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english and sexism
Hi, i'm Giorgia, an italian student. I'm graduating and i have to do a research on Language Sexism, about English language.
English is a quite neutral language, and i know that sexism is said to be an attitude, but there may be aspects which do not reflet a real equality between men and women.
Which are your ideas or examples about it? Do you think there are terms which "offend" women? Do you have advices about how to change some aspect of your language?
all your answers will be very helpful for me, thank you!
***a real equality between men and women***
Giorgia - have you ever heard of the expression in the English Language: "A pipe dream"?
Well, you have now....it simply means an unachievable goal.
Women being "offended"? When are they ever not bing "offended"?
Sexism has always been part of language, and thus it will ever be. You must also remember that sexism, like many "isms", is very often a one way street, and a case of "geese and ganders" hardly if ever applies in the real world, at least here in the UK it doesn't.
Anyway, here are a few ripe comments to get your teeth into:
"Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement."
Mark Twain....male.....an American.
"The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots."
Rebecca West....female ....British
"Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not yet been able to answer the great question that has never been answered: What does a woman want?"
Sigmund Freud....male.....an Austrian. If Freud couldn't fathom out to answer to that riddle then it's pretty certain nobody else can either now or at any time in the future.
"Women should have labels attached to their foreheads saying: 'Government Health Warning: women can seriously damage your brains, genitals, bank accounts, confidence, self worth, razor blades, and good standing among your friends'."
Jeffrey Bernard.....male....British.
Are you assuming that because English has no grammatical gender like many other languages, English speakers are somehow culturally exempt from sexism and discrimination? I don['t thin the two phenomena have much to do with each other.
She's probably talking about that kind of shit whereby you now have to say "spokesperson" instead of "spokesman".
Ignore Damian. He is still clinging to male entitlement and thinks feminists are trying to take over the world. Still, the best thing he has come up with to justify his narrow perspective is that a friend of his got in trouble for raping a woman.
First, I would read "The Laugh of the Medusa" by Helene Cixous. She is a French philosopher, but much of what she has to say about sexism within language and writing spills over into the English language too. Also, I would try and get a copy of "Homophobia, A Weapon of Sexism" by Suzanne Pharr. It goes into great depth in describing the use of pejorative language (in English) to maintain male, heterosexual privilege.
Another thing English language feminists often cite as a locus of sexism has to do with the pronouns (e.g. fe-male, wo-man, wo-men, s-he, he-r). The fact that the male is always refered to in the word is often seen as an indicator of phallogocentrism (In critical theory and deconstruction, phallogocentrism or phallocentrism is a neologism coined by Jacques Derrida to refer to the privileging of the masculine (phallus) in the construction of meaning).
Hope that was helpfull.
<<Well, you have now....it simply means an unachievable goal.>>
Equality between gays and straights - a pipe dream.
<<Women being "offended"? When are they ever not bing "offended"?>>
Gays being "offended"? When are they ever not being "offended"?
<<Sexism has always been part of language, and thus it will ever be.>>
Homophobia has always been part of language, and thus it will ever be. (fag, man this is so gay, don't be gay, etc)
<< You must also remember that sexism, like many "isms", is very often a one way street, and a case of "geese and ganders" hardly if ever applies in the real world, at least here in the UK it doesn't.>>
-phobias, too, are like -sims.
One day I hope to visit the dimension that winteris lives in. It sounds utterly alien to the one the rest of us have to suffer through.
The link between language and and kind of bias entrenched within a society is interesting. The language reflects the bias; as society changes and biases change, the language lags and serves to reinforce the bias, slowing down rate of change.
The bias of sexism in our society, for instance, is embedded in the English language in many ways. Wintereis has given some good examples already, and good sources. Some other examples include professions that alter a word ending to indicate a female (actor, actress; policeman, policewoman), in which the root of the word is intrinsically male. Language does try to reflect our imperfect attempts as a society to battle sexism: for example, many female filmstars call themselves actors rather than actresses nowadays, effectively neutralising the root word.
