What price do we pay for the free use of sexist language within our everyday experience? In addressing this question Rosalie Maggio quotes Donald G. McKay, who has indicated that each of us hears the generic he over a million times in our lifetime.
McKay continues with the opinion that the consequences of this repetition are "beyond the ken of present-day psychology" and that such usage has all the characteristics of a highly effective propaganda technique: repetition, covertness/indirectness, early age of acquisition, and association with high-prestige sources.
For any of us who might consider this overstated, Maggio reviews several lines of evidence indicating that use of the word "man" and masculine pronouns to include men and women is not successful at the level of achieving a sense of inclusion among women listeners or readers. Moreover, women from their earliest days are given the subtle or not so subtle sense that