Can one use 'man' like one can use 'woman' as an adjective?

Question

As a consciously feminist act so that women are not reduced to their reproductive capacities, the word 'woman', which is generally accepted and used chiefly as a noun, is used in place of the word 'female', and 'woman' is used as an adjective to refer to women who are artists, philosophers, etcetera --- for example in these two sentences:

'Yes, she was one of the very first women philosophers of her generation'.

'She helped womankind so much by employing her skills and talents as a titanic woman theologian as which we all know her today, and as which she will certainly be remembered forevermore'.

Whilst reading Plato's Republic, I noticed that Plato used the word 'man' and 'woman' as adjectives to modify the noun 'guard' when he was speaking of how women and men ought to be trained in the same things such as education so that they can become the greatest Guardians in the State which he is thinking up.

But whilst using 'woman' as an adjective doesn't irk me too much, using 'man' as an adjective sounds too... silly. However, I will not use 'woman' as an adjective if I am not going to use 'man' as an adjective because I want to use the words in a way that suggests equality between women and men. I think using 'woman' as an adjective and not using 'man' as an adjective would be very sexist towards men.

Answer 1

Sorry if this ends up as a rant.

You have realised what feminists call man as the default. In that if you don't say the word woman it is taken to be a man (unless you are discussing such things as cleaning or caring).

The man who has it all (twitter) is an excellent parody of this situation, it uses the word man in exactly the way you suggest, to show how stupid it feels in our society. here is a link of a pair of t-shirts, one saying programmer and one saying "man programmer" male programmer, wont work if you use an ad blocker

Now to the advice:

I would honestly only mention the sex of a person if it actually mattered, so in your philosopher example the fact she was a woman was notable as it made her a first. other wise I just wouldn't bother.

I think using 'woman' as an adjective and not using 'man' as an adjective would be very sexist towards men.

In fact it is very sexist toward women, as it is saying I don't need to tell you the sex of this person

"it is a man, it is always a man, unless we tell you otherwise"

I am going to give you a riddle, if you haven't heard it try to solve it first.

A father and son were in a car accident where the father was killed. The ambulance brought the son to the hospital. He needed immediate surgery. In the operating room, a doctor came in and looked at the little boy and said I can't operate on him he is my son.

Who is the doctor?

Spoiler below:

it is the MOTHER
When people are asked this riddle they often come up with a pair of gay fathers before coming up with the mother.

And this is why saying man doctor sounds silly because we ALL KNOW doctor means man unless it is adjusted.

Like the night is dark unless someone tells us the full moon made the night bright enough to travel by.

Answer 2

Can one use 'man' like one can use 'woman' as an adjective?

Yes, according to the following passage taken from a dictionary that seems to address the question quite precisely:

When circumstances make it relevant to specify sex, woman [...] is used, the parallel term being man: Men doctors outnumber women doctors on the hospital staff by more than three to one.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lady

Answer 3

You can use man like you use woman, but be prepared for the resulting usage to be less common or recognizable.

As an example of the disparity between collocations for women [role] and men [role], I offer two examples of real-world situations where men and women might be used to form a noun phrase:

1. [gender-term] doctors

2. [gender-term] teachers

In both examples, women is a far more common collocation than men. Even when usage of male and female increases in the 1970s, women remains more common than either, whereas men becomes less common than either. Even though all of these uses are relatively rare compared to, say, doctors or teachers, the pattern in publication over time replicates what you're sensing: men [role] has always been odd, whereas women [role] has been in use and continues to be in use.

WendyG gives a valid answer for why that seems silly - in a context where most people in a given role are men, one only needs to specify gender to address the exception - women. I agree with that analysis, with one wrinkle: even in roles where women are assumed to be the default, women is used more. We can do a test with a role that throughout the 20th century has been associated with women: nurse.

Male nurses remains fairly close in usage to female nurses in the 20th century, modeling in part WendyG's point, but nonetheless men nurses remains lower than women nurses at all points of use. This is true even though a nurse by default is likely a woman and not a man.

So in addition to her answer, I suggest that men specifically has been more resistant to being used in collocations to describe gendered roles than women.

I don't have a firm answer for why; it may be that woman began to be paired with roles in a time (the 17th to the 19th century) before it was necessary to specify most male equivalents, and language usage has preserved that distinction. For instance, in the OED "woman, n." has first citations for the following:

• woman physician (1533)
• woman surgeon (1629)
• woman actor (1633)

• woman shoemaker (1704)

• women singers (1382)

• women officers (1493)
• women ministers (1577)
• women doctors (1622)
• women presidents (1709)

Some man/men equivalents listed include man actor (also 1633), man singer (rare, 1611) and man-witch (1622), but overall the list is shorter, indicating the formation was less frequent. That pattern may continue to influence how generative the respective forms are; since we have more examples of women [role] in circulation, men [role] is used less often even when it might meaningfully distinguish a man from the presumptive default.