> Since my schooldays I have been listening patiently to claims that Latin and the Romance languages are inherently sexist because if you have a group of men and women, the adjectives will be masculine.
This can be just as easily reversed. Imagine if instead we would use feminine gender for a mixed group and masculine gender only when the group is composed of men. Someone then might complain that this is sexist because men have special treatment - a group consisting of only men has a separate word to highlight the fact that no women are present.
Same with claims that the word "woman" in English is sexist because it is derived from a word "man". If it were reverse (men were called "women") the same people would complain about sexism because the female version of the word is shorter - as if something was subtracted from the masculine version of the word, suggesting that women are lesser than men.
So in summary - my impression is that the complains have nothing to do with the material, but are just the product of current cultural zeitgeist.
This can be just as easily reversed. Imagine if instead we would use feminine gender for a mixed group and masculine gender only when the group is composed of men. Someone then might complain that this is sexist because men have special treatment - a group consisting of only men has a separate word to highlight the fact that no women are present.
Same with claims that the word "woman" in English is sexist because it is derived from a word "man". If it were reverse (men were called "women") the same people would complain about sexism because the female version of the word is shorter - as if something was subtracted from the masculine version of the word, suggesting that women are lesser than men.
So in summary - my impression is that the complains have nothing to do with the material, but are just the product of current cultural zeitgeist.