It's A Man's World -- ROBERT POOLE, Author, RESPONDS

Tweet UPDATE: I sent an email to Robert Poole's college education dept. b/c I couldn't find an address for him. He responded very quickly himself.

Here is what I wrote to the University of Cumbria where he works as a history prof:

I wondered (since you are the educational unit) if you would ask him why he didn't use the word "humanity" instead of "man" in the subtitle of his book.

It would have been more accurate (unless you want to get technical in insisting that all the astronauts who first saw the earthrise were men). In the larger context, leaving out half of the world's population defeats one of the more important points of the book.

Linda Jansen
Seattle, WA

Here is Robert Poole's response to my emails:

Dear Linda,

Thanks for your message. Your question is a very fair one, and I wouldn’t disagree. The answer is that in the book I use ‘humankind’ and ‘humanity’ a good deal, and in my proposed title I used ‘humankind’ and argued for at least ‘mankind’. The publishers however felt that ‘man’ was better and more direct for a title. As the publishing team is almost entirely female, and as several female friends also thought ‘man’ was fine, I went along with it.

I was also half-persuaded that ‘man’ was not exclusive. It denotes (in one of its senses) the species, and doesn’t exclude ‘woman’ any more than (say) ‘horses excludes ‘mares’.

This won’t persuade you perhaps but it may at least show that I am mindful of these issues. I hope it hasn’t spoiled your reading of the book too much.

Best wishes,

Robert Poole

and from a second email, in which he said he reiterates that he did try to get that word changed and sends his website for the book, the idea of which I told him is inspiring despite the flaw:

www.earthrise.org.uk

I’ve put links through to Amazon (unavoidable these days) but there’s also a link to the much more civilised Barnes and Noble bookshop. If you’d like to paste your comments in there as a first review it would give it a nice start, and (i would guess) one centred on the environmental/Gaia rather than the space aspect which seems to get a bit lost elsewhere.

With best wishes and thanks once again for your comments,

Robert

Original blog entry below:
I haven't read this book. I do wonder why the author chose to use the word "man" in the subtitle rather than "humanity." I know the astronauts that took the earthrise pictures were men, but it is sad that 40 years after the event, half of humanity is written out of the picture.

It isn't a small quibble. Part of the problems we have now are caused by the fact that we do not identify with each other as a parts of a whole. In order to preserve the whole, we need to care for all the parts.

The persistence of the substitution of "man" for "humanity" does nothing to help realize that fact.