In some cases, however, the campaigns to use less biased language can backfire if we try to push language correction too quickly. I remember a story about a council in the late 80's deciding to rename "manholes" as "personholes" and "workmen" as "workpersons", which received heavy backlash from both conservatives, who could easily ridicule it under the "political correctness" banner, and women, who pointed out that this pettiness was not the main thrust of their campaign for equality. It seems, therefore, that language can only progress at a rate equal or close to real progress made to allow women equal opportunity.
Personally, I think the campaign for equality between sexes has a long way to go. We still talk about a "chairman" in the boardroom, for instance, and we still have an uneven balance of men and women in powerful positions in business, even accounting for the fact that many women have to take career breaks to have children.
I don't know if that random ramble has been of any help. Your best bet would probably be to read Wintereis's recommended books. Good luck with your research.
I think another question that this train of thought brings up is: are cultures which have languages that use grammatical gender more sexist for having it? Does referring to a table as "she" or a dog as "he" spill over into social relationships?
<<fe-male, wo-man, wo-men, s-he, he-r>>
How do you know it wasn't the other way around? Maybe it was "female" first, and then they just chopped off the "fe" to make "male"?
The word "female" is actually unrelated to the word "male". It was falsely thought to be and its spelling was changed to make it look similar.
Etymologist:
You need to reread what you wrote. The word for female changed toward the spelling and pronunciation of the male. The same thing can be seen in her and she. So, indeed, they are irrefutably related whether they began as such or not, and—since they changed toward the masculine—this seems to point toward a privileging of the patriarchal perspective within the English language. There are certainly more than these few words to consider, but it would be naive to think that language is neutral since it is a product of society. There may be instances when the matriarchal perspective is privileged over the patriarchal. Perhaps, if you are interested in the issue of sexism within language, you should pursue such a possibility.
she
c.1154, probably evolved from O.E. seo, sio (acc. sie), fem. of demonstrative pronoun se "the." The O.E. word for "she" was heo, hio, however by 13c. the pronunciation of this had converged by phonetic evolution with he "he," so the fem. demonstrative pronoun probably was used in its place (cf. similar development in Du. zij, Ger. sie, Gk. he, etc.). The original h- survives in her. A relic of the O.E. pronoun is in Manchester-area dial. oo "she." She-devil "difficult woman" first recorded 1840.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=she
<<You need to reread what you wrote. The word for female changed toward the spelling and pronunciation of the male. The same thing can be seen in her and she. So, indeed, they are irrefutably related whether they began as such or not, and—since they changed toward the masculine—this seems to point toward a privileging of the patriarchal perspective within the English language. There are certainly more than these few words to consider, but it would be naive to think that language is neutral since it is a product of society. There may be instances when the matriarchal perspective is privileged over the patriarchal. Perhaps, if you are interested in the issue of sexism within language, you should pursue such a possibility. >>
Since languages tend towards "vulgarization", perhaps by showing preference for the male for they were actually insulting males, implying that males are more vulgar.
As for English terms, the suffix -man just means "person" (or it should by rights). A fireman or a chairman can be male or female.
Man (Mankind), "man, human, person" < Proto-Germanic mannaz, "human" < PIE *mánu-, "human"
Our English word woman is a compound simply meaning "female person" [OE, wyf + man ; cf. German, Weib, "woman", Mann, "man", but the German word Man with one 'n' refers to any person, "one" : Man sagt, "one says, people say, it is said"].
The Old English word for a female human was wyf [cf. midwife, "woman who is with (the mother giving birth)", fishwife, "woman (selling) fish"].
A male human was called wer [cf. OE, Wergild, "the price of a man", werewolf (Gk., lycanthropos, Ger., Werwolf), L., vir, Irish, fear, pl. fir].
In fact, it wasn't until the late Middle Ages circa 1300 that the word man came to replace wer as the common word for a male in English ; but man has always kept its general sense of neutral personhood for certain contexts. In the eighteenth century the philosopher Hume was still referring to "all men, both male and female". The King James Bible --the cornerstone of Modern English surely-- is chock-a-block with such usages.
Mankind, Man's fate, manmade, manslaughter, man-hours, unmanned boat, good will toward men : we still use all these terms to refer to persons and people generally -- not males only.
"Man is a piece of the universe made alive" (Emerson)
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