Editor,

I have listed to Mack Gift's tapes, read your two newsletters and was about to dash a check off to become a member. Then, I reread "The Thesis of Humanist Manifesto I." The language used is exclusionary. The words "man" and "he" and "his" and "manly attitude" are used. I refuse to continue playing the game that I know when these terms include me as a woman and when they do not. This organization seems too important to fall in the old male supremacist linguistic traps. I can no longer in good conscience bow my head and say that I understand that "man" used in an important document includes me and all of human kind and when "man" is used on a restroom door it excludes me and approximately half of the human race.

This is not a trivial issue to me. If your group is willing to engage in dialogue on this matter, please let me know.

Respectfully,
Doris P. Lancaster

Response from the Editor:

Dear Ms. Lancaster,

Thank you for your letter. You are on to something, and yes, I think Humanists of Utah could use some dialogue on the matter of male writing: should we just assume that it is understood that historical documents that only mention "man" include the other half of the human race? Or should we make that explicit?

I'll also ask Ed Wilson, who is one of the few surviving signers of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto I, if the writers were aware of the exclusive nature of the "man" terms put in there.

A note from Ed Wilson:

A Humanist Manifesto, 1933, was written to be read as a whole, including the introductory statement by Raymond Bragg, its initiator and principal editor. Under pressure to revise the document, the A.H.A. Board very early voted that the statement was a dated document and would not be revised, but reaffirmed the original declaration by Bragg that it is not a dogma or creed.

Point XIV, always controversial, reflects the influence of the Depression. Inequality of wealth, homelessness, unemployment and poverty are still with us and of humanist concern, but with humanism emerging in many nations and a global movement, current wisdom seems to favor the view that humanism should not be inflexibly linked to any one type of economic solution.

Basically, humanism is linked to "the scientific spirit and democratic faith": Curtis E. Reese after talking to John Dietrich in 1917 changed the name of his first book from The Religion of Democracy to Humanism.

--Anne Zeilstra