Like a lot of these days, I try to think about and alter the terms I use that rely on gendered words that have no need of being gendered. Terms like fireman, policeman, stewardess, man-eating tiger, etc., are improved by replacing the gender with a function. Firefighter. Police officer. Flight attendant. Magician-eating tiger.

Changing one's usage of these terms helps erode old barriers remaining from a less enlightened time, making the world a better place each time it is done. Looking out for and altering terms like this in one's usage is a very appropriate rule for one to set for oneself.

However, art often requires breaking rules.

Your Honor, I'd like to petition the court to allow exemptions for gendered language that perform poetic duties as part of a term or phrase, where substituting a non gendered word in its place removes part of the artistic flair that contributes to it being a commonly used adage.

For instance: the term "Man-in-the-Middle" is very nicely alliterative, which I believe plays a big part in its memorability, acceptance and usage, while "Person-in-the-Middle" sounds clunky and unappealing. Saying "Person-in-the-Middle" makes the entire process of ungendering language seem like a silly overreaction.

Some replacements with "person" come across like asking people to go see James Gunn's Superperson (2025), asking your carolling group to sing Frosty the Snowperson or asking someone if someone likes Vermeer's The Person with a Pearl Earring.

In conclusion, Your Honor, "Person-in-the-Middle" is terrible and its usage actually harms the very appropriate efforts to foster acceptance of the process of ungendering language. I believe that the alliteration present in the term " Man-in-the-Middle" makes the term artistic, and thus deserving of the same "ungendering not needed" waiver we provide for other artworks.

I rest my case.

@nyquildotorg
on the one hand, i feel like a lot of what makes "snowperson" sound bad comes from the fact that we've spent all our childhoods and more being psyop'd by mass media that in retrospect had one hell of an axe to grind about this stuff (or rather found its most superficial and crude caricature an excellent distraction from substantive issues of representation and bias)

on the other, it's obvious that substituting two syllables for one, along with a different initial consonant, in many contexts that originally alliterated, is going to give terrible sounding results (unless the original was already bad and you were delibrately choosing a more metrically and assonantly appropriate substitution)

but also dumb string searches are never going to give consistently good results for anything

but also "man" might be misleading in implying there's always a live person immediately involved when a lot of this stuff could be automated (and the speed and volume of the threat model that implies), which "person" would make even worse

anyway, "interception attack" is right there

@nyquildotorg "Meddling Mallory"

@apophis oh, i think you're onto something! After looking up a bit list of popular "unisex" names, I think I'm going to say "Max-in-the-Middle" lol