What I was looking for, actually, was a little tourist .

             information to help me plan a camping trip to New England. But there it was, on the first page of the 1979 edition of the State of Vermont Digest of Fish and Game Laws and Regulations: a special message of welcome from one Edward F. Kehoe, commissioner of the Vermont Fish and Game Department, to the reader and would-be camper, i.e., me. .

             This person (i.e., me) is called "the sportsman." "We have no sportswomen, sportspersons, sportsboys, or sportsgirls," Commissioner Kehoe hastened to explain, obviously anticipating that some of us sportsfeminists might feel a bit overlooked. "But," he added, "we are pleased to report that we do have many great sportsmen who are women, as well as young people of both sexes. " .

             It's just that the Fish and Game Department is trying to keep things "simple and .

             forthright and attempting to respect a "long-standing tradition." "And anyway, we really ought to be .

             flattered with "sportsman" being "a meaningful title being earned by a special kind of .

             dedicated man, woman, or young person, as opposed to just any hunter, fisherman, or .

             trapper. " .

             I have heard this particular line of reasoning before. In fact, I've heard it so often that .

             I've come to think of this argument, along with the arguments pitted against it, as all belonging to "The Great Person-Hole-Cover Debate." Afterall, gender-neutral manholes are invariably brought into the argument as evidence of the lengths to which humorless, Newspeak-spouting feminists will go to destroy their mother tongue. Consternation about womanhandling the language comes from all sides. Sexual conservatives who see the feminist movement as a unisex plot and who long for the good .

             olde days of vive la difference when "men were men" and "women were women," nonetheless do not rally behind the notion that the term "mankind" excludes women. .

             But most of the people who choke on expressions like "spokesperson" aren't right-wing .