‘Person of the Year’: On Time Magazine’s use of a Gender Neutral Word

Recently, President-elect Donald Trump complained about Time Magazine calling him ‘Person of the Year’ when he preferred the term ‘Man of the Year.’ And if a woman is given the title, then, well, she can totally be ‘Man of the Year.’

First off: Men don’t whine about not being called men. Petulant children do.

But semantics aside, let’s talk about semantics.

While I don’t know exactly why Time chose ‘Person of the Year,’ my guess is this: The people in Time magazine are journalists. As journalists, they are writers. As writers for a newspaper with the prestige of Time, they are presumably good writers who study English, reader engagement, and means of personal improvement. And as good writers, they know this basic rule of writing:

Don’t make your readers think.

Really, don’t. As much good as it will do them, guessing semantics and decrypting syntax are a chore that will cause your reader to stop reading. It’s easier to read something else. That something else won’t be you.

It’s the same reason you don’t give your fantasy characters names like XaxxQidil NuZz’itut, because that just rolls off the tongue.

It’s the reason avoiding character names which start with the same letter is not recommended unless they vary in shape and length.

It’s the reason you don’t bloat your writing with foreign or invented words simply because you want to make your readers feel anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctuous with your cause of a pericombobulation.

It’s the reason you backwards no talk. Or uz wordz lik this. Oh tak wid an accent.

It’s why reading Shakespeare and Huck Finn require a bit of squinting.

Its also why grammar is important

Is there a time and place where these monstrosities are acceptable? Sure. But magazine headlines are not one of either.

So what’s wrong with ‘Man of the Year’ then?

After all, man is one of the most basic English words you can have. It’s quite self explanatory and doesn’t require you to think.

Well, yes it does. English isn’t a gendered language monster like Spanish or German, but it is heavy on gender coupling, which both media and marketing exploit to no end. That means for every Man, there is a Woman. For every Him, you can sell a Her. For every doctor, there is a female doctor. There is nurse and there is male nurse. We have policemen and policewoman. We have prom kings and prom queens. We have magazines calling in people to vote for sexiest women and sexiest men. The internet even has rule 63, which states: “For every male character, there is a female version of it.”

Should it be that way? That’s another article I’m not going to write.

For Time to argue that their person of choice is either a man OR a woman — that is, one person, not both — adds another layer of complexity to an already misunderstood title. Oh, and did I say one person? Sorry. Sometimes there are groups of people (2+) which throws in the monstrosity of plurals and the fact that there *can* be a man AND woman of the year.

This is the list of possible titles if we use gendered terms:

• Man of the Year
• Woman of the Year
• Men of the Year
• Women of the Year
• Man and Women of the Year
• Men and Woman of the Year
• Men and Women of the Year

This is what Time writers and readers think while they anticipate the ‘Who knows what it will be’ title:

• Who will he be?
• Or will it be a she?
• If there is a man of the year, why can’t there be a woman of the year too?
• If there is a woman of the year, why can’t there be a man of the year too?
• If this is a group of people, are they just men, just woman, one man and lots of women, one women and lots of men?
• What if you labeled ‘Men of the Year’ but there happens to be a woman you forgot?
• What if you labeled ‘Women of the Year’ but there happens to be a man you forgot?
• What’s wrong with calling a woman a man?
• What’s wrong with calling a man a woman?
• What influence has he or she had on the news?

Has your brain given up yet? I’m sure you’d prefer to read more superfluous statements such as this anyway: “In order to be named Time Magazine’s man, woman, group, idea, or object of the year, he, she, they, or it must have been a dominant figure in the news (for better or for worse).”

Counter Point: ‘Man’ can be a gender neutral term.

I agree.

Man, in fact, translates from the ancient origins of English as ‘person.’ It’s served as a root word for words such as human, freshman, and mankind which are all gender neutral. It’s also not uncommon to use male associated words like “dude” and “guys” as catch all terms for whatever person, group, or inanimate object you’re talking to (at least in West Coast US).

However, ‘Man’ on its own is rarely used as a gender neutral term.

The world history of gender hierarchy in places like America, where the anti-suffragette “women want to be men” propaganda still persists to this day, doesn’t help.

Many Americans like to think our country is a Christian nation, where implications of “wanting to be the opposite sex” are sinful because they defy God’s will and design of gender roles. Calling a man a woman or a woman a man is just not done.

For the gentlemen in the room, calling a woman ‘Man’ has long been a sign of uncultured etiquette. Women are ladies, even if they are cross dressing soldiers in the Civil War.

And phrases like ‘Be a Man’ or ‘Be the Man’ have their own social stigma.

Also, Time has used ‘Woman of the Year’ in the past, magazines still have polls to elect “Sexiest Man” and “Top Working Women,” so Time is going to have to define its word choice to the extreme, and trying to convince people to recognize ‘man’ as gender neutral will devolve into the same semantic arguments feminists consistently have to make to over and over convince other English speakers a word with ‘female’ at its root is also a gender neutral term.

Is it? Yes.

Does everyone understand that? No.

Why not? Pattern matching.

It’s how we learn to understand words in the first place and why children are told to learn Latin or Greek to improve their SAT scores.

Gender Neutral words reduce thinking time.

Any other path gives readers far greater grounds to misunderstand your real message or ignore it completely. Time would prefer otherwise. Their ability to sell magazines depends on it.

This is the list of possible titles if we we use gender neutral terms:

• Person of the Year
• People of the Year

Right away, you know this is a title held by one person and one person alone (or group, because plurals are still a thing). It’s implied it can be anyone — man, woman, child (oh my, I forgot age variations of the above — good thing there haven’t been children yet), and any mashed up combinations of all three. There is nothing to argue. There is no “If one, what about the other?” There is no question of semantics. It’s a catch-all categorical term with subcategories, and oh, how much humans love their generalizations.

And this is what Time writers and readers think while they anticipate the ‘Person of the Year’ title:

• Who will they be?
• What influence have they had on the news?

Maybe they’ll be a man. Maybe they’ll be a woman. Maybe they’ll be a Who.

Some might call this “dubbing down” to be PC culture, but it’s not. It’s called English. Simple, basic, “let’s focus on the individual, not what biologically accurate term denoted by society and grammar we call them because no one wants to care about that, and can we please argue about something else?” English.