i think there is a lot of room for making fun of people who try too hard especially to call themselves something dignified, a la malvolio. i loved bart simpson hailing the post delivery with "here's the fe-mail man".
however, some changes fall into place, probably because the attitudes have already changed to prepare the way, as it were.
i feel that words like "wimmin" belongs to the former group, as does "person hole" for man hole.
"chair", or "chairwoman", is one of the latter i think, as is "waiter" (to cover both sexes).
unfortunately, we as people have held, individually or collectively, some pretty abominable beliefs. if we think removing the words that refer to those attitudes will change the attitudes we are fooling ourselves yet again.
"mentally retarded", "backward", educationally impaired" "one with learning difficulties" whatever we call something, if we don't respect the thing we are referring to, our discriminatory nature will catch up with us sooner or later.
