"I just wanted to say something about the oh so promiscuous myth that the English word for “woman” is in fact a derivation of the word “man” implying inferiority. It isn’t true.
Technically, in Old English “woman” was one part of a gendered pair. While “man” was indicative of both sexes “werman” served as the masculine and “wifman” the feminine. But then of course the good folks of Normandy took over England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and from there everyone started getting lazy.
The “wer” in “werman” (Cognate of Latin “vir” for “virility”) eventually fell out of common usage, but it can still be found in such words as “werewolf” (Originally being a masculine designation) Surprisingly, it also forms our word for “world” which comes from the Old English “wereald” or “the age of man” (A masculine designation for one’s lifetime) “Wifman” on the other hand was eventually slurred into it’s current shape “women” but the original prefix does live on in our word for “wife”.
Likewise, people have made similar claims about “female” being derived from “male”; in reality, both are derivatives of the Latin “femina” and “masculus” which were borrowed into English through the Romance languages. The deceptive similarity is more a matter of spelling convention more than anything; originally “female” was “femelle”.
As for pronouns, technically English used to have gender neutral forms; they just ended up falling out of use after a time.
Subject: hé (m), héo (f), hit (n)
D. Object: hine (m), híe (f), hit (n)
I. Object: him (m), hire (f), him (n)
Possessive: his (m), hire (f), his (n)
Today we have this:
Subject: he (m), she (f)
Object: him (m), her (f)
Possessive: his (m), her (f)"
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