(no subject)

[novapsyche]

A very good article found via feminist: Why Sexist Language Matters -- I've been meaning to write a paper/article/essay about this for a while, myself.

Comments

[timiathan.livejournal.com]

I agree; I don't think there's anything we undervalue more than the influence of our lexicon. Words don't just convey our thoughts, they shape them, and sometimes even create them.

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

Some of these words refer to persons occupying a position: postman...
These have already mostly fallen out of disuse, except where the person is known to be male. The effort for a while was to say chairperson, etc., but I think I'm starting to hear chairwoman more.

"all men are created equal."
Just about everyone under 50 views this as an anachronism, and not just using "man" as a generic.

It makes a difference if I think of myself as a "girl" or a "woman"
"You guys" can already refer to a group of entirely women (at least, nobody blinks when I use it this way). I think the best thing that could happen would be for the use of "guy" to refer to an individual woman to take hold. You may notice male people (especially between around 15 and 24) can get very uncomfortable about the use of "boy" or "man" because of the value judgment.

it makes a difference if we talk about "Negroes" or "African-Americans."
For now. "African-American" will be considered offensive 20 years from now, too. Already, black people descending from somewhere else will be inappropriately included (I'm thinking Australian aborigines, but I had a naturalized Jamaican coworker once who took offense at being referred to as African American), and it doesn't seem right to include descendants of Pygmies and Khoi people in a term when it's generally intended to mean Bantu descendants (although this isn't as bad as American use of "Asian" to mean Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc. or British use of "Asian" to mean Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi).

There could be serious consequences for referring to a man as a "woman" -- a term that still means "lesser" in our society. If not, why do men get so upset at the idea of being called women?
Wrong prejudice. This is homophobia, not misogyny.

while being labeled "one of the guys" might make us feel included
This is more about social style than anything. Two of the maybe five best programmers I've worked with personally have been women (traditionally male-dominated field, so that's probably a better-than-average rate). I've referred to Elena as "one of the guys", but would never say that about Jodi, because they just have different ways of relating to men socially; it's not any sort of professional value judgment.

Also, this is one case where "one of the girls" might not be offensive for a straight man.

Most of us can see a link between calling women "sluts" and "whores" and men's sexual violence against women.
"whore", maybe. "slut" is a term women use against other women. It's still a sign of entrenched misogyny, and a verbal weapon against women, but I'm skeptical about it being related to rape specifically.