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IN DEFENSE OF GENDER –

10/28/2016 On Language; IN DEFENSE OF GENDER – ProQuest http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/docview/424181129?accountid=3783 1/2 More like this Abstract Translate Full Text Translate On Language; IN DEFENSE OF GENDER Defend it on any grounds you choose; the neutering of spoken and written English, with its attendant self-consciousness, remains ludicrous. In print, those ”person” suffixes and ”he/she’s” jump out from the page, as distracting as a cloud of gnats, demanding that the reader note the writer’s virtue. ”Look what a nonsexist writer person I am, avoiding the use of masculine forms for the generic.” Spoken, they leave conversation fit only for the Coneheads on ”Saturday Night Live.” ”They have a daily special,” a woman at the next table told her male companion in Perry’s, a San Francisco restaurant. ”Ask your waitperson.” In a Steig cartoon, the words would have marched from her mouth in the form of a computer printout. As the after-dinner speaker at a recent professional conference, I heard a text replete with ”he/she’s” and ”his/ her’s” read aloud for the first time. The hapless program female chairperson stuck with the job chose to render these orally as ”he-slash-she” and ”hisslash-her,” turning the following day’s schedule for conference participants into what sounded like a replay of the Manson killings. So pervasive is the neutering of the English language on the progressive West Coast, we no longer have people here, only persons: male persons and female persons, chairpersons and doorpersons, waitpersons, mailpersons – who may be either male or female mailpersons – and refuse-collection persons. In the classified ads, working mothers seek child-care persons, though one wonders how many men (archaic for ”male person”) take care of child persons as a fulltime occupation. One such ad, fusing nonsexist language and the most popular word in the California growth movement, solicits a ”nurtureperson.” Dear gents and ladies, as I might have addressed you in less troubled times, this female person knows firsthand the reasons for scourging sexist bias from the language. God knows what damage was done me, at 15, when I worked in my first job – as what is now known as a newspaper copyperson – and came running to the voices of men barking, ”Boy!” No aspirant to the job of refuse-collection person myself, I nonetheless take off my hat (a little feathered number, with a veil) to those of my own sex who may want both the job and a genderless title with it. I argue only that there must be a better way, and I wish person or persons unknown would come up with one. Defend it on any grounds you choose; the neutering of spoken and written English, with its attendant self-consciousness, remains ludicrous. In print, those ”person” suffixes and ”he/she’s” jump out from the page, as distracting as a cloud of gnats, demanding that the reader note the writer’s virtue. ”Look what a nonsexist writer person I am, avoiding the use of masculine forms for the generic.” Spoken, they leave conversation fit only for the Coneheads on ”Saturday Night Live.” ”They have a daily special,” a woman at the next table told her male companion in Perry’s, a San Francisco restaurant. ”Ask your waitperson.” In a Steig cartoon, the words would have marched from her mouth in the form of a computer printout. In Berkeley, Calif., the church to which a friend belongs is busy stripping its liturgy of sexist references. ”They’ve gone berserk,” she writes, citing a reading from the pulpit of a verse from I Corinthians. Neutered, the once glorious passage becomes ”Though I speak with the tongues of persons and of angels …” So much for sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. The parson person of the same church is now referring to God as ”He/She” and changing all references accordingly – no easy undertaking if he intends to be consistent. In the following, the first pronoun would remain because at this primitive stage of human evolution, male persons do not give birth to babies: ”And she brought forth her firstborn son/daughter, and wrapped him/her in swaddling clothes, and laid him/her in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. …” As the after-dinner speaker at a recent professional conference, I heard a text replete with ”he/she’s” and ”his/ her’s” read aloud for the first time. The hapless program female chairperson stuck with the job chose to render these orally as ”he-slash-she” and ”hisslash-her,” turning the following day’s schedule for conference participants into what sounded like a replay of the Manson killings. Redress may be due those of us who, though female, have answered to masculine referents all these years, but slashing is not the answer; violence never is. Perhaps we could right matters by using feminine forms as the generic for a few centuries, or simply agree on a per-woman lump-sum payment. Still, we would be left with the problem of referring, without bias, to transpersons. These are not bus drivers or Amtrak conductors but persons in transit from one gender to the other – or so I interpret a fund-drive appeal asking me to defend their civil rights, along with those of female and male homosexuals. Without wishing to step on anyone’s civil rights, I hope transpersons are not the next politically significant pressure group. If they are, count on it, they will soon want their own pronouns. In the tradition of the West, meanwhile, feminists out here wrestle the language to the ground, plant a foot on its neck and remove its masculine appendages. Take the local art critic Beverly Terwoman. + McFadden, Cyra. New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast) [New York, N.Y] 02 Aug 1981: A.9. Full text Abstract/Details 10/28/2016 On Language; IN DEFENSE OF GENDER – ProQuest http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/docview/424181129?accountid=3783 2/2 She is married to a man surnamed Terman. She writes under ”Terwoman,” presumably in the spirit of vive la difference. As a letter to the editor of the paper for which she writes noted, however, ”Terwoman” is not ideologically pure. It still contains ”man,” a syllable reeking of all that is piggy and hairy-chested. Why not Beverly Terperson? Or better, since ”Terperson” contains ”son,” ”Terdaughter”? Or a final refinement, Beverly Ter? Beverly Terwoman did not dignify this sexist assault with a reply. The writer of the letter was a male person, after all, probably the kind who leaves his smelly sweat socks scattered around the bedroom floor. No one wins these battles anyway. In another letter to the same local weekly, J. Seibert, female, lets fire at the printing of an interview with Phyllis Schlafly. Not only was the piece ”an offense to everything that Marin County stands for,” but ”it is even more amusing that your interview was conducted by a male. ”This indicates your obvious assumption that men understand women’s issues better than women since men are obviously more intelligent (as no doubt Phyllis would agree).” A sigh suffuses the editor’s note that follows: ”The author of the article, Sydney Weisman, is a female.” So the war of the pronouns and suffixes rages, taking no prisoners except writers. Neuter your prose with all those clanking ”he/she’s,” and no one will read you except Alan Alda. Use masculine forms as the generic, and you have joined the ranks of the oppressor. None of this does much to encourage friendly relations between persons, transpersons or – if there are any left – people. I also have little patience with the hyphenated names more and more California female persons adopt when they marry, in the interests of retaining their own personhood. These accomplish their intention of declaring the husband separate but equal. They are hell on those of us who have trouble remembering one name, much less two. They defeat answering machines, which can’t handle ”Please call Gwendolyn Grunt-Messerschmidt.” And in this culture, they retain overtones of false gentility. Two surnames, to me, still bring to mind the female writers of bad romances and Julia Ward Howe. It’s a mug’s game, friends, this neutering of a language already fat, bland and lethargic, and it’s time we decide not to play it. This female person is currently writing a book about rodeo. I’ll be dragged behind a saddle bronc before I will neuter the text with ”cowpersons.” Cyra McFadden, author of ”The Serial,” lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. William Safire is on vacation. Illustration drawing of women Word count: 1153 Copyright New York Times Company Aug 2, 1981 More like this Add to Selected items Search 1. 2. 3. Related items Search with indexing terms Subject ENGLISH LANGUAGE LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES ebrary e-books Studies in Language, Gender, and Sexuality : Language and Woman’s Place :… Gender and History Special Issues : Historicising Gender and Sexuality (1… Gender and Early Learning Environments n ;  Cite 9 Email P Save Search ProQuest… >

 
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