Well Anthony, after reading the post that you made on your class discussion board, I could see why your classmate may have taken offense. Sometimes, we may not be aware that our use of certain non-neutral terminologies can cause what we write or say to have a discriminatory context. For example, you mentioned at the beginning of your post that “a business lady” gave “a presentation on etiquette” and that you were surprised that “she actually had some good pointers.” To your classmate, you might have come off as someone who believes that business executives who happen to be female do not usually have good points to say since you said that you were surprised that the particular lady who spoke at the conference you attended did. Furthermore, even the use of the term “business lady” may have offended your classmate since it seemed to delineate a business man from a woman when there should practically be no difference in terms of their profession.
Hence my use of the gender-neutral term “business executive” instead of business man or woman. If you are following me on this by now then you should already be aware of the other terms that you used that could offend your female classmates such as “managers and their wives” which implies that only males can be managers, “good old boys at the top”, “how impressed the guys at the picnic were”, and “any man who wants to advance in the business world.” My suggestions for you to avoid this incident in the future are to increase your inclusive language vocabulary, to always assume that there are people in the crowd who may be offended by the use of non-inclusive language, and lastly, to always check what you write first before sending it to a crowd.
