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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  109
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.
According to paragraph 4, the reason why many female aviators embrace their two-noun term is that________.
选项 A、it helps in promoting gender equality in male-dominated fields
B、the trend isn’t believed to stem from the legendary WASPs
C、the term is reflective of the influence of outstanding women
D、they do belong to the group Women Military Aviators
答案A
解析 根据关键词female aviators和embrace their two-noun term可以定位到第四段，该段最后一句表示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. [她也确实注意到，许多航空领域的女性都很愿意使用这种称呼，来鼓励航空领域里(性别)的平等；在这个领域里，从业者中只有7％是女性]。这句话与选项A“这有助于在男性主导的领域促进性别平等”表述最为接近，故A项为正确答案。B项、C项和选项D均是兰德克对“女飞行员”(“两个名词称谓”现象)由来的分析，并不是女飞行员们接纳“两个名词称谓”的原因，故三个选项均应排除。
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