Return of Gendered Language

By Sheila Gibbons, Women's eNews. Posted March 13, 2003.

Let's call it exclusionary language creep--the re-emergence of masculine words to describe people who may be female or male. Despite years of effort by women's groups, linguists and educators to encourage speakers of English to adopt words that are gender-neutral, they note, and I note, a lapse into lazy terminology that excludes women. This slippage is occurring even at major newspapers, where their executives should know better.

A few examples:

"For seasoned NEWSMEN, trained to see though political spin, the spectacle is cringe-making." Richard Spertzel, "Iraqi Mind Games," The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 4, 2002.

"There's nothing to connect to the reader or enable HIM to feel a real part of a public debate." Jay Harris, the former San Jose Mercury News publisher, complaining of news media failure to engage ordinary citizens in discussions of public policy. Quoted by David Shaw in The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 24, 2002.

"[Desmond] Morris was the British zoologist who in 1967, when most scientists and philosophers were still trying to draw distinctions between MAN and beast, shocked everyone by declaring that Homo sapiens, hairlessness notwithstanding, was still an ape and thought and behaved like one."

"In the years since Morris, meanwhile, a number of other scientists have been working to erase the MAN-animal distinction from the other end--to suggest, for example, that language might not be unique to humans, and that primates may have culture, something we also believed was uniquely ours." Charles McGrath, editor of The New York Times Book Review, in "Gone Ape: What Does It Mean That Orangutans Have 'Culture'? That, Like Us, They Just Want to Play," The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 19, 2003.

"Journalists losing touch with the MAN on the street." Headline on a David Shaw article, The Los Angeles Times, Dec. 8, 2002, although the phrase does not appear in the article itself.

Wall Street Journal readers criticized a reporter, Tara Parker-Pope, for referring to a married couple as "man and wife." Mary Temple of New York wrote to say the phrasing "denotes possession of the wife by the man, not an equal partner . . . I know this is a subtle point, but your wording does send a message of inequality" (Aug. 20, 2002).

So did an article in the twice-weekly county newspaper I receive. This paper, the Enterprise, owned by The Washington Post Company, described an auto accident that injured a "man and his wife," repeating the reference to "his wife" until halfway through, when the story finally gave her name.

"Lawmen" has found new favor not just among headline writers, who might like its brevity, but among reporters on the police beat. I noticed more frequent use of the word during the Washington-area sniper crisis last year.

And "fireman/firemen" was everywhere after 9/11. The Associated Press Stylebook, most journalists' vade mecum, says that while "fire fighter" is preferred, "fireman" is an acceptable synonym. Not to Rosemary Bliss, retired fire chief of the Tiburon Fire Department in the California Bay Area, who made history when she became the state's first career female fire chief in 1993. "This can be a very touchy issue with many women working as fire fighters and in other male-dominated trades where language can be very exclusive," she says.

Serious Movement Derided as 'Feminazi' Propaganda

A little history: The editors Casey Miller and Kate Swift homed in on the problem in 1970 when they copy-edited a junior high school sex education manual and were troubled by the use of masculine pronouns (his, him) throughout. Their concern led them to write "Words and Women: New Language in New Times" and later, "The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing for Writers, Editors and Speakers." In "Words and Women," they demonstrated the importance of using gender-neutral forms: "The way English is used to make the simplest points can either acknowledge women's full humanity or relegate the female half of the species to secondary status."

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