I really didn’t think my opening post on this blog would generate any controversy. It just suggested that by using both male and female nouns and pronouns to refer to all people, a writer could avoid appearing sexist. But some people — who didn’t necessarily read the whole essay — found that suggestion to be wrong if not downright offensive.

I don’t think my suggestion was wrong, but I did make the mistake of having Facebook (for a $14 fee) send the post to about 2,600 other people. I assumed these people would be my own Facebook friends or friends of friends, but that was not the case. I don’t know what algorithm Facebook used to decide who should receive my post, but they ended up sending it to quite a few people who lacked the interest and/or intelligence to understand what I wrote.

I hid two or three responses that were overly vulgar. That included a post that showed a defecating rhinoceros along with the caption: “You paid Facebook to s— on my news feed, so let me return the favor.” Otherwise, however, I left the negative comments unhidden. Some of these people saw a sinister purpose in my proposal for gender-neutral language.

“Imagine a world where the newspeak bullies distribute propaganda under the title “Bully Buster,” warned one respondent. “The left will love anything artificial,” declared another.

Some respondents tried to be humorous in voicing their displeasure. “He-Man no like gender neutral,” said Allan H., who included a short video clip featuring He-Man himself. “For every word you make neutral, I’ll make three extra gendered,” Edward B. threatened.

For his part, Jerry B. took my post as an opportunity to boast of his virility: “I am not gender neutral,” he asserted, “every woman I’ve ever known can tell you that.”

At one point, a brief religious argument took shape. It started with Jon H. stating “The day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.” Genesis – Bible, King James Version. Cliff J. fired back: “Here’s the real version of that story. It predates the Bible by 5,000 years.” It wasn’t clear to what version he referred, but Jon responded anyway: “It does not predate Creator God.” Another salvo came from Cliff: “If you’re referring to the Hebrew God of the Bible, indeed it does.” Thankfully, the battle ended there with no clear winner.

Most of the negative comments weren’t worth answering, but I made a couple of exceptions. One was to Mach B., who thought gender-neutral language represented a step toward 1984-type social engineering. I noted that if he was smart enough to have read 1984 or at least know what it was about, he was smart enough to know gender-neutral language was a light year away from newspeak, doublethink, and Big Brother.

I should add that 22 people “liked” my post, but for whatever reason, none of them chose to argue with anyone making a negative comment. I suppose I could have tried to refute the naysayers. I could have pointed out that using gender-neutral language does not mean I see no distinctions between the genders or believe such distinctions have no importance. But in the end, I doubt any of them would have changed their mind.

I’m not sure I’ll ever advertise my blog posts again, but if I do, I’ll be more careful about who receives them.