man - guy or person?

[keannu]

This all seems to come from male-dominant language tendency - whenever I have to interprete "man" in various contexts, I come to hesitate choosing between "guy" and "person". I wonder how native speakers perceive this word "man". This seems to come from the discriminatory prejudice in the ancient time that only man(guy) is the basic human being.

gz144)He's the man who I want to marry.

[SoothingDave]

This "man" refers to a person of the male persuasion.

Women did not hold certain legal rights in western society in the past, but they were always considered "human beings."

[keannu]

I didn't mean only this case, how do you tell "guy" from "human being" that so many "man" denotes? Just the context?

[SoothingDave]

Do you mean how to tell when it refers to only males and when it refers to human beings in general?

Yes, from context. No one would say "a man is at the door" if it was a lady.

On the other hand, if you read a text talking about the "rights of man" or that "all men are created equal" you should, absent some other context, read it to mean humans and not just males.

[emsr2d2]

And when someone uses the somewhat exasperated exclamation "Oh man!" it doesn't mean either sex.