Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
But it's not.
We've back-formed "man" from "human" - and it is - or we wouldn't be worried about it.

The real question is, why do you think we're not? You are muddled on two separate points: first, that the form in another, ancient, language has any present significance in the context of de-sexing language; second that grammatical gender is a form of sexed language in the way that we care about.
As I have already said, people are happier with the language they're more ignorant of - because they feel it's de-sexed. They don't fully understand all the connotations of the word they're using, so they're happy with it.

The word "vagina" is just a great example, because it's so inherently sexist, reducing a woman's intimate parts to their function with relation to a man. People like the word, though, because they don't understand it. By contrast they dislike English words such as cwim which I tried to find a reputable reference for and can't because it's relegated to "slang".

Presumably these people speak languages and lead lives outside Classics.
Ja, some of them speak Spanish or Catalan. The defence that the word is so divorced from modern English that it's origin is no longer relevant only works in English​. Which was the sole point of those examples.