[ExI] Gender-Neutral Side Note

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Nov 9, 2025, 12:25 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 09/11/2025 16:01, spike at rainier66.com wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org>
> <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf Of *Ben Zaiboc via
> extropy-chat
> *…*
>
> >…But against that is the decision to replace "...where no man..." with
> "...where no one...". Again, no great objection, at least it does make
> sense and doesn't sound artificial, but it still tends to draw the
> attention to these silly 'gender issues' that get people so riled up, and
> it's unnecessary. There are more important things to worry about.
>
> --
>
> Ben
>
>
>
>
> >…Ja, that and they fixed the split infinitive by switching to “to go
> boldly” replacing “to boldly go” tossing us grammar nazis a bone.  But it
> also makes us realize that eliminating the split infinitive was not a real
> improvement.  Picard’s revised introduction still doesn’t eliminate the
> Columbus problem.  When I was first told Columbus discovered the Americas,
> I knew that was false: there were already people here, plenty of them.
> Where Picard went had “ones” already there, the Vulcans, the beloved
> Feringi (I really relate to them for some odd reason) the Klingons and so
> forth.
>
>
>
> Better would have been “…to go boldly where no earth-evolved human has
> gone before…”
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hm. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
>
> The thing is, spike, "to go boldly" might be more gramatically correct,
> but it lacks the resonance of "to boldly go". It just sounds weaker. So I
> prefer the ungrammatical version, for its dramatic effect.
>

I learned recently the whole split infinitive rule has no real basis, it
was put forward as a recommendation by one guy taking inspiration from
Latin, where such constructions are impossible, and it just has been
repeated ever since:

https://youtu.be/BccyQaNKXz8

But it has no basis within the English language, and as you note, many
sentences are weakened by adhering to this rule.

Jason


I expect this was why it was originally chosen (for the dramatic effect,
> not my preference).
>
> And this is where "man" works well, too: "To boldly go where no man has
> gone before" = "To (dramatic emphasis) /boldly/ go where no
> (gender-neutral, but species-specific, hu-)man has gone before".
>
> Re. discovering, you have to realise that probably very few of the
> discoveries we have made throughout history have been correctly assigned.
> We like neat stories about some lone genius making a world-changing
> discovery, but it rarely happens like that. It takes lots of time and lots
> of people. Then some chancer takes the credit. Then there's the difficulty
> of properly defining "discovered". If I point out that Leif Erikson
> discovered the americas hundreds of years before Columbus, you'll point out
> that actually, some unknown proto-asians discovered it, thousands of years
> before him. Then I'll argue that some mammoths probably discovered the
> place, millions of years before /that/. Then ...
>
> --
> Ben
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20251109/569527be/attachment.htm>