Maryland NOW
Working to Improve the Lives of Women in Maryland

Sexism in Language

Are you unintentionally sending negative messages?

Language is not intrinsically sexist, however, most Americans traditionally use it in a manner that discriminates against women and girls.  The purpose of this article is to provide information on this damaging behavior and to ask you to consider making changes to your everyday communications.

Communication

Language is a system of symbols that we human beings use to communicate intelligibly with one another.  We use this same set of symbols to communicate within ourselves, i.e. to think.  If our symbols are askew, then our thinking is askew.  If our symbols are prejudiced, racist, sexist, or homophobic, then our thinking and our consequent actions are prejudiced, racist, sexist, and homophobic.

When we assign a gender-biased connotation to a word, we assign a gender bias to the concept that word symbolizes.  A craftsman, businessman, fireman, policeman, newsman, anchorman, mailman, salesman, or repairman is perceived as a male person.  The talents and skills necessary to expertly perform the duties of these occupations are not inherent to male persons only.

On the other hand, an artisan, entrepreneur, fire fighter, police officer, journalist, news anchor, letter carrier, sales agent, or technician denotes a person of either sex performing a job.

When we use male-marked vocabulary, we propagate the erroneous notion that the concepts of the gender-biased words are limited to men – that women are not welcome, that women are not able, that women are not allowed.  What we accept, we teach.  If we accept gender-marked language, we teach gender-biased behavior.  Consider deleting gender-marked words from your vocabulary.

Females, Girls, Ladies

• A female is any animal of the sex which bears off-spring.
• A girl is a female child.  She lacks experience, maturity, and judgment.
• A lady is a female appendage to a gentleman.  Her status and her name are determined by a man – either her father or her husband.  Mrs. John Jones is not an entity in her own right.  She has no individual value.
• A woman is an adult female person.  She has a name of her own.  She has a reputation of her own.  She has experience, maturity, and judgment.

It is time to stop calling our co-workers, friends, sisters, and mothers “females,” “girls,” and “ladies.”  Try women, Women, WOMEN!  Those with difficulty calling college and high school women women, could try young women instead of girls.

Men With Girls

When a man calls his woman companion a “girl” he diminishes himself as well as his companion.  He implies she is physically undeveloped, emotionally inexperienced, and mentally undiscerning.  But also, he suggests (whether or not he intends to) that he does not merit a woman, that he is not worthy of a companion with maturity, knowledge, and judgment.

She/He/It

Unlike many languages, English uses masculine and feminine pronouns in accordance with anatomical sexual differences.  Since the sixteenth century, the male pronoun was used when either pronoun was appropriate.  Using the male pronoun exclusively implies that the referent nouns are not available to women and girls.  Generally, this is erroneous.

Frederick Bodmer, a distinguished Swiss philologist, wrote, “Gender concord, like number concord, adds to the labor of learning a language without contributing anything to the clarity of a statement.”  Perhaps it is time for she, he, her, and him to be discarded in favor of the gender-neutral it.

Parallel Structure

You may remember your high school English teacher insisting that standard English requires parallel ideas to be expressed in parallel sentence structure.  Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for) connect nouns, phrases, and clauses of equal rank.  Using nouns of unequal rank with coordinating conjunctions is substandard English.  The components of the following pairs are parallel.  Other combinations of these nouns are nonstandard.

female	male
young woman	young man
women	men
ladies	gentlemen
wife	husband
gals	guys
girls	boys
Mary	Bert
Goskirk	West
Dr. Goskirk	Mr. West
Mary Goskirk	Bert West
Miss M. Goskirk	Mr. B. West
Mrs. M.S. Goskirk	Mr. B.S. West
Ms. Mary Goskirk	Dr. Bert West

Common Gender Given Names

To promote inclusive language when citing generic examples in our work or in our advertisements, we can use given names that are common to both girls and boys: Chris, Dale, Dana, Evelyn, Fran, Hillary, Jean, Jerry, Kelly, Kim, Lee, Leslie, Lynn, Marion, Meredith, Merle, Morgan, Pat, Robin, Rusty, Sandy, Sidney, Stacy, Terry, Tracy, Val, Vivian.  It is time for Kim Johnson to supersede John Doe.

Further Information

For more in-depth examinations of sex biases in language, read Casey Miller and Kate Swift’s The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing: For writers, editors and speakers, and Words and Women; Dale Spender’s Man Made Language; Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern; Bobbye Sorrels’s The Nonsexist Communicator; and Mary Vetterling-Braggin’s Sexist Language: A Modern Philosophical Analysis.

Please Help

Words can hurt worse than sticks and stones.  Listen to those around you.  Do they intend to demean women? Does their conversation project the subtle message that women are less able than men, less valuable than men? What can we do about our own language?

Consider setting an example for those around you.  Teach your children and help your friends to speak with gender-neutral words.  And, watch for the insidious terms like tomboy, bachelor’s degree, and master bedroom which creep in when we are unwary.  Try active child, undergraduate degree, and large bedroom.

© 1989 Sandra West

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