"Male" as the standard gender

[Ginsan]

If somebody punches me I'll punch him back. If somebody's kind to me I'll also show him kindness. A skeleton walks into a bar. He orders a beer. And a mop. Mankind Since the dawn of man Frenchman He who is ..... shall always ..... *insert arbitrary proverb* You see the point, right? When one gives a random example of something, it's always a he, him, or his, but it's usually not she or her. It's only a female if that particular story calls for a female, like "she got pregnant", or "she broke up with her boyfriend". I wouldn't go so far as to say "men are dominating the world and suppressing women, it's evident in the language" or anything close to that. But I do find it strange and sometimes it's almost irritating. I think there are 2 general ways in which this can be discussed. 1) Why did it become this way? We could talk about evolution, our ancestral environment, more recent human history, biology of females vs males. My guess would be that because men are physically stronger and were usually out hunting and gathering recources, while the women stayed at home watching the kids and preparing food. And I don't know if this is the case, maybe men were hunting animals while women were plucking berries and fruits and veggies, and doing similar useful things that required less physical strength. I also think that men more often than women are doing something that attracts attention (purposefully or as a side-effect), like inventing stuff, starting fights/wars/conflicts, invading territory, boasting about themselves, telling impressive sounding stories, attracting females (yes, females also like to attract males, but it seems to me that men go out of their way far more often than women do). Maybe because events more often revolve around men than women, it became natural to have the standard gender in a story/speech/sayings be male. Does this make sense? 2) How do you feel about this? Do you think it's somehow unfair? If you could wave a magic wand to make everybody refer to both females and males perfectly equally, would you do it? People would use "she and he" as often as "he and she", "male and female" as often as "female and male", or people would use female and male words equally often but not always using both he and she, because that would be tedious. Steven Pinker & Elizabeth Spelke debate - The Science of Gender & Science" Here is a debate about gender differences, Steven argues that there are significant differences and Elizabeth argues that there are not. They talk about child development (the effects of sterotyping and parenting), IQ, social constructs, why there are more men in maths and physics, and probably more things that I don't remember right now. I thought that both sides made valid points, but my irrelevant ignorant opinion mainly justified by my gut feeling is that Steven was right, males and females do have significant differences.