Taking The Sex Out Of Language

Back in 1970, two independent thinkers decided that words were sexier when they weren’t sex specific.

These two ladies are none other than Kate Swift and Casey Miller. After editing a sex education manual full of man-isms, they took it upon themselves to take feminism to the books. If women wanted equality, damn it they would give women equality!

Knowing how important words are to us social animals (unless of course you follow Hobbes’ “war of all against all” philosophy), these women waged a war of words.

If it was a French war, it would have been the war against “masculine” versus “feminine.” In English, it’s a war to make pronouns gender neutral. Same difference. If words really do have something to do with the way we think, this kind of macrofeminism could really lead men and women to a level playing field.

Unfortunately, we are social animals of habit and some of their clever “desexed” words just didn’t stick. “Tey,” “ter” and “tem” may sound incredibly sexy (unless that’s just me), but “he/she,” “his/her” and “him/her” are here to stay. Sorry, Coldplay, I just don’t think we can go back to the start and pretend pronouns weren’t gendered in the first place. Let’s accept our language limitations. We may have lost, but we put up a good fight.

Looking on the bright side, they’ve succeeded in changing some words that have made a significant difference in shifting linguistic sexism to a more balanced state. Where you used to have “salesman” and “fireman,” you have “salesperson” and “firefighter.” It’s just a matter of taking “man” out, but we’re one step closer to invading enemy lines.

Then there’s those words that seemed designed to refer to men with the “ess” tacked on the end as an afterthought. “Stewardess” and “actress” come to mind. Now we say the much more politically correct “flight attendant.” “Actor” includes men and women. We’re now approaching the other camp on the horizon.

Roadblock! We’ve become a bit scrambled in the “Miss” “Ms. “Mrs.” love triangle up to this point. It seems safe to always use “Ms.” since it is rather ambiguous. It’s like the white stuff in the Oreo cookie. You take the top off, lick the middle, and only eat the cookie part because it’s there and you don’t want to waste it.

Glad we got that one sorted out people.

So we’ve kind of stopped here and now our leader has passed away. Now I’m wondering what she felt about the words “man” and “woman.” Perhaps she would say everyone is human. It’s species-specific but avoids gender. Anyway, we’ll soldier on without ter.

There’s no reason to fret because Swift and Miller’s legacy lives on in the changes that have been made to take the identity (which prefers the masculine) out of gendered words. Writers and public speakers are making the effort to use neutral language. It may be a politically correct facade to save their own skins, but they’re still putting it out there and we’re hearing it. The good news is that now we’re talking about it. I’m getting increasingly paranoid about my pronouns as I write this…

Despite “genkind” taking a nosedive and becoming archaic before it could even be archived, these two humans made us aware of the gender bias in language and we’re better for it.

The verdict’s out — an overall great (and quirky) contribution to feminism.

Contact the author here: tinybart@morningquickie.com