One of the comments reads : Actually, we will probably never figure out, was it man or woman. but I thought this comment of the professor was an interesting eye opener. https://mastodonapp.uk/@MarkHoltom/112070436760917344
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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Agreed, when speaking of the distant past, I always assume that by "man" they mean "mankind" aka human.... Not males.
In the grand scheme, I don't think it matters whether the thing was done by a male or female, the fact that it happened is the interesting thing about it.
I'm 100% positive that both men (males) and women contributed to these things, and it is impossible to know how much influence each sex had on any given thing, so I'm not sure why the sex of the ancient person who did it, matters.
Make that a common sentiment and a good chunk of the division surrounding modern discourse goes away. People care way too much about genitals both in the past and present.
Not only what your genitalia is, but what you do with it, seems to be a top priority for far too many people. They're not your genitals, so maybe don't worry about it?
But "God" or something. I don't know.
Not sure why you phrased that as correcting them when you were agreeing and adding to it.
I didn't take it as a correction. More of a clarification. I omitted some extraneous detail that they added. I felt it was implied well enough by context that it didn't need to be said, obviously they wanted to add more clarity to the statement.
In my mind the two statements are identical, except that mine relies on context and theirs is a bit more explicit in what is said.
Fair enough.
I don't think that's phrased as a correction. It clearly wasn't as you noted
"clearly wasn't"
I see now, you just phrase things abruptly in a way that SEEMS rude but clearly isn't. My mistake. Have a nice day.
You figured out what it meant. That's clear enough for communication purposes imo. You're welcome to your own interpretation though
You are ignorant of recent history then.
Men did do their best to segregate women in the 18th and 19th century. And they succeeded. Even in the language.
Women fighting for women to be recognized in history is an important fight for women to be respected and recognized for their doing, because even now they aren't.
And I'm not saying it's an all men problem. It's a society problem.
Oh, wow. Um....
We're talking about bone carvings. And you're well into or after the bronze age.
What I'm referring to is significantly prior to anything you're talking about. The events you're referring to are a few hundred years ago, part of recorded history, while I'm talking about the early days of mankind, well before the printing press, paper, or even writing instruments like the fountain pen or quill.
When you go back, well over 1000 years ago, more like 3000+ years ago, why does it matter if a thing was done by a human person with male genitalia or female genitalia?
That was my statement. Either you vastly misunderstood, or you're so occupied by making a point, you didn't care.
We're talking about history where mysoginy left a big footprint because it was made by men that incapable of thinking that women could be more than what they were in their time.
Exactly like today. You're asking why it matters whether it was a man or a woman, yet this whole conversation sparked because someone said that it could be a woman.
That's conservatism for you.
I'm not disputing the fact that misogyny was (and is) and big problem, that women's contributions were either disregarded or coopted by some guy and credit taken away from the actual contributor.
That happened. A lot.
But in the times before the written history books, we should be less concerned about the gender of an individual who we think used a thing in a new/innovative way for the time. I don't think that studies of bone carvings or other ancient artifacts, being referred to as an "achievement of man" should imply, or was ever meant to imply, that it was done by someone with a penis. In that context, in all cases, for all intents and purposes "man" should, and as far as I know, is, thought of as "human" or "mankind".
This isn't a debate about the sociopolitical unfairness towards women, it's a semantic argument about using the term "man" to refer to a human individual or someone who is a part of mankind. Bluntly, I took the statement in the OP as a tongue in cheek joke by the professor. They know that's not what it meant, and used the assumption that "man" = "mankind" as the juxtaposition to subvert expectations, to crack wise about it. The same way someone would say "you know what sucks about twenty six year olds? There's twenty of them" where the premise directs you to think of someone who is 26, and the punchline indicates that your assumption of it being a statement about people who are 26 years old, was wrong. That's what makes it funny. Granted, that's not very funny, but it's the structure of a very common type of joke.
That's what's in the OP.
Instead, here we are talking about women's suffrage for a field where they probably only remark about the gender of someone as a footnote.