Taboo functions of language

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People tend to assume the worse about everyone and interpret everything another says with that as their guiding principle. I'm usually quite pessimistic myself, but I try to read and hear everything as accurately as I can.

That's the way that I was taught, back in the olden days.

Perhaps high schools are no longer emphasizing grammar, or perhaps our language has shifted.

A lot of languages default to the masculine form. For example, when speaking of a group of people that includes one male among any number of females, Spanish would use ellos rather than ellas, and French would use ils rather than elles.

I noticed that a modern Bible translation is using plural pronouns with singular antecedents. Back in my day, such a translation would be universally scorned.

So, is this the effect of feminism, or just diminished educational standards?

Perhaps in another generation, Bible translations will use "gonna" rather than "going to", and will split infinitives all over the place. "Our Father, who art in Heaven" will be "Our Parent, out in Space"...

A lot of it has to do with feminism, but of course I disagree with the previous posters on whether or not it's a good idea.

Talk about overthinking!

You wouldnt say " My sister lives with I.".

So why would you say "My sister lives with Mom, and I."?

Obviously "me" is correct.

Whats to debate?

Obvious to you, impenetrable to a lot of busy bodies

Our language has gone none-gender-specific in other areas as well.

For example, "flight attendant" instead of steward/stewardess; "dining room attendant" or "server" instead of waiter/waitress.

We still have actor/actress, since it is still acceptable (and possibly legal, I don't know) to discriminate against men who want to perform female roles, and vice versa. And, the actress may represent the last profession in the USA where the woman still seeks to appear feminine (as opposed to, for example, the stewardess and the waitress).

Other languages have responded to feminism by becoming increasingly gender-specific.

For example, the word médico is a Spanish masculine noun, meaning doctor. The fact that the noun itself is masculine doesn't mean that the person is male or female. Still, Spanish has invented the word médica specifically for female doctors. The Spanish language has responded to feminism by emphasizing the femininity of women, whereas English-speaking culture has sought to reduce women's femininity.

"Ms." has become the default title assigned to women in the USA, due to the previous dichotomy of Miss/Mrs. having been deemed "sexist" because it was based upon her marital status. Spanish and French haven't developed any such neutral term. French and Spanish-speaking women still insist on Madame/Mademoiselle and Seňora/Seňorita, based upon their marital status, and will correct you if you guess wrong.

Really it's all just layering to the cake of wanting to protect yourself through some means even if you are contradictory.

Using the title "Mrs." would tend to communicate the message, at least to honourable gentlemen, that you were unavailable for coitus.

One should be assumed to be unavailable for sex unless clear signals otherwise are presented, regardless of marital status or gender. Just ask Herman Cain.

Unless the woman says either "Let's shag!" or "Let's make the two-backed beast!", a proper gentleman of the 21st century should assume that she is unavailable for coitus.

Yeah, what is the deal with such as this? Why can't people just recognize the linguistic functions of language? Why is it that they demand that everyone else change their speech because they can't recognize that nobody's intentionally trying to offend them when they are just trying to use proper inflections and pronouns? Why is it that people read so much into everyone's speech rather than trying to actually understand what is being said? Do they want to be offended because it makes them feel emotionally better or some other nonsense like that?

I suspect so. I can't think of a better explanation.

The problem is that people were assumed to be entitled to know the marital status of women, and not men. Another example: I frequently wear a fake wedding ring at work to keep men (and it's always men) from asking about my sex life. It's not necessarily that they want to shag me - they just assume that they have a right to know if I'm married, and if not, why not. My family life is not a stranger's business.

In Spanish there's a term for a married man, marido, but there is not the easily produced feminine form of that word to refer to a married woman in the actual language. At least so I heard at a Spanish church once. Anyway, I doubt that entitlement had anything to do with the words Miss and Misses, perhaps more with ensuring of propriety such as you do with wearing a fake ring. Also, you're dealing with people who have been raised by television and government education to not be able to get their minds out of the gutter, so even if there is some notion of stupid entitlement in them it's not due to language which has been abandoned over the decades due to people striving for equality in the area of telling other people how to speak.

Yes, but sometimes the intent is to shift the blame for things. "Tommy was hit with a ball" and "Billy hit Tommy with a ball" have different meanings.
Billy might object to the second sentence whereas the first is more factual. Yes, active voice is clearer, but there is a lot more liability there.

As I had already mentioned, the passive voice need not to be nebulous. The same meaning in, "Billy hit Tommy with a ball", can be conveyed equivalently in the passive voice like so: "Tommy was hit with a ball by Billy." In fact, as I had said previously, the active voice equivalent of the unnecessarily nebulous passive voice statement, "Tommy was hit with a ball", is not, "Billy hit Tommy with a ball", but instead, "A ball hit Tommy".