English: A Sexist Language?

[Crazed Rabbit]

Simple question, simple answer; yes or no?

Now, I am not normally one to question such things, but an interesting (moronic) editorial in a college's newspaper I happened across from another school said that English was sexist. It was written by a woman (!).

Some of her main 'points':

The language is inherently sexist in favor of men. The linguistics of English continually devalue women.

Language is the basis of all communication. It is culture. It is society.

Language is society? Culture? Cretin.

It would not have killed my second grade teacher – and all other teachers, officials and purveyors of the English language – to have added a simple “she/he” so everyone could have felt included and not immediately left out due to deep-seeded inequality.

Well boo hoo hoo. Let's all go looking for every tiny thing that might offend us and say its part of some massive conspiracy to oppress our gender/race/country/heritage/ethnicity (sp?)

Because the English language was standardized by old, rich, white men, clearly they would create a language partial to their gender. However, this favoritism goes beyond subliminal small talk – it is written into the laws that rule this country.

Ah, the standard assumption of how are language came to be, and the assumed sexism of its creators. By her logic, we could assumer that language created by a woman would be sexist too.

The United Nations doesn’t ameliorate the situation, either. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” However, a “spirit of brotherhood” still denotes the omnipresent patriarchal tradition that denies women fundamental rights.

Just what fundamental rights are being denied? The right to have a bathroom pass that says he/she?

By simply becoming conscious of words that connote male superiority, linguistic culture can be changed to include all people and their differences.

Ah, the words, though generic references, connote male superiority. I love how she justs says this and provides no support.

Everyday usage like “man the table,” “one man show” and “man-made” verbally expresses male dominance and excludes females. Instead of these sayings, one could simply say “work the table,” “one-person show” and “synthetically manufactured.

Ah, here's the fundamental rights being denied. The right of women to have something man made be called 'synthetically manufactured', though I can think of many man-made things that would not fit such a stupid phrase. Anyone notice how its much easier to just say man-made?

Referring to women as “girls,” “chicks” and “ladies” is infantilizing and recalls the anachronism of women being the “fair sex,” the weaker of both sexes.

I hate to burst your bubble...but women are, physically, the weaker sex. And I refuse to see anything wrong with calling women 'ladies'.

But that's just me. I don't do the whole "I'm a poor victim who can't cope with a d***** thing"...thing.

Here's the whole stupid thing (the first line is interesting, and doesn't make sense):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The English language is suffering from a severe case of vagina envy.

The language is inherently sexist in favor of men. The linguistics of English continually devalue women.

Language is the basis of all communication. It is culture. It is society.

Language expresses awareness, emotions and thoughts. When the very words we speak intrinsically convey bias, we perpetuate inequality. We encode messages in daily interactions from incipient consciousness.

In elementary school, it always bothered me that the unisex pronoun – used mostly for permission slips and take-home announcements – is “he.” Substituting the masculine pronoun when referring to a group of mixed genders is lazy and inappropriate.

It would not have killed my second grade teacher – and all other teachers, officials and purveyors of the English language – to have added a simple “she/he” so everyone could have felt included and not immediately left out due to deep-seeded inequality.

And I’m sure dear Mrs. Schutte didn’t realize she was offending anyone by using the grammar rules laid out by the patriarchy. Because the English language was standardized by old, rich, white men, clearly they would create a language partial to their gender. However, this favoritism goes beyond subliminal small talk – it is written into the laws that rule this country.

The language that governs the United States is sexist. Not only does the United States not have an Equal Rights Amendment written into the Constitution, the ERA has been repeatedly voted down in congressional sessions. It is ridiculous that the very country that espouses the essence of democracy does not even have simple equality inherent in its foundation.

The United Nations doesn’t ameliorate the situation, either. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads: “All human beings

are born free and equal

in dignity and rights.

They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” However, a “spirit of brotherhood” still denotes the omnipresent patriarchal tradition that denies women fundamental rights.

By simply becoming conscious of words that connote male superiority, linguistic culture can be changed to include all people and their differences.

Everyday usage like “man the table,” “one man show” and “man-made” verbally expresses male dominance and excludes females. Instead of these sayings, one could simply say “work the table,” “one-person show” and “synthetically manufactured.”

Using generic masculinity to refer to society as a whole implies that women are not representative of humanity, even though women comprise 52 percent of the world’s population.

