A Feminist Take On The Negative Power of Sexist Language
Pronoun envy and the struggle for gender equality in the English language
The way society utilizes its language can have a powerful effect on how people are treated within the culture. The genderization of language will become less acceptable in western culture, along with the removal of racist language. During an undergraduate college lecture, a white male student became very uncomfortable after saying the n-word aloud in order to make a point about hate speech. Despite the warning the speech could be offensive, the class agreed to listen. After saying the n-word one time, he was visibly uncomfortable and switched to saying “the n-word” for every instance after. This incident illustrates a speaker and their language can make both the presenter and their audience uncomfortable.
People are often unwilling to speak out against oppressive language. Many humans, especially in my experience in the United States, don’t want to assign power to speech. In my 2003 research, using pronouns they/them seemed an impossible evolution in language. Yet, here we are, and I for one, am happy language is an organic and changing form of communication.
Some feminists believe it is time to acknowledge the power of language and to treat it with the respect it deserves. They argue we must stop using language as a form of psychological abuse and oppression. The English language is predominately patriarchal and is used as an oppressive agent against women creating an imbalance and disconnect in communication.
He/Man or ?
In my 2003 Literacy and Rhetoric course at The University of Oklahoma, we engaged in an informal discussion about the pronouns “he/him” and “she/”her. Some of us wondered if literature should use more inclusive language. I was shocked that almost all of my peers were against such change, mainly because it would be too much of a hassle to form this new way of writing.
Wendy Martyna explores the issue of gender-specific and nonspecific language in her essay, “Beyond the He/Man Approach: The Case for Nonsexist Language.” Martyna claims that this contrary reaction is typical and asserts the reason is “there seems to be a general cultural reluctance to acknowledge the power of language in our lives, an insistence that language is of symbolic rather than actual importance” (Martyna, 34). She argues in her essay that the “he/man” approach is a form of “social and pathological exclusion” and, thus harmful to the feminist movement (Martyna, 32–33).
As I continued reading about the pronoun debate, I learned seemingly innocuous language such as generalizing everyone identifies as “he” functions in an oppressive fashion. Incorporating inclusive pronouns such as “they/them” is vital for women to strive for equality in our current patriarchal system. Affirming this notion, Martyna quotes Edward Sapir (1933) in her essay:
All in all, it is not too much to say that one of the really important functions of language is to be constantly declaring to society the psychological place held by all of its members. Our goal is to revise the character of that declaration, so that our language comes to suggest the equal humanity of all its users.
— (Martyna, 35)
The emergence of feminism is still relatively new and this struggle for equality in language is still sometimes viewed as “over the top.” This continues to hold true in 2022, though a larger portion of the population seems willing to adapt to the new language than in 2003.
In the 1970s, the desire to use an inclusive pronoun for all was dubbed “pronoun envy” (Martyna, 32). However, when we investigate, we see that the argument to adapt pronouns in the English language for inclusivity is legitimate.
Martyna argues the he/man approach doesn’t function in the way originally intended: “The he/man approach to language involves the use of male terms to refer both specifically to males and generically to human beings” (Martyna, 25). Because “general” language that is supposed to be inclusive is biased to males, the general becomes specific to man and has subtext of exclusion of all who don’t identify as “man.”
The unmarked category represents both maleness and femaleness only (Clark and Clark, 1977). Thus, the male in Lionel Tiger’s Man in Groups excludes female in Women and Madness, while the male in Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man is supposed to encompass the female in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Rights of Woman.
— (Martyna, 26)
There is a distinct separation of categories here, and the unmarked category is too nonspecific as we discover when we find that “in general, males appear to be using and understanding he in its specific more often than generic sense” (Martyna, 31).
There is hope for the emergence of specific, inclusive, and positive nonsexist language; however, there have been problems along the way.
An investigation of psychology textbooks found that hypothetical professors, physicians, and psychologists were referred to as he, while hypothetical nurses, teachers, and librarians were she
— (American Psychological Assn., 1975. Martyna, 31).
This is, of course, a dangerous way to present material to students, a way in which to perpetuate stereotypes of which gender belongs to what field of work. Martyna illustrates the gendered language issue:
The sex-specific he appears five to ten times for every generic he (Tittle et al., 1974; Graham, 1973). The generic masculine thus appears amidst a profusion of references to specific males. Based on this predominantly sex-specific usage, our best guess when encountering a he is that it will not contain an implicit she.
— (Martyna, 32)
Language As a Tool of Oppression
Kate Clark addresses language as a cultural agent to perpetuate oppression and violence against women in her essay “The Linguistics of Blame: Representations of Women in The Sun’s Reporting of Crimes of Sexual Violence.” The author discusses The Sun’s manipulation of language in its reporting to make it appear female victims are responsible for the crimes committed against them.
Clark cites startling headlines, such as, “Victim Must Take the Blame of January 1982” (Clark, 183). The Sun is a British tabloid and like many publications in the United States, falls into the misguided use of oppressing women through language.
The Sun has several strategies for not blaming an attacker. One of the most common is to lessen the awareness of a man’s guilt by making him invisible.
— (Clark, 187).
