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Some time ago, Paris police launched a manhunt for three gunmen.

But, what if there are three women who carry guns, shoot and escape, is it still appropriate to say "manhunt for three gunmen"? Will it have to be "womanhunt for three gunwomen"?

mangoyogurt
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    Manhunt is the general term, as illustrated by @Jasper. Apparently people, including feminists, are fine with it, since males commit most violent crimes. And you would have to know that it was solely female perpetrators before using womanhunt or gunwomen made sense. –  Feb 23 '15 at 16:22
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    It's man as in human. Nothing to do with gender or crime rates. – JamesRyan Feb 23 '15 at 17:42
  • Of possibly related interest: Do kidnappers only kidnap kids? – choster Feb 23 '15 at 21:47
  • A gunmanhunt? :) – Joshua Taylor Feb 23 '15 at 21:47
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    @JamesRyan: it's not really though, since "human" is from Latin "humanus" whereas "manhunt" is a modern (1830-ish) coinage man+hunt. So it's "man" as in "man". Which in English (as opposed to OE) is ambiguous as to whether it means both genders or just one. But Latin doesn't have "man", and "human" isn't "hu+man", or is it? – Steve Jessop Feb 24 '15 at 01:25
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    I wonder when will people start to find manager to be inappropiate, along with command. – vsz Feb 24 '15 at 07:12
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    @SteveJessop - RE: "So it's 'man' as in 'man'..." Perhaps so, but the noun man has two distinct meanings, right? So, I think JamesRyan's point is spot on. – J.R. Feb 24 '15 at 10:09
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    @J.R: at least as spot-on as vsz's, anyway. As I understand it, he could as well have said that the "man" in "manhunt" is "man as in amanuensis", or "man as in Amanda". But that's not correct either. The word "man" is ambiguous. Further claiming that unrelated occurrences of those three letters in that order in an English word are all the same thing, undermines the point. – Steve Jessop Feb 24 '15 at 10:39
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    @SteveJessop - Okay, I'll agree that the bolding of 'man' in human could be considered misleading. But I also think that the 'man' in manhunt refers to "any human being," not "an adult male," and I think that's what he was trying to point out. I once heard someone quip: "Always remember there are two kinds of man – there's male man, and female man," which is one of the most funny and intelligent things I've heard said regarding this decades-old debate. – J.R. Feb 24 '15 at 10:39
  • @J.R. the funny quip is direct from OE, where (I won't attempt the proper orthography) "wermann" was a male person (cf. were-wolf, literally man-wolf in a gendered sense), and "wifmann" was a female person (cf. wife). I certainly agree that because the word "manhunt" is commonly used for women rather than "womanhunt", therefore "man" in "manhunt" refers to both :-) That's just what "refers to" means! The mistake people often make is to put this backwards, and try to work out what manhunt "must mean" based on which meaning of "man" was in the mind of whoever coined it. – Steve Jessop Feb 24 '15 at 10:48
  • ... and the corresponding mistake made by those who utterly ignore all etymology or ambiguity, is to assert that because the word "man" can encompass both genders, therefore formations like "manhunt" never suggest anything at all about gender in the mind of the reader/listener. In practice a word can be both formally ambiguous (and changed from its etymological base) and also suggestive of one possible meaning (perhaps its ancient one, perhaps whatever is the most common meaning). – Steve Jessop Feb 24 '15 at 10:52
  • @SteveJessop - I think your last two comments here could found a pretty good answer to the question, if you wanted to give it a shot. – J.R. Feb 24 '15 at 11:32
  • Personhunt for three gunpeople. – Juan Carlos Farah Feb 24 '15 at 13:57
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    @vsz This is the typical straw man fallacy. "man" is "man" + "hunt", but "manager" is not "man" + "ager". – Alexia Luna Feb 24 '15 at 14:35
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    *straw woman fallacy.

    I also find the following words incredibly sexist: "emancipate", "reprimand", and "mango". Clearly all of these words suggest things in the mind of the reader as Steve Jessop would put it. You know in some countries EVERY word is either masculine or feminine. One such country is France, where its public knowledge that women have very few rights. [/sarcasm]

     – J.J Feb 24 '15 at 14:51

5 Answers5

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Yes, you would still use the word "manhunt". For example, a review of Thelma & Louise includes this quote:

Ridley Scott’s 1991 road movie Thelma & Louise is often cited as the singular feminist movie of the decade, but in reality it’s so much more than that. Geena Davis plays Thelma, a housewife stuck in a mundane marriage. Sarandon plays Louise, a waitress who always finds herself alone while her musician husband is out on the road. The two decide to take a road trip but soon become fugitive when Louise shoots and kills a man who attempts to rape Thelma. Soon, they find themselves the targets of a massive federal manhunt.