Referring to women as “girls,” “chicks” and “ladies” is infantilizing and recalls the anachronism of women being the “fair sex,” the weaker of both sexes.

This usage is both condescending and blatantly discriminatory.

Qualifying careers or nouns with gender-specific titles – like the suffixes “-ette,” “–ienne” and “-man” – is condescending and implies the predominance of certain genders in occupations in which this may not be reality. This language advances the stereotypes and almost assuredly strengthens the gender barrier in these professions. Gender-neutral vocabulary is easily applicable to describe occupations and people.

Crazed Rabbit

[Keba]

Huh?

We already have full equality established by law between the sexes ... what more do these people want?

I mean, come on, Enlgish being sexist? It's impossible to tell if the writer is male of female when reading a text, unlike other languages ... then what are those?

There really are crazy people all over ...

[GiantMonkeyMan]

i think that english is actually quite unsexist if you consider some other european based languages, for example in french (correct me if i'm wrong please and all those french lessons in school must have been useless ) if there is a group of men it is ils, a group of women it is elles whereas if there is a mixed group it should take the male version...

and besides from that

[InsaneApache]

Je nais c'est quoi?

[L'Impresario]

Je nais

You are born right now? This is fascinating stuff

Well, it's logical that most languages have a "bias" for the masculine forms, it's been established through centuries. The masculine is the standard form in most situations. when there are 2 or 3 pronouns (masculine, female, neutral), the masculine is used the most, as the gender isn't established by numerical superiority (in grammatically correct instances that is).

Language does reveal societal norms and trends. Patriarchical communities definately had a serious impact on the form of the language and this is not a recent development. It wasn't a random choice to have the masculine version of most ranks, positions, jobs etc as their standard appellation, but it isn't a grand masterplan neither.

English though isn't any more sexist than any other languages with similar societal standards, and sometimes it's genderless adjectives (not being subject to declination as well) make it appear as a fairly PC language.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

English does lack a set of gender neutral third person pro-nouns. By convention we use the male, as we have to use one or the other and we can't keep switching it.

Its not so much sexist as deficiant.

Not that its exactly what I'd call a problem

[Brenus]

Well, French is divided in gender. We haven’t neutral. So, when you use a word, immediately it is a gender issue. France is female, for example… So the theory of all important names or words are masculine just collapse. The symbol of France, Marianne, is a female… A bridge is masculine but a Church is female. Some words can be masculine or feminine, and some change gender when change in number (amour (love) is masculine when one, feminine when several: un amour eternel, des amours eternelles) .
So the pretend sexism is base on assumption. Except if you pre-suppose that a bridge is more important than a church. Or the French are degrading their country.

"Je nais c'est quoi?" je ne sais pas?I don't know?

[thrashaholic]

Because the English language was standardized by old, rich, white men, clearly they would create a language partial to their gender.

Oh dear, that was just too precious... "standardized by old, rich, white men....". Sorry to break it to you, love, but English was largely standarised in the Early Modern English period (mid 1400s - 1800) when there weren't many non-whites in Britain to complain about it. In fact it was most of the standardising was done by William Caxton (who, for the greater part of his life at least, wasn't old either - I will grant him being male though) and his printing press, that's why 'standard' English is the southern English variety (he was from Kent you see). Of course the King James bible and so on had something to do with it too.

However, language is something that is 'possessed' by everyone who uses it and consequently is a function of the people who do use it. So, seeing as the division of men to women is roughly equal they both have an equal influence on linguistic development. In fact, seeing as, in the past, it was mostly likely mothers who taught the children language, women would have had a disproportionately large influence on the development of the language.

Interestingly too, in old English, 'man' used to refer to all of mankind, then there was 'wife-man' (the development to woman is obvious) that referred to women only, and then a separate word again for the male gender that meant 'sword-man'. Subsequently the 'sword' prefix was dropped leaving us with what we have today.

The stuff about ladies is pretty silly too, what about gentlemen? They both hark from the same era, both are used quite rarely these days, both are used to convey politeness. None of this gender hierarchy bollocks she's epousing. Far from it in fact, 'lady' donotes nobility, the same level hierarchically as 'lord', a word no-one uses for men anymore, so if anything its use is asserting female status in society.

In conclusion, I bet she doesn't have a boyfriend.....

[doc_bean]

Ancient Hebrew was sexist, every language is sexist. Get over it.

