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I hope I don’t get beat up over this question, but this seems like the safest place on earth for me to ask a question like this. And I’ve wanted to ask it many times, but never had the guts. Let me start by saying that I am pro-women in the workplace, have found the women to whom I’ve reported to be better leaders than the men, and so on. I never hire, or offer privileges based on gender, and would love to see more equality for women in the church. I support elevating the status of women in our church too.
But I’ve never understood why there is such emphasis on gender neutrality in speech. For example, why we can’t call a female person who chairs a committee a chairwoman and a male person who does the same a chairman. So, while I think both genders should have an equal shot at the role of chairing “the committee”, I don’t understand the goal of erasing any language that specifies the gender of the person. In most cases, you can’t hide the fact that a person is a man or women. The church accidentally missed this issue when they chose the term “president” for anyone who leads an organization, and counselors, for their assistants, so that’s good, but in society at large, it appears to be a big issue.
In fact, when I lived in Canada, there was a lot of social disciplining from others regarding our use of language in this regard.
So, without chastising me for not getting it, or inferring that I’m somehow unsupportive of the cause of women in society, I was wondering if someone would enlighten me on why gender neutral language is important to proponents of equality for women. My hope is that I’ll come away with a deeper understanding and I can stop wondering about it. I won’t be posing any counter arguments, believe me, as I simply want to hear others’ perspective so I can understand it better. I’m simply seeking understanding.
The short answer is that gender is no longer considered binary. There may be a biological female who does not identify strictly feminine and may be uncomfortable with being called a chairwoman. Or vice versa. It’s not just a woman thing.
Gender is related to much more than penises and vaginas. Gender is considered more of the state of masculine and feminine, and relates to social and cultural, sex and personality factors.
I think this is why standard questions on forms and whatnot no longer ask for “gender” but rather “sex”. In some circles, especially church, we don’t like to say the word “sex” so we soften it by saying “gender”, yet have no idea that the concept is not what we think it is, or refuse to budge from our paradigm.
Most of us probably used to consider sex and gender as synonymous terms. Obviously, many people still do, and this issue has become a social and political brouhaha. In my opinion, we all just need to have some patience and understanding, with a willingness to adapt our paradigms as new data becomes available.
Cnsl1 did a good job explaining the issue. I will use a specific example. I know a transgender woman in the Church who has not had reassignment surgery yet. Biologically, she still is male, but she dresses, presents, and sees herself as female. With gendered language, her only options would be unacceptable to someone.
Calling her a chairman, because of her natal sex, would be unacceptable to her – but the Church won’t call her a chairwoman, because she still is biologically male. The only option is chair or chairperson – and neither of these options should be offensive to anyone, so they are better than sex-specific terms.
The only people who will be offended are the people who don’t understand what we now know about the intricacy of sex and gender, and we have education for that. Ignorance shouldn’t keep new knowledge from impacting what we do and say any more than it absolutely has to do so.
I like terms that are titles that don’t reflect gender/sexual orientation etcetera at all then. Flight Attendant, Administrative Assistant, Professor, Chair, Dean, Mayor, President — those all seem to work. I wonder what you would call the First Lady? Ostensibly to create an egalitarian culture, but in practise to create an ever changing vocabulary for the in crowd which allows people to determine who is part of their élite. I agree that it’s because of the issue of non-binary gender primarily, but adding “man” or “woman” also changes the flavor of the word. At Amex, we mostly just dropped the “man” or “woman.” For example, someone wasn’t a “chairperson,” but a “chair.” Someone wasn’t a “workperson,” but a “worker.” hawkgrrrl wrote:
I agree that it’s because of the issue of non-binary gender primarily, but adding “man” or “woman” also changes the flavor of the word. At Amex, we mostly just dropped the “man” or “woman.” For example, someone wasn’t a “chairperson,” but a “chair.” Someone wasn’t a “workperson,” but a “worker.”
As in the famous “Will the chair table the motion?”
😆 I do know that words matter. I am thinking of the name changes of Actress to Actor and Stewardess to Flight attendant.
What important information is revealed by coding the woman’s gender in her job description?
What assumptions might we make about this job that might not be accurate? What wording better conveys a position of professional competance and recognized authority in their field? If we call woman by a gendered job title are we freezing them out from gaining the full title and respect of the male counterpart?
I understand that male nurses also face stereotyping and discrimination for their chosen profession. In this case there is nothing inherent in the word nurse that means female – but people have been conditioned to picture nurses as female and doctors as male. Because of those stereotypes things may be more difficult for a male nurse or a female doctor than they would be for their counterparts of the stereotypical gender.
On a somewhat related note. I have taken training on person first language. This is where individuals with disabilities are described as people first and then disabled later. i.e. “The man who is blind” rather than “the blind man” or “the girl with autism” rather than “the autistic girl”. This is a small nuance but by decribing an individual as the person first and the disability after it attempts to emphasize the person hood of the individual rather than to emphasize the disability which may serve to dehumanize the person.
In both these scenarios, I believe that sometimes people use words to intentionally hurt and marginalize. That is bad. Sometimes people use these hurtful words because they do not know any better but they do not personally mean to cause offense. That is still bad but better. Sometimes there are words that were never meant to cause offense but imply assumptions that are no longer appropriate. That to me is not bad in a personal morality sense but can have negative consequnces mostly for marginalized groups. Changing our vocabulary in order to minimize the damage caused to these groups and maximize opportunities for all to achieve is the better option.