According to Google NGrams, "manhunt" is about 600 times more common than "womanhunt". Similarly, "gunman" is about 600 times more common than "gunwoman". Whereas "armed man" is only about 12 times more common than "armed woman". Google NGrams does not find "female gunman" at all.

Men are much more likely to commit crimes using guns than women, so it is hard to find descriptions of female gunmen. Here is an example of an author using a phrase to avoid choosing between "female gunmen" or "gunwomen":

  • Nice Girls With Guns: Kingwood High friends say the girls were "Sweet." Adults say "Well-Mannered." Cops say "armed robbers."
Jasper
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5

Man is derived from a term that was gender neutral and this sense persists today in many terms, such as manslaughter, so manhunt is the correct term to use.

If you wish to find a gender neutral alternative to "gunman" and a more specific term such as "armed robber" is not appropriate, the term "shooter" can be used. This is a widely used term(more common even than gunman) and has become much more frequent in recent years. The term "Active Shooter" is defined by the U.S.Department of Homeland Security as ""an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area" and would be appropriate in this instance.

tallus
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    But note that "gunman" describes someone who carried or is presumed to be carrying a gun. It does not imply that the individual actually fired the gun, so "shooter" is not necessarily appropriate. – WhatRoughBeast Feb 24 '15 at 02:35
  • I don't think the phrase "armed and dangerous" is the equivalent of "gunman." Gunman almost always refers to someone who has used a gun, not someone who is merely a firearms owner or who happens to have a firearm in an unlocked suitcase nearby. – user26732 Feb 24 '15 at 18:53
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    "Used" does not mean "fired". If a robber holds up a bank by pointing a gun at a teller, he is a gunman. He is not a shooter. – WhatRoughBeast Feb 24 '15 at 22:12
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My humble opinion, as I am a not-mother-tongue-English-speaker, is "man" is coming from mankind which designates an human being, male or female. So manhunt will be appropriate regardless the sex of the hunted. I guess the same applies to "gunman" which is the same regardless if the gun bearer is male or female. Try polling a dictionary with the term "gunwoman".

J.R.
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Papy
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    You're assuming that feminists accept the idea of the word "man" being a generic term that includes both males and females. They don't. That's the whole point of many feminist language campaigns. They campaigned against "policeman" and "fireman" and "longshoreman" exactly because they rejected that idea. – Jay Feb 24 '15 at 14:25
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    Even more entertaining is the (minority) claim for "womyn" and "herstory". This is a mark of fairly radical beliefs, but it has happened. – WhatRoughBeast Feb 24 '15 at 14:34
  • I don't understand why they don't instead simply add a new word "goman" or something for "man" and insist on using "man" as a gender-neutral term... that would simplify matters considerably, no? – Fengyang Wang Feb 25 '15 at 00:47
  • @snailboat: As are suggestions for "womyn" and "herstory", no? – Fengyang Wang Feb 25 '15 at 03:51
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It's perfectly acceptable to use terminology that implies a gender if you attach a male term to something negative or a female term to something positive. It's only sexist when your words imply that something positive must be male or something negative must be female. :-)

In the 1920s the female equivalent of a "gunman" was a "gun moll".

I have never heard anyone say "womanhunt" or "gunwoman". If someone was worried about implying that the person with the gun is male when that person's sex is unknown, they'd probably say, "A search for the suspect" rather than "A personhunt for the guncreature".

Jay
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    Many women dislike being referred to as men, regardless of whether you do so in a complimentary way. "My, you're a dashing young lad!" Manhunt doesn't imply a gender, though, so that's not the issue. –  Feb 23 '15 at 20:50
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    But be aware that, for some extreme feminists, Manhunt does imply gender. And they don't like it. – WhatRoughBeast Feb 23 '15 at 21:40
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    @snailboat "Manhunt doesn't imply gender." Feminists have succeeded in having "policeman" changed to "police officer" and "fireman" changed to "fire fighter". I've heard feminists object to the word "history" because it begins with the masculine pronoun "his". If they don't object to "manhunt", it's not because it's a "generic 'man' that includes both genders" and is therefore okay. – Jay Feb 24 '15 at 14:22
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The word means "human hunt", not "male hunt". The man- part of the word is meant in the larger generic sense, not the gender-specific sense.

I suppose in certain circumstances it could be used as a humorous double entendre, with the interpretation in your more limited sense furnishing the pun. For example, a group of ladies out for a night on the town might say they are on a manhunt.

MPW
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