SEXISM

SEXISM A term used in feminist critiques of society and in general usage for: (1) Attitudes and behaviour based on traditional assumptions about, and stereotypes of, sexual roles in society and some GENDER usages in language. (2) Discrimination or disparagement based on a person's sex, especially when directed by men or society at large against women. In terms of language, sexism refers to a bias through which patterns and references of male usage are taken to be normative, superordinate, and positive and those of women are taken to be deviant, subordinate, and negative. Usage typically challenged as sexist includes: (1) Man used to refer to the human race in general (book title: The Ascent of Man) and to individuals (What does the average man in the street think?). Such neutral forms as humankind and person have been recommended in its place. (2) Girl used to refer to adult women (considered to be as demeaning as the use of boy for adult non-white males) and used attributively in such expressions as girl athlete, girl reporter. The use of such phrases appears to have declined in recent years. (3) Lady used to indicate a woman professional, as in lady doctor and lady lawyer, a genteelism that dates from a time when women were rare in such professions and the few who did exist came from the upper and middle classes. (4) Naming that does not equally represent men and women, such as: Professors Eliot, Goldstein, and Barbara Smith. Many manuals of style now recommend strict parallelism: Professors Eliot, Goldstein, and Smith or Professors Edgar Eliot, Sol Goldstein, and Barbara Smith.

Non-sexist usage

Since the 1960s there has been strong social pressure from feminist and other groups, especially in North America, to make the use of English and other languages less biased against women. Some of these attempts have met with fairly widespread acceptance, while others have been resisted and appear to be regarded as too radical, or awkward, or unnecessary. An early change in the US (c.1970) was the coining of the abbreviated title Ms parallel to Mr in that it identifies gender but not marital status. This term is often used in public (such as in newspapers and the mail) in the way intended by feminists, but it has also often been used as a replacement of Miss, to designate an unmarried woman, while Mrs continues to designate a married woman (often because women and men wish to retain some such distinction). During the 1980s, increasing pressure against sexual discrimination in areas such as job advertisements and academic journals led to the development of guidelines for non-sexist usage, intended to help people avoid both explicit and implicit sexism in language. One such set of guidelines is The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing by Casey Miller and Kate Swift ( Harper & Row, 1988). They cover such issues as not assuming that a doctor or other professional is always he, dropping such derivatives as authoress, executrix, and usherette, using neutral terms such as draughter for draughtsman, chair for chairman, flight attendant for steward and stewardess, and using women rather than girls for adults.

Radical coinages and adaptations

Many feminists consider that radical changes in the form of certain everyday words have psychological value, as with the conversion argue, presents a new perspective on and analysis of life and the processes with which the original words have generally been associated. The forms womyn and wimmin are seen as more detached from man, the origin of woman being wifman, meaning ‘female human being’ but easily interpretable as ‘wife of a man’. Equally radical is the reclamation or positive reinterpretation of negative words for kinds of women, such as crone, hag, witch.

Generic male usages

Despite traditional assertions that such generics as man and he include woman and she, in practice the gender for many words is often specifically male, as in refugees and their wives (who are also refugees). Both the man in the street and the man of letters are supposedly general, but the unacceptability of *She was a leading man of letters and the non-use (or rarity) of She was a leading woman of letters demonstrate a primary and abiding male reference. A widely approved alternative to generic he (Ask anyone and he'll tell you) has not yet developed. The most common appears to be singular they, which has a long history of usage: Ask anyone and they'll tell you. He or she and to a less extent in writing s/he (s)he occur, and sometimes she and he, but commentators generally recommend avoidance strategies, such as a shift to plural constructions.

Use of person

The neutral use of person in its own right and in compounds has become more common: chairperson, layperson, spokesperson, with the occasional successful plural -people: business people, lay people, sales people, working people. However, the usage is often mocked (clergyperson, fisherperson), and remains an uneasy term for many people. In two cases, especially in North America, the first element alone has had some success: anchor, chair. The term layman is widely used, especially in such phrases as in layman's language, but neutral layperson/lay person appear to have caught on for both religious and professional reference: plural lay people, religious collective the laity. For many people, however, person remains an awkwardly formal and unwelcome intrusion in their lives, and of all the words associated with discussions of inclusive language has provoked the most jokes, as with personhole covers and to person an assembly line.

