Is there an explicitly male version of “craftsman/craftsmanship”?

This is somewhat of a fringe question, I’m sure, but the recent question asking for a gender-neutral of craftsmanship thread got me thinking.

Since the suffix ‑man has become something of a gender-neutral placeholder until a more gender-explicit solution is widely adopted, it has the interesting quality of lacking the strong gender implication that the suffix ‑woman possesses.

For instance, craftswoman or craftswomanship would never be used in reference to a male’s handiwork. What then is a term that would never be used in reference to a female’s handiwork?

Solution 1:

You can treat the word as you would ‘blacksmith’.

Certainly, many people will write things like craftswoman, making your question relevant. However, since woman literally means female man, ‘craftswoman’ and similar wordisms sound more like clever wordplay to me, useful in certain situations, rather than serious words.

I find that ‘female craftsman’ works much better and, by the same token, ‘male craftsman’ for your scenario. The derivatives would be the same.

If you really want to coin a new word, I would go with craftswain (^_^)/.