Sexist language that I personally cannot stand

But, hypothetically, if it's asked by your boss, wouldn't it be? Assuming it's a man, he could be trying to figure out how long you'll stay as an employee. Trying to find out when the biological clock (that only women have) will blow up into babies.

Pregnant women are very much discriminated against in the workforce, and every female is a potential future pregnant woman. So yeah, maybe you're right. Attitudes...

Edit to add: There's some sarcasm in this post about the biological clock thing.

Not cool.

Particularly if theres a pattern or a problem.

The very definite STATEMENT that you WILL want/have kids, and how much you'll LOVE it when you do!

my PRACTICE, and used to cringe at the thought of dealing with a screaming, pooping infant. And still people (especially clients) would say this - with straight faces.

Now that I am perimenopausal they have shut up about it.

1. "You'll change your mind!" and

2. "Don;t you think that's selfish/why are you being selfish."

like sport analogies. cannot stand it.

I don't think that is sexist at all.
Women play sports. In fact my daughter is on a full tackle women's football team.
http://www.tulsathreat.com/

yes, ofcourse some women do but not all. also have you ever heard people use female sportspeople analogies? nope. always male basket ball players or whatever player.

It's part of our popular culture.

and Danica Patrick.

Being originally from the Hartford area. It's tough to have basketball analogies and not mention some of the greats that Geno has coached. And I think we are starting to see reaction in the stands to Danica Patrick and Johanna Long.

it has "they", which is third person unspecified gender PLURAL, but for third person singular, i'm stuck with he, she, or it.

i guess the idea is that if their gender is unknown or unspecified, they might as well be dead?
why is identifying someone's gender SO important that you can't even use pronouns until you determine the gender?


as in: "see that person over there in the distance? they're wearing a hat!"

that's the "best" we can do, make an obvious singular/plural error.

as a gender neutral pronoun

and google tells me "hir (pronounced 'here')" also works ("ze" for subject, "hir" for object).

thanks!

as a gender neutral pronoun instead of "him" or "her." I thought it was pretty cool and caught myself using it IRL a couple of times.

I recently read that's becoming an accepted use.

I also generally use "y'all" instead of guys/men or girls/women.

I haven't adapted to, "Yous guys."

a teenager.

Pronouns have been s/he, her/him, etc.

I always put the female first, ie, women and men, hers and his, LGBT instead of GLBT, etc.

The idea of gender non-specific language, like the pronoun ze, is fine with me, but it's not common enough for most people to recognize yet.

and I use it when I'm discussing (historically) traditional roles, like 'gatherers and hunters'.

I will often use they as a gender neutral term even when the implied plurality is incorrect.

But there is no easy substitute for man in the sense of meaning human. E.G., manned spacecraft. What would suffice to rip the gender specific term? Human occupied spacecraft? Or the horrible humaned spacecraft?

I think that our language has to evolve to accommodate these social changes. I would be an early adopter.

On the other hand, some people take it to utterly silly extent. The word, history has nothing gender specific in its etymology. It's ignorant to coin a word herstory which clearly does have a gender specific origin. That's just stupidity.

So where does one start? As one who sees this as a bias, I do my best. But sometimes the language fails me and I fall into common vernacular. What are we to do?

I now try to read more books specifically about women. The more I read about women, I'm hoping that strong women historical figures will help me get off the chain of men we should all know about. Capone, Napoleon, Lawrence of Arabia, Edgar Allan Poe, Etc. It's getting rather dull. Especially Lawrence of Arabia, 945 goddamn pages of wasted time. (It was a very dry read.)

Sure, Genghis Khan might be important to learn about, but is anyone going to talk about Mongol Queens?

Having women dominate your mind, just might help, who knows?

Hypatia! The last curator of what is known as the Library of Alexandria.

The early Christian church would not have survived without women, who carried the word forward.

Another of my favorites, Hildegard of Bingen. A physician, a musician, a mathematician, a composer of wonderful music.

History is full of these stories of women who stood up against male dominance.

Here are some you might want to look up:

Caroline Herschel -- discovered multiple comets and was one of the most important astronomers of her day.

Henrietta Leavitt -- did the original research that gave rise to the expanding universe. Another astronomer who, because of her gender, received no note.

Marie Curie -- the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes in science. I don't think this has been repeated since.

There are many other women in science, which is my focus. But literature has their heroines. Maybe George Elliot?

Celebrate women of note. They did all these things in an environment of gender bias. And they continue to do so today. It is both a shame and a hopeful wish.

Thanks for your post.

a book filled with one ,man's lack of knowledge about female sexuality

eta not to mention some racism too

The main themes of historical texts have often been drawn from the records of the deeds and accomplishments of men--generals, kings, presidents, captains of industry. ("What was Napoleon up to? Lots, until the Duke of Wellington stopped him at Waterloo.") The implied lesson is that the only significant deeds are done by men, the only significant thoughts are thought by men. Only in the last forty or fifty years, I think, have progressive historians been writing texts that report on groups of people like farmers, trade unionists, laborers, small businesspeople. This trend in historical thinking is a step in the right direction, but still leaves half of humanity out of its focus.