[AntiochusIII]

Ancient Hebrew was sexist, every language is sexist. Get over it.

Not necessarily. I could think of a few other languages that aren't as fixated on gender and/or have gender-neutral pronouns.

That, of course, doesn't mean this editorial is somehow sensible. I have always taken the view that the meaning has more value than the semantics of a word. She's probably one of those individuals so fixated in a single particular issue as to fail to grasp the whole picture.

[Justiciar]

I say we burn our trousers in protest!

[Ironside]

Well, most of it is ramblings but there's a few points (works for Swedish too).
The man - mankind connection and the ´words that follows from this.
Gender based professions (works the other way too, like nurse).

And the only point I actually care about. The lack of a genderless word for persons. In those rare cases when you have to use a he/she wording, it would be soo useful.

CR the first sentence is a reference to "penis-envy", but I don't know enough of the term to know how accurate her use of it actually is.

[Blodrast]

eh... I've never met/heard of a feminist who wasn't fanatical about it.
Maybe she exists out there somewhere, who knows.

I never understood people who can be so anal and fascist about such minor, trivial things. I am sure they could achieve greatness had they chosen to channel their energy and zeal for better purposes...

As for the lady (sic!) in cause, thrashaholic's last phrase sums up my opinion of her, although I would have put it in much, much less PC terms... stupid *****...

[yesdachi]

I say we burn our trousers in protest!

I should have taken mine off first.

It is not the language that is sexist it is how it is used. The author should have attacked a specific person (grade school jock/bully?) or group (men who think girls are prettier than her?) rather than the entire language. Its like saying guns kill people when it’s really people using them who kill people. Blaming a tool because she is ticked at someone is a cop-out, if she is pissed at someone (ex-boyfriend?) maybe she should confront that person (her dad maybe?) rather than lash out at all men and the language our mom’s taught them.


Geek reference – I believe all D&D books refer to the player/character as a female.

[Tachikaze]

It is not the language that is sexist it is how it is used. The author should have attacked a specific person (grade school jock/bully?) or group (men who think girls are prettier than her?) rather than the entire language. Its like saying guns kill people when it’s really people using them who kill people. Blaming a tool because she is ticked at someone is a cop-out, if she is pissed at someone (ex-boyfriend?) maybe she should confront that person (her dad maybe?) rather than lash out at all men and the language our mom’s taught them.

Language can't be separated from use. Use is language. Conversely, what is not used is not language.

Language is a big part of what determines how people think. If that were not true, politicians and commercial advertizing wouldn't study the convincing (even brainwashing) effects of language so much. If someone hears something enough, they will believe it.

Females are subtly positioned into an inferior position to males by the small elements of language that accumulate over time. They are constantly reminded of their inferior position. This is every bit as effective as making laws that lower women's status. In fact, it is even more effective, since it also convinces the women themselves that they are inferior.

The English language portrays man as the norm and woman as secondary. Even this small nuance puts men in the center and women on the periphery.

It's kind of funny how much men resist altering the language to be more neutral. If they truly feel the two genders are equal, why don't they show it in their language?

[yesdachi]

Language can't be separated from use. Use is language. Conversely, what is not used is not language.

Language is a big part of what determines how people think. If that were not true, politicians and commercial advertizing wouldn't study the convincing (even brainwashing) effects of language so much. If someone hears something enough, they will believe it.

Females are subtly positioned into an inferior position to males by the small elements of language that accumulate over time. They are constantly reminded of their inferior position. This is every bit as effective as making laws that lower women's status. In fact, it is even more effective, since it also convinces the women themselves that they are inferior.

The English language portrays man as the norm and woman as secondary. Even this small nuance puts men in the center and women on the periphery.

It's kind of funny how much men resist altering the language to be more neutral. If they truly feel the two genders are equal, why don't they show it in their language?

Language has been used for many different purposes and regrettably for women who care, the English language has been used most commonly for purposes towards men. Men who have traditionally been the ones responsible for making purchases, being educated, reading newspapers and in general just being out in public. As women’s roles change from Suzy homemaker to more outside the home roles where they become more of a consumer or active part of society so to will the language change to accommodate them. Although there are fewer men than women, men are still the decision makers in most financial matters around the home and in business. When language is being used it is still usually being used towards men.

