'll up the score
Of the ships on the bottom of the sea.
Satan's hosts will pass the word,
in the future yet to be
That we're safe as long as there's
a submariner underneath the sea
So rig for dive and take her down
Go Down, Down Underneath the Ocean,
Fearless men will find renown
in the deep blue underneath the sea.

SN Greg Wright Greg,if she is proficient with it and is carrying a .50 Barrett--i would just call her "Bad Ass".

I thought we all called them females...

O.o