Roy wrote:
I do know that words matter.I am thinking of the name changes of Actress to Actor and Stewardess to Flight attendant.
What important information is revealed by coding the woman’s gender in her job description?
What assumptions might we make about this job that might not be accurate?
Yet in the examples you give, they are encoded as male. Actor is the masculine form, not a neutral one. What does that say?It says there wasn’t a gender-neutral alternative that was common enough to be accepted and understood generally, so they systematized into the one without an obvious negative bias. Old Timer wrote:
It says there wasn’t a gender-neutral alternative that was common enough to be accepted and understood generally, so they systematized into the one without an obvious negative bias.
Not really. In trying to be gender neutral, they encoded the male version as default and as superior. In doing so they are in fact unwittingly erasing females from written sources. In rarer cases e.g. nurse, a feminine form has become the default.
In fact there have been attempts to create gender neutral forms which are often ugly e.g. waitron instead of waiter (male) or waitress (female).
In German and in French I believe, I may be wrong here, feminists have actively campaigned for the retention of female forms and the practise is to alternate male/female in writng.
As I say earlier, part of the role of this specialized language is to create language hierarchy, particularly if terms are changed on a regular basis. (The medical profession does this – it helps to maintain group cohesion and to check who hasn’t been up to speed. The LDS do this occasionally e.g. Mormon -> LDS, HT -> ministering) The result is language which is ostensibly egalitarian but creatrs an in-group and out-group)
As for the numerous gender free pronouns that have been cropping up and the people who wish neo-pronouns to refer to them, then the best way to deal.with that is just to use the person’s name. If I’ve met someone once for less than five minutes, then I can’t remember if there is a preference for “they”, “hyr”, “heesh”, “xyr” etc.
I think the general concept is that there may be certain negative assumptions about people and professions that are hard baked into our words. It is therefore appropriate that we make efforts to change our language so as to not marginalize people and groups unnecessarily.
It is also appropriate to use kindness and compassion for those that get confused by the changes and may take longer than average to adapt.
Roy wrote:It is therefore appropriate that we make efforts to change our language so as to not marginalize people and groups unnecessarily.
But how much? I’m getting to the point where I would prefer to drop pronouns altogether in some cases, because there are people who want specialized pronouns, or feel themselves to be one thing one day ans another the next. I can’t always know which people want to be called xyr or heesh or whatever, or will be insulted by he or she or another pronoun. Especially if I don’t know such people or have met them for less than five minutes.
In some cases, it even verges on passive aggression and it’s getting worse. I got dumped on by someone for using the term albino, because her husband is one. The thing is that albino is *not* an offensive term, and I have no hatred of such people (why would I?). If I had referred to “bleached freaks” (that’s about the worst I could think up) then she would have a case. I very rarely come across such people. (She did make one good point. That people with his condition are frequently villains in film and books.) I’m well aware he is a person with feelings and all the rest, who will like particular music and films, and have a personality etc etc. I don’t actually know him although I have seen him around. Instead she claims I should say “person with albinism”, which as far as I am concerned is a synonymous phrase, which contains the same root word. I have a good friend with a different genetic condition, I’m not blind to that fact, but at the same time I treat him as an individual. I would do the same if I ever got to know this lady’s husband. I might like him, maybe not, but that’s nothing to with his albinism.
It does seem like there are people out there who go out of their way to be offended. I see it partly as a kind of power struggle and a need to find fault with others when nastiness is not intended. It’s a form of elitism. It’s even worse when the terms of reference get revised regularly as this undermines etiquette and increases the chance of someone getting angry over such a thing. A perfect example of this is with people of very short stature, I’ve no idea which terms for them are acceptable and which are offensive, and I so rarely meet them that I am not up to speed on it.
I often get mistaken for another nationality. It’s a bit tedious, but I put up with it. It’s partly my accent. I only get annoyed if someone presses the point or doubts me. But if they don’t do that, then why should I be annoyed?
SamBee wrote:But how much? I’m getting to the point where I would prefer to drop pronouns altogether in some cases, because there are people who want specialized pronouns, or feel themselves to be one thing one day ans another the next. I can’t always know which people want to be called xyr or heesh or whatever, or will be insulted by he or she or another pronoun. Especially if I don’t know such people or have met them for less than five minutes.
I think you’re vastly overstating how often someone changes pronouns. Most people that change at all aren’t shifting on a daily basis.
SamBee wrote:
Instead she claims I should say “person with albinism”, which as far as I am concerned is a synonymous phrase, which contains the same root word. I have a good friend with a different genetic condition, I’m not blind to that fact, but at the same time I treat him as an individual. I would do the same if I ever got to know this lady’s husband. I might like him, maybe not, but that’s nothing to with his albinism.
This is not synonymous. In using “albino” his wife feels that you’re reducing him to his genetic condition. By using “person with albinism” he’s a person first. It may seem arbitrary but as noted previously, words do have power.
As a general principle, I believe that it is important to describe people in the way that they have requested. Therefore using terms like “person with albinism” instead of “albino”, “intersex” instead of “hermaphrodite”, or “Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” instead of “Mormon” is the considerate approach.
Roy wrote:
It is also appropriate to use kindness and compassion for those that get confused by the changes and may take longer than average to adapt.
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