Thus, "her story" is a neat coinage that suggests that, a) since we have heard lots of *his*tory, b) it's time to consider some herstory. And every time we point to the accomplishments of Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, et al., we tweak the contemporary record in the direction we want it to go--a recognition that women can and do achieve great things.

Herstory is a stupid coinage. It basically claims that history is deliberately skewed to report only about males. Either that, or that women are so unimportant in history there needs to be a special herstory.

The first is clearly not true. And I don't think anybody would claim the second.

If women are misrepresented in history, the solution is to fix it, not making a special herstory, forever separate.

The idea of "herstory" is to highlight and bring awareness to the significant achievements of women that have been left out when their era or area are discussed, not to present a special history that's forever separate.

The problem can't be fixed if the omitted women's stories aren't highlighted in some way.

But using the word herstory also allows people who would be against your goals criticize the word, totally missing the point.

Call it what it is. Women's history. Yes, it will still be criticized, but at least not on the basis of etymology.

Maybe we'll just have to disagree about this. I am okay with that. I am with you on all these issues. My only quibble is the branding which I think will inevitably work out as counter to women's goals.

Why use branding that invites this very discussion?

A symptom of institutionalized bigotry is opposition to any attempts to bring awareness to the effects of that bigotry.

Every February, more than one racist asshole mockingly asks "why don't we have a WHITE history month?" argues that African Americans haven't done anything worth putting in a history book, etc.

Every March, more than one sexist asshole mockingly asks "why don't we have a MEN'S history month?" argues that women haven't done anything worth putting in a history book, etc.

It is a very important issue as well. As an amateur history buff, I am in awe of women's part. History is full of women who rose above what can only be termed organized bigotry. I can't get enough of this part of history because it is so under-reported.

We all have to fight the good fight. But, please forgive me if I call it women's history or even just history.

Thanks for your thoughtful responses.

i think its just a feminist analysis of history.

sometimes phrases are sexist but one uses them anyway because of the limitations of language and so i sympathize with you. Man up, is something i thinks is sexist but occasionally i really want to use it

I'm not talking about the way female is being used in this thread, I'm talking about the dudebros that use female as in "Well, females are always <insert idiotic statement here>"

You know, like they're an effing biologist talking about the habits of an animal none of us have ever seen before.

that was super funny. thanks

That is what i was taught to use in the Army. Male and Female were considered the most pc designations. I still consider female to be a word that has fewer negative connotations than woman or girl or broad or whatever.

not generally..

Gender, being a social construct, doesn't always match sex.

Even when it does, age plays a factor. I don't call 12-year-olds men or women and I don't call 36-year-olds boys or girls.

"Baby Woman," or "Baby Man," is kind of catchy.

I meant more along the lines of the guys that the second they use the word "female" you just know it's time to break out your EvoPsych bingo card, because you're about to fill it up.

It's the older generation that uses this mostly, and it's always said with a smirk like we are aliens or something. Gawd that bugs my arse.

it fosters the idea that we are SO different. like cats and dogs.

because the equivalent for men is "Manly man."
The juvenile vs. mature term thing rubs me the wrong way.

since 51% of the population didn't have them. Saying that someone like Barbara Jordan or Elizabeth Holtzman (Watergate Impeachment Judiciary members) had "balls" was ridiculous. We settled instead on "tits" since everyone has them and it made perfect sense to me at the time (we were doing lots of pot and LSD back in the day-what can I say). Testicles are VERY fragile, mammary glands not so much.

The phrase "man up" bugs the hell out of me, but I don't have the balls, uh, I mean tits, to tell people when they use it.

Straight men don't cook well.

I always think of Grier when somebody mentions, Men don't (insert supposedly feminine craft here)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Men_Don't_Eat_Quiche

Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, by American Bruce Feirstein, is a bestselling tongue-in-cheek book satirizing stereotypes of masculinity, published in 1982 (ISBN 0-671-44831-5). It popularized the term quiche-eater, meaning a man who is a dilettante, a trend-chaser, an over-anxious conformist to fashionable forms of 'lifestyle', and socially correct behaviors and opinions, one who eschews (or merely lacks) the traditional masculine virtue of tough self-assurance. A 'traditional' male might enjoy egg-and-bacon pie if his wife served it to him; a quiche-eater, or Sensitive New Age Guy would make the dish himself, call it by its French name quiche, and serve it to his female life partner to demonstrate his empathy with the Women's Movement. He would also wash up afterwards.

The book's humor derives from the fears and confusion of contemporary middle-class men about how they ought to behave, after a decade of feminist critique on traditional male roles and beliefs.

The book was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 55 weeks, and sold over 1.6 million copies. An Australian adaptation by Alex Buzo was published in 1982.