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?

[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.

[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

[Sasaki Kojiro]

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.

Wait. "she/he"?? Doesn't she realize that this places women before men, connoting female superiority, creating an omnipresent matriarchy, and denying men their fundemental rights? This deep sided inequality will have these 2nd graders grow up believing men to be inferior. Think of the children!

[Crazed Rabbit]

Brillant, Sasaki.

Crazed Rabbit

[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 *****...

[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.

[Papewaio]

I think she is confusing quantity with quality and general with specific.

Man-- could be a specific as in a singular male, or it could be used in the general and apply to all as in mankind. While woman get a specific term just for themselves without it being used in the general sense... they get special treatment.

I am sure if the shoe was on the other foot and English had woman for a singlular female and then used womankind for everyone the authour would complain that woman where a second class citizen as they didn't get a specific pronoun only for themselves.

Also she seems to confuse the number of times something is mentioned with the quality. Even then she is focused on the trival issues and not the real underlying problems.

In short she is a PC Princess.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

There is a lot of discussion out there on the nexus of language, thought, and culture.

Ochs work on "primary orality"

Saussure's work with sign - signifier - signified

Lyotard's thoughts on the differend

Habermas's construction

Agar, and a large batch of other anthropologists

Korzybinski


The three concepts are so intertwined that it is hard to separate them effectively and impossible to study one without impinging on the others.

Does this mean that it is valid to argue for that a change in language must occur if there is to be a chang in culture? Almost certainly. To a goodly extent, the automatic presumption of masculinity is an expression of cultural value -- at least as a holdover -- and some change in language must accompy a change in culture. The tough part is the assumption that if you force people to change the way they speak, that will lead to the cultural change you seek....there is a lot less solid ground on that side of the issue.

Does this mean that if we neuter English entirely there will cease to be any difference between men and women? Not likely -- because biology may be described in language but cannot be ignored.

[Lemur]

What's wrong with being sexy?

[Tachikaze]

So I guess it's up to me to disagree with everyone here and more-or-less side with the author.

First of all, language and culture are intimately intertwined. Language influences culture as much as the culture influences language. I think only a person who is determined to find fault with her writing would think she means they are completely synonomous.

She was wrong, though, when she said language was the basis for all communication.

The author never said English was more sexist than other languages. It's not important whether they are or not. The topic is English. However, it can be helpful to study other languages that have everyday examples of more gender-neutral syntax.

Japanese is, in many ways, more gender-neutral than English. Pronouns may change with the gender of the speaker (usually due more to the level of politeness than prescribed pronouns for man and women), but not the gender of the subject or objects of their sentence. Hito and kanojo are used for "person" and "she or he", respectively, regardless of gender. San is used where English-speakers say "missus", "mister", "miss", or "ms". The suffix -jin (added where English adds "-man") is gender-neutral.

English does need a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun. They works pretty well, especially when the number of people is not important. I hate "he/she" or "he or she". Another one, "s/he" works OK in writing, but not in speech.

I wish also that the words man and human were reversed. Then man would be the root of both woman (female man) and human (male man--not mailman). The WO prefix would be for females, the HU prefix for males.

The author didn't mention that on forms the male checkbox is almost always listed before the female one. Why? F comes before M in the alphabet.

Men did standardize English, not in speech, but on paper. Almost all writers during the early development of English were men.

"Spirit of brotherhood" is an example of exclusion. If it said "spirit of sisterhood" I'll bet all you male forumers would have something to say. I don't agree with her that it excludes women from the rights provided by the Declaration.

If you need an example of how male-centered language can affect women's rights, you need not go any farther than the US Constitution. An amendment had to be made to ensure that women could vote.

"Girls" and "chicks" are, indeed, demeaning terms. I don't agree with the author that "ladies" is any worse than "gentlemen". Those two words don't carry the meanings they once did.

I think the tone some of you are using is disgusting. It's not that you have to agree with her statements, but to say that women aren't demeaned, disparaged, belittled, repressed, objectified, and ridiculed--and that language doesn't reflect that--is blind. I am shocked what I hear men say about women when women are not around (and sometimes when they are). In this day in age, I would think they have gone beyond that. I'm not talking about the criticism. Women criticize men just as much. I'm talking about the words they use to label them.

The author makes several good points, even if many of them are rather cliché. Some of you just want to attack her. Maybe you are being defensive or insecure. Maybe she has struck a nerve. I don't know. But I think the responses help support her point about male repression or chauvinism.

[Kanamori]

"Spirit of brotherhood" is an example of exclusion. If it said "spirit of sisterhood" I'll bet all you male forumers would have something to say.

Probably something along the lines of, "I don't really care." If it carries the same meaning, the only differnece is in the squiggles that make it up. Culture makes the connotations, and language is a way of communication. The words only have meaning that they are given in the social context. Anyway, more people would be apt to say that the culture is biased.

Having a language that excluded such an obvious grouping as sex would be simplistic and boring.

It also should be said that the language of rich white men is typically different than language of the other 'classes', and often each 'class' has peculiarities.

[naut]

What an idiot.

[Duke of Gloucester]

I will dissent too, and agree with her up to a point. I think her diagnosis is correct, but her prescription is wrong. Language certainly reflects culture, and in this case lags behind culture a certain amount. In the past women were discouraged from entering certain jobs and professions, and were seen as inferior to men in terms of decisions and opinions. Our language reflects that difference. We have words like man-made, man on the street and others. There has been some linguistic change, so we now talk about fire-fighters instead of firemen.

Does it matter? It is impossible to say, but I think not. There would be two reasons why it might be a problem. One would be stereotyping. If we refer to something as "man-made", so long as it does not discourage girls from entering chemical engineering and manufacturing industries there is no problem. My judgement would be that the reasons fewer girls choose these professions has other causes, and that this problem should be addressed by working in schools and colleges, encouraging girls and providing role models. Indeed working to change the language may distract from actually solving any problems relating to real inequality.

The second reason might be offence. My position on this is that offence is in the eye/ear of the receiver, and that if someone tells us that terminology is offensive we should avoid it. Hence, if significant number of women are offended by the term "man-made", I am happy to say something else. However, I have not come across this opinion so I continue to use the term.

In short, where inequality exists, it is better to address the real causes of the inequality, rather than attacking the language that reflects it.