Clark continues to cite multiple headlines that function to either delete the perpetrator or to put sympathy on the perpetrator's side instead of the victim’s side. Additional examples include, “Girl 7 Murdered While Mum Drank at Pub” (187) “Psycho Saw Mum Raped,” (190), and “Sex-Starved Squaddie Strangled Blonde” (192).
With these biased headlines, the perpetrator is given justification for his crime with phrases such as “sex-starved.” The perpetrator’s name is dropped from the headline. How is it that the mother is inadvertently blamed by The Sun for drinking at a bar while her daughter was being murdered? That’s a sexist choice, a reflection of the patriarchy.
Clark goes on to posit The Sun misrepresents men who typically commit crimes against women by taking away their humanity through language choice: “fiend,” “beast,” “monster,” “maniac,” or “ripper” (Clark, 184).
Actual acts of violence by men on women are also very common and the men from whom women are most at risk are not strangers but those they know and those they live with. The ‘Rape Counseling and Research Project’ found that ‘over 50% of women have had some prior contact with the man who raped them’ (1979).
— (Clark, 197)
The Sun from 1986 to 1987 committed a crime of its own in using language to perpetuate a myth that women are responsible for the violence committed against them. It is time to fight against such incorrect manipulation of language and to work together to get the truth across to readers.
Not only does the gender language issue arise in the context of the classroom and popular culture, but also in rhetoric.
Lesley Di Mare argues that for most of western history, women have been excluded from rhetoric in the public sphere in her essay, “‘Rhetoric and Women’ The Private and the Public Spheres.”
Mare paraphrases one of Aristotle’s ideas:
Rhetoric is the search for all the available means of persuasion in a given situation [and] should be the impetus for society to reconstruct perceptions concerning accepted forms of rhetorical processes, as well as who might utilize those processes and in what contexts.
— (Mare, 48)
Women must be equal in rhetorical conversation. Language must evolve to be inclusive. In order for all people to have equal footing, we must use inclusive language.
Mary Crawford discusses Robin Lakoff’s contribution to language in chapter 2 of Talking Difference: On Gender and Language, “The Search for a Women’s Language.” Lakoff asserts that from a young age, girls are socialized to communicate in less powerful ways than boys. This gives women a huge disadvantage in social, work, and academic settings.
The effect of women’s style is largely negative. It is perceived as deferential, uncertain, and a reflection of ‘girlish confusion’ (1978: 147).
[Lakoff] concludes that it functions to achieve and maintain ‘non-responsibility’ for one’s actions, and that this goal is characteristic of women because of early socialization.
—( Crawford, 25)
This is probably why assertiveness training for women in the workplace has gained popularity. Such training is a beginning to the fight in how language is taught differently to boys and girls and non-gender specific people, but the problem will not be completely solved until we teach our children equal communication.
Internalized Patriarchy in Gender Communication Styles
Cheryl Forbes and Allen Emerson investigate the conversational differences between adult men and adult women. Their essay discusses how women often feel silenced in academic settings because women have been taught a different communication style than men. The authors cite Tannin and Lakoff, who use three examples of “characteristics of female discourse: overlapping, interrupting, cooperating” (Emerson and Forbes, 165). Focusing on an adult male and an adult female in a Math and English class, Emerson and Forbes found women communicate in a more narrative style.
Emerson and Allen argue women have a different communication style than men and this should be accepted and respected. I tend to disagree with this conclusion. I recognize it is too easy to assume that we should teach our children to communicate as the men in our patriarchal society communicate. In order to realize a gender-equal culture, we must incorporate “she/her,” “he/him,” and “they/them” into our everyday conversation and communication in a proportionally equal manner.
Sexist language, such as pronouns used at the subtle exclusion of all but men, is harder to recognize than racist and derogatory terms. Language should not be manipulated to show bias, as in the headlines that made women look like the perpetrators when they were victims. Boys, girls, and nonbinary children should be taught similar forms of communication. “He/Man” should be replaced with “He/She/They.”
When I wrote this paper in 2003, there’s no way you would’ve convinced me the singular “they/them” and the gender-neutral “they/them” would have become an acceptable form or speech and writing in my lifetime. The progress I’ve seen in the last two decades shows there is hope for language to evolve into more inclusive communication.
Works Cited
Clark, Kate. “The Linguistics of Blame.” The Feminist Critique of Language. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. 183–197.
Crawford, Mary. “The Search For a Women’s Language.” Talking Difference: On Gender and Language. London. Thousand Oaks. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1995. 22–48.
Emerson, Allen and Forbes, Cheryl. “(Re)telling the Old Tales: The Emerging Voices of Women in English and Mathematics.” Untying the Tongue: Gender, Power, and the Word. Ed. Linda Longmire, and Lisa Merrill. Westport, Connecticut. London: Greenwood P, 1998. 163–173.
Mare, Lesley D. “Rhetoric and Women: The Private and Public Spheres.” Constructing and Reconstructing Gender: The Links Among Communication, Language, and Gender.” Ed. Linda Perry, Helen M. Sterk, and Lynn H. Turner. New York: State University of New York P, 1992. 45–50.
Martyna, Wendy. “Beyond the He/Man Approach: The Case for Nonsexist Language.” Language, Gender and Society. Rowley, Massachusetts: Newbury House Publisher, Inc., 1983. 25–37.