Lexical asymmetry

Male/female pairs of words are often asymmetrical: governor refers to a man with great power and position, governess to a woman employee with limited authority over children; master generally refers to a man who controls things (but may sometimes be a woman: She's a master of the subject), while mistress may refer to a powerful woman in charge of a house or college, but more often means a married man's kept lover (negative echoes from this sense often affecting the other). In some areas, however, female terms have not emerged, symmetrical or otherwise: the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts, once conferred only on men, are now conferred on both men and women without any such contrasts as *Spinster of Arts or *Mistress of Arts. In addition, although terms like lady lawyer/doctor are widely used, there has been no general move towards such forms as doctorette, lawyeress, instances of which are jocular and/or pejorative. The relative position of male and female in binomial phrases (such as he or she, host and hostess, male or female, man and wife, men and women, men and girls, men and ladies, boys and girls) gives primary status to males, the only exceptions being the chivalric ladies and gentlemen and the informal mum/mom and dad. Asymmetrical pairs are also common, with female terms as lower in status, as in men and girls, men and ladies. It is often also the case that pejorative terms are stronger when applied to women: bitch is seldom a compliment, whereas bastard (especially old bastard) can under some circumstances be intended as a term of respect or affection. Of similar positive status when masculine is dog (as in you old dog!, admiring a roué); when feminine in reference in AmE it means an ugly woman. Witch is almost always pejorative, whereas wizard is often a compliment.

Marked suffixes

In common with other European languages, English has traditionally indicated femaleness by the use of certain suffixes, indicating that the nouns to which they attach have traditionally been taken to refer only to men. The suffixes are (1) -ess, as used in actress, authoress, sculptress, waitress. It is sometimes said to highlight women's accomplishments, but is often linked to roles presented as less significant than those of men, such as manageress, poetess. Actress, however, is widely used at the same time as the inclusive use of actor has gained ground, especially in the theatre. Hostess continues to be widely used, but because of its occurrence in such phrases as bar hostess it may decline, making way for inclusive host. Jewess, Negress are dismissive additions to often disparaging usages of Jew, Negro. (2) -ette has three depreciative senses: small size (as in cigarette, kitchenette), artificiality (leatherette), femaleness and auxiliary status usherette). The term suffragette is widely used to refer to activists at the turn of the 19–20c who sought votes for women. These women, however, called themselves suffragists. (3) -trix, as in the now rare aviatrix, has a limited use in legal language (for example, executrix, testatrix), and in the sadomasochistic term dominatrix. Such usages, however, mark females in these roles as unusual.

Inclusive usage

The possibility of eliminating sexism from language involves the Whorfian hypothesis: not just that language is a reflection of the society which uses it, but that society is in part shaped by its language. If this is so, language change may bring about social change: children hearing constant references to the doctor … he may well assume that all physicians are or should be male. A consistent use of non-sexist and INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE might help change this perception. Male-based words appear to be increasingly challenged by both women and men. In many cases, they have been formally replaced by neutral terms: chairman by chair, forefather by ancestor, headmaster and headmistress by head teacher. Asymmetrical words such as mistress in the sexual sense are being replaced by neutral terms such as lover. The replacement of mother/father by parent, unless gender-specific roles are involved, reflects some breakdown in socially stereotyping according to gender. In the case of housewife, on the other hand, the male-oriented house-husband seems to be integrated (sometimes mockingly) into both AmE and BrE, while homemaker appears to remain feminine in reference, and home manager has not gained acceptance. Common work terms can generally be neutralized without much difficulty: manpower can be changed to personnel, work force, or workers, and man hours to operator hours. Suffixes like -er in job titles such as steelworker and bookkeeper can be used to modify longshoreman to longshoreworker and fisherman to fisher, but often meet with ridicule. See FEMININE, FEMINISM, GENERIC, GENERIC PRONOUN, MASCULINE, POLITICALLY CORRECT.