The thing about landlord is that there is a LORD in it. They are the LORD of the LAND... If they are male. The female equivalent of a lord? A LADY.
Actor however, doesn't fall into that problem. They are ACTing and they are ORators. Actress doesn't linguistically make any sense. Builder is the same. Accountant, Teacher, Doctor, Athlete, Cab Driver, Author, Artist, etc.
A policeman is a MAN that works for the POLICE. A mailman is a MAN that delivers your MAIL. They don't need to be that way however. There's plenty of ways where we can make ones like these gender neutral. Police OFFICER, mail CARRIER, garbage COLLECTOR and many others. The more we use them, the more we get used to them and the less stupid "You said that so you're being sexist!" there will be.
It isn't really sexism that the OP described anyway, it's incorrect grammar. But SHE could always have used "Land OWNER". So by her logic if YOU are be sexist, then so is SHE!
If somebody's making that much of a fuss over language not being gender neutral enough, they should look at French. Everything is described as male or female. Funnily enough, though, describe male genitalia and give it a male pronoun and you're grammatically incorrect there. The same happens the other way around. But that's beside the point. SOme languages are very gender specific and can't really be changed. Others can. English is one of those languages. It just requires a bit of effort.
Actor however, doesn't fall into that problem. They are ACTing and they are ORators. Actress doesn't linguistically make any sense. Builder is the same. Accountant, Teacher, Doctor, Athlete, Cab Driver, Author, Artist, etc.
A policeman is a MAN that works for the POLICE. A mailman is a MAN that delivers your MAIL. They don't need to be that way however. There's plenty of ways where we can make ones like these gender neutral. Police OFFICER, mail CARRIER, garbage COLLECTOR and many others. The more we use them, the more we get used to them and the less stupid "You said that so you're being sexist!" there will be.
It isn't really sexism that the OP described anyway, it's incorrect grammar. But SHE could always have used "Land OWNER". So by her logic if YOU are be sexist, then so is SHE!
If somebody's making that much of a fuss over language not being gender neutral enough, they should look at French. Everything is described as male or female. Funnily enough, though, describe male genitalia and give it a male pronoun and you're grammatically incorrect there. The same happens the other way around. But that's beside the point. SOme languages are very gender specific and can't really be changed. Others can. English is one of those languages. It just requires a bit of effort.
