Good example: “man is evil” clearly means people, since one would say “men are evil” if referring to males.
I just searched for the phrase and it's about half split between either meaning from context inference. Yet, the meaning pertaining to the species is mostly from discussions by educated philosophers, and the other one are annoying identity politics arguments about why one's North American dating life is disappointing, — not exactly the audience I am ever interested in reaching, frankness be.
The reason I'm not what you call “kind” is simply because this is how English works, and how it has always worked and how English speakers would interpret and parse that word.
I see no reason to avoid using a word in a perfectly acceptable, current, and historic use simply because you find that it has a different, secondary use. You call that “not being kind”. I call it “You don't own the English language any more than I do.”
You may speak as you will, I do not deny that the current usage of the word “man” has acquired a secondary meaning of “adult male human” opposed to it's historical meaning of “human" and if you wish to use it as such, then I'm confident I can usually discriminate by context. I merely ask that I be allowed the same and speak as I will and use the word in it's original meaning, that obviously still sees current use.
One would also think that “man is evil” would be preferred by the erudite philosopher to the more ambigious “men are evil”, although one can never overestimate the fondness that an educated person might have towards pedantry, frankly.
“Mundane people” is an entirely different segment than “raging identity politics aficionados complaining about their romantic life”.
The common man on the street will think nothing ill of the word being used as such, even when he be a blue collar construction worker, and will normally interpret it as intended.
I have never met such a raging identity politics aficionado in real life. I would assume not living in the U.S.A., where most of them seem to be centred, reduces my chances. But even there, it seems to be a rather small segment that is isolated to weblogs, as even newspaper columns do not seem to find it mainstream enough to dedicate segments to it.
I'd gander that if I were to find myself in New York and strike a conversation with a blue collar local and say something such as “A beautiful city isn't it? all these millions of men, working as an organized beehive.”, that he'll not interpret me wrongly or even think much of it.