You said it yourself that advertisers and politicians study the convincing effects of language and obviously they have concluded that they should still be directing their words at men. It is just the way the world is today, women are (more considerately that in the past) positioned as less important to men but we are already seeing that change especially over the last few years with advertising and programming on TV becoming more female friendly (a woman president on TV and network TV loosing Monday Night Football to ESPN due to ratings). It is a slow change that may not ever see women as equal despite all the laws and political correctness efforts but if society changes and elevates women to an equal status to men we will know by listening to advertisers or when salesmen stop talking to men first or servers at restaurants stop bringing the bill to the men.

Women have been second chair to men since recorded time and just because they have started to become more independent lately (relativity speaking) doesn’t mean society should misrepresent language to make a small minority of women feel equal. If more language is being directed at women, the way language is being used will reflect the change.

I stand by my comments that the language isn’t sexist but the people who use it are, and are on purpose in many cases, perhaps mot because they are sexist but because they are not addressing women.

[GoreBag]

Language is society? Culture? Cretin.

That's actually an excellent point. Language barriers are most important and prevalent in maintaining the perception of a distinct and united culture. Your language is your culture, inescapably, the same way as religion is. Of course, the article is drivel and sociology doesn't seem to be her strong point, but your comment didn't seem to address that much either.

[rory_20_uk]

One classic I heared some time ago was another raving feminist who thought that Physics was sexist:

This obvious fact is bourne out as fluid mechanics is so much harder to model than that of a straight beam. Fluid is of course from a female's menses, and a straight beam is a penis...

People with that mentality will find these issues. In the case above, blame the Creator (I think that the true problem was that Men were making the fluid mechanicsharder on purpose).

I've yet to hear any men declaim how primary school teachers are mostly women, as are the majority of Paediatricians (and Psychiatrists I think). It seems men are able to accept women are better at some things, and leave it there.

[Crazed Rabbit]

That's actually an excellent point. Language barriers are most important and prevalent in maintaining the perception of a distinct and united culture. Your language is your culture, inescapably, the same way as religion is. Of course, the article is drivel and sociology doesn't seem to be her strong point, but your comment didn't seem to address that much either.

Language is certainly part of society and culture, but it is not the whole of either.

Crazed Rabbit

[Scurvy]

I'v never really thought of english as being a genderised language (i always found learning french really difficult because of the masculine and femenine tenses - which is all they actually teach you in secondary school)

a language definately demonstrates the culture and characteristics of the speakers, but i think it is possible to have many cultures cultures speaking the same language,

[GoreBag]

Language is certainly part of society and culture, but it is not the whole of either.

Crazed Rabbit

Ahem: Cretin.

[Crazed Rabbit]

So are you suggesting language is all of society and culture, that nothing else matters when taking into account these two besides language?

Crazed Rabbit

[rotorgun]

I find it incredible that this is even an issue. After all, most of us are taught how to speak properly by our mothers before we even learn the mechanics of the language. My dear mother never tried to tell me that it was sexist to utilize gender specific words, nor did she feel inclined to say he/she everytime she spoke of "all mankind" etc. It would not surprise in the least me if we discovered that women invented languge to begin with.

What's the beef!

[Reverend Joe]

So are you suggesting language is all of society and culture, that nothing else matters when taking into account these two besides language?

Crazed Rabbit

I think he's saying "Cretin."

As for the question at hand: No. Plain and simple. Language does not subvert one's thinking, and if it does, then you need to reasess your mental malleability.

[Husar]

I hate to burst your bubble...but women are, physically, the weaker sex.

Also, I lately noticed a sign at a supermarket saying something about "Kassiererin", the german female form of cashier, should the guy who served me at the cass feel opressed now???
He didn't look like he had a ny problem with it.

[Tachikaze]

Also, I lately noticed a sign at a supermarket saying something about "Kassiererin", the german female form of cashier, should the guy who served me at the cass feel opressed now???
He didn't look like he had a ny problem with it.

Maybe if it happened to him everyday, everywhere he went, all through his life, he would get tired of it. Suffering through one instance doesn't put him on par with what females go through.

[Husar]

Maybe if it happened to him everyday, everywhere he went, all through his life, he would get tired of it. Suffering through one instance doesn't put him on par with what females go through.

If women are confronted with so much suffering every day, why are many of them still pretty happy?
You sound like this is unbearable suffering, worse than slavery...
Language is changed by the people qwho use it everyday and I oppose attempts to change it by force just because someone thinks it's better that way.