Sex Is Biological - Essay Example

Sexist Language Introduction Sex is biological: people with male genitals are male, and people with female genitals are female. Althoughthis is an oversimplification, in general, sex may be thought of as a physical, physiological, biological attribute. Gender is cultural: a society's notions of "masculine" are based on how it expects men to behave, and its notions of "feminine" are based on how it expects women to behave. Words like womanly/manly, tomboy/sissy, unfeminine/unmasculine have nothing to do with the person's sex; they are culturally determined, subjective concepts about sex-appropriate traits and behaviors, which vary from one place to another and even from one individual to another within a culture. It is biologically impossible for a woman to be a sperm donor or for a man to be pregnant. It may be culturally unusual for a man to be a secretary or for a woman to be a miner, but it is not biologically impossible. To say automatically "the secretary...she" and "the miner...he" assumes all secretaries are women and all miners are men, which is sexist because the basis is gender, not sex. Gender is a subjective cultural attitude. Sex is an objective biological fact. Gender concepts vary according to the culture. Sex is, with few exceptions, a constant. The difference between sex and gender is important because much sexist language arises from cultural determinations of what a female or male "ought" to be. When a society believes, for example, that being a man means to hide one's emotions, bring home a paycheck, and be able to discuss football standings whereas being a woman means to be soft-spoken, "never have anything to wear," and love shopping, babies, and recipes, much of the population becomes a contradiction in terms -- unmanly men and unwomanly women. Crying, nagging, gossiping, and shrieking are assumed to be women's lot; rough-housing, beer drinking, telling dirty jokes, and being unable to find one's socks and keys are laid at men's collective door. Lists of stereotypes appear silly because very few people fit them. The best way to ensure unbiased writing and speaking is to describe people as individuals, not as members of a set. Sexism in Language Sexism in language takes many forms, though these may be reduced to three types: language ignores, it defines, and it deprecates women. As a result, women and girls are hurt both psychologically and materially by it. In addition, such usages as the "generic" masculine do not serve their intended linguistic function and are often ambiguous. Language and usage reflect and help maintain women's secondary status by defining them and their "place." Whereas men are often referred to in occupational terms, women are more often referred to in relational terms, for example as wife or mother, or by titles which denote the presence or absence of an authorized relation to a male (Miss, Mrs. ). Neutral occupational terms take on feminine modifiers- lady judge, woman doctor -which remind us that prestige occupations are male-identified. And finally, the male power to define through naming is seen in the tradition of a woman's losing her own name upon marriage, having thrust upon her the man's name, and giving birth to children that will have the man's name. The terms lady and girl are euphemisms for woman which define her by denying woman's sexuality, maturity, and capability. Sexism in language can be defined in a variety of different ways. It can be defined as "sexist language is language that unnecessarily identifies gender" http://www.ualr.edu/owl/avoidsexistlanguage.htm. It can also be defined as a statement which contributes to, encourages or causes or results in the oppression of women. This is perhaps too limited a definition in that it restricts sexism to language about women. It can also be defined as a statement which use constitutes, promotes or exploits an unfair or irrelevant or impertinent distinction between the sexes. When considering these issues, it is necessary to ask to what extent our perception of the world, and what we understand 'natural' sex roles to be, is in fact influenced by the language we speak.. We need to consider whether language just 'reflects' the world, or whether there is a case to be made for language affecting the way we perceive the world. Deprecating The deprecation of women in the English language is seen in the connotations and meanings of words applied to female and male things. Different adjectives are often applied to the actions or productions of the different sexes: women's work may be referred to as pretty or nice, men's work as masterful or brilliant. While words such as master, prince, lord, and father have all maintained their stately meanings, the similar words mistress, madam, and dame have acquired debased meanings. A woman's sex is commonly treated as if it is the most salient characteristic of her being, but this is not the case for males. This situation is the basis of much of the defining of women, and it underlies much of the deprecation. Sexual insult is overwhelmingly applied to women. Furthermore, trivialization accompanies many terms applied to females. While male- based terms suggest concerns of importance, like fraternalism and mastermind, female-based terms tend to refer to unimportant and/or small things, such as ladyfingers, ladybird, maidenhair fern. The feminine endings -ess and -ette are added to many words which are not in actuality male-limited, resulting in trivialized terms such as poetess, authoress, majorette, and usherette. Ignoring The paramount example of the way in which language ignores females is the "generic masculine," or "pseudo-generic,"; that is, the use of the masculine to refer to human beings in general. It is common in such terms as chairman, spokesman, the man in the street, the working man, the Black man, men of good will, the two-man boat. Especially prevalent is the "generic" he and its forms. Linguists have claimed that this usage, one of many examples of "marking" in the language, includes women and is not biased but innocuous. Women and girls are also ignored in the language simply by not being the topics of discourse. An extensive study of children's schoolbooks, for example, found that of 940 uses of he, 97% referred to male human beings, male animals, or male-linked occupations; only 3% referred to sex-unspecified persons. Male pronouns outnumbered female ones by about four to one, and the mention of men over women was about seven to one. So, compared to specific male reference, actual generic usage is rare. The range of insult terms for women which relate to their sexual availability has been widely documented. The female form is seen as the marked term and the male as the unmarked term. There are a range of different affixes which are used to refer to women, such as 'lady' and '-ess', '-ette', '-enne', '-trix', and these have connotations which the male term does not; these connotations are generally derogatory and trivializing. Terms like 'lady poet', 'lady doctor' and so on generally lend an air of amateurism to the person whom they are describing. Lady poets rarely write for a living. It is interesting that even with the more acceptable term 'woman', it is still necessary to mark the gender of the female, but not the male, who is referred to simply as a 'writer'. The terms 'actress', 'authoress', 'hostess', 'stewardess', 'poetess', 'comedienne', 'aviatrix' and so on also have this sense of lack of seriousness about them, especially when they are compared with the male term (compare 'aviator' and 'aviatrix'). Many of them, etymologically speaking, are diminutive forms of the male term; that is, '-ette' can be seen to mean 'smaller than' or 'less than'. It is interesting to note that terms like 'usherette' have no male equivalent. These terms pose something of a dilemma for feminist analysis; for most theorists, these are terms which should be avoided because they have trivializing connotations. In the animal 'kingdom', the generic noun which is used to refer to the animal grouping is often the same as that used to refer to the individual male, so that, for example, we talk about the lion as an animal and about the behavior of the lion (the individual male); whereas if we wish to talk about female lions we use a marked term: 'lioness'. It would seem more logical to use the generic in all cases; however, since that generic is already coded as male, it seems as if women's presence in the language is being erased. For some theorists, these marked terms, although negatively coded, at least demonstrate the presence of women. Effects of Sexist Language As mentioned earlier, the use of sexist language items may have three effects: 1. It may alienate female interlocutors and cause them to feel that they are not being addressed; 2. It may be one of the factors which may cause women to view themselves in a negative or stereotyped way. It may thus have an effect on the expectations women and men have of what women can do; 3. It may confuse listeners, both male and female. Much research has shown that sexist language does have far-reaching effects not only in the short term on people's relation to others and their environment, but also in the long term on their self-image and confidence. Virtually every published study in the academic literature indicates that male-specific lexicon, even when used as a "generic," is masculinely marked in the mind of the receiver. Methods for testing the meanings and gendered associations for nouns and pronouns in modern English are diverse. The most common method for assessing the effects of gendered nouns is to ask subjects to draw or select pictures that represent the referent after hearing words in the masculine "generic" or gender neutral constructions. In one such experiment Schneider and Hacker (1973) found that when students were given terms such as "Industrial Man" and "Economic Man" as hypothetical titles for chapters in Sociology text books and asked to bring in pictures that could be used in the chapter, about 64% of students brought in pictures containing only males to represent the chapters (Falk, & Mills, 1996). Gender-free or anti- sexist language is a conscious choice by speakers to assure readers and listeners that they do not view the world as the male domain that it may appear to be. By their language-use, writers and speakers can demonstrate an acceptance of the validity of women's experiences and contributions. The use of 'he or she' in sentences does not simply give information; rather it signals a certain orientation and attitude which is critical of stereotypical views of the roles of the sexes. There is much general belief that language changes slowly, that language change can't be forced, and especially that the pronoun system is quite unlikely to be changed by feminist efforts, which are seen as naive at best. Since linguistic change follows social change, putting pressure on the pronoun system is wasted energy. Feminists concentrate their efforts on "educating children and the general public to the way language is rather than by trying to change the language." Most telling have been the emotionality and vehemence of the opposition to suggestions of change, which have generally been stronger than the original feminist suggestions. Periodically, some under-informed and over-incensed male columnist displays what he considers wit with diatribes using his projected version of the threatened "newspeak." Feminists for language change have been accused of "a willful exercise in intellectual dishonesty," of "contemplating social follies and injustices," of "a misguided attempt to change her story," of committing "social crime," and of "pronoun envy". Both common sense and Sigmund Freud tell us that such vehemence attaches itself to nontrivial, core conceptions. We must conclude that the artificially induced sex polarization that props up male supremacy is fundamentally encoded in our masculist language and will be defended vehemently by those who will fight to retain male privilege. Conclusions Language change is always taking place, though in some periods and in some groups change is faster than in others, creating extra tension between the necessary conservative and innovative forces of language. We are all products of a semantic bias that accepts a language filled with linguistic sexism. To break away from an illogical and outmoded style of language use may seem to some an unnecessarily cumbersome and awkward effort, but many educated and sensitive people, writers and speakers are striving to rid the language of this prejudice (Gilman, 1989). Change may occur not only in usage but in acceptance of forms which are already in existence but not recognized as "standard." Both of these types of change may occur at different levels of formality of the written and spoken language. The situation of the singular they, so common in informal and spoken usage, may be one of progress toward acceptance in writing and in more formal circumstances. Its persistence over the centuries suggests two things: (1) that this is the weak point of the pronoun system, or of sexist language as a whole, and the point therefore at which it will break; (2) that the speech community does feel the strain of referring to females with the masculine, and that they is a major way to avoid that strain. While language purists and linguistic sexists decry the awkwardness of proposed changes to nonsexist language, such change could well represent in fact a retreat from strain, that is to less awkward and dissatisfying language. Furthermore, the proposed reform of the pronoun system would be in keeping with the trend to simplification which the system has undergone over the years. Studies of language change find other social and personal factors active: Labov ( 1972) has studied phonologic change that takes place over time synchronically, that is, in a single time, by studying the factor of age. Older speakers tend to cling to the old form, and younger, to adopt the new. Similarly, in the racial terminology study, the adoption of new racial terms was most prevalent in younger rather than older Blacks. Change was related, among academics, to their political attitudes, personal history, academic field, and social class. Some of Labov's (1972) discoveries about change suggest patterns by which change in sexist language may develop. Labov noted that the change spread to the extent that the values of the original subgroup with the change were adopted by other groups in the speech community. But if the change originated in the highest status group of the community, it became a prestige model for all members of the speech community. Applying his observations to change in sexist language, we would expect such change to occur first among those most affected by it-women; particularly young, educated, socially conscious, perhaps employed and mobile women, whose active presence will constitute pressure on speakers to use nonsexist forms. These women will in turn exert influence through example and argument on others to change. To the extent that nonsexist values are adopted in the speech community, nonsexist forms may be adopted by other groups within it. The first ones to use changed forms, however, being of lower prestige (as women), may be stigmatized, and their speech may become the overt topic of social comment and stereotyped, a phenomenon we have already seen taking place. However, if the change is put forward in sectors of higher prestige, it has more chance of being adopted. Reference: Labov, William. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. http://www.ualr.edu/owl/avoidsexistlanguage.htm. Erika Falk, Jordan Mills, 1996. Why Sexist Language Affects Persuasion: The Role of Homophily, Intended Audience, and Offense. Journal article. Women and Language, Vol. 19, 1996 Gilman, Karyn L., 1989. Eliminating sexist language. Folio: the Magazine for Magazine Management